Boston Public Schools Superintendent Mary Skipper rated her own job performance as “effective” or “highly effective” in all categories and took feedback from the school committee during a special meeting Monday night.
The school committee generally agreed and gave Skipper a 3.75 average rating overall, citing her overall performance as “effective” or proficient.
“I think I speak for all of our school committee members where we say that we do have confidence in your ability to lead this district,” said member Stephen Alkins. “We agree change is not going to happen overnight.”
The rating will help the school committee determine any increase to Skipper’s annual $300,000 salary managing the largest school district in the state.
Committee members rated her as “effective” or “proficient” in three out of four major categories: instructional leadership, management and operations and professional culture.
Skipper scored a “developing” rating, her lowest score, in family and community engagement.
Skipper said in her self-evaluation that she helped lower rates of chronic absenteeism following the pandemic and increased the number of students reading at grade-level as a result of her Equitable Literacy initiative.
School committee members Michael O’Neill and Quoc Tran individually rated Skipper as “highly effective” while members Brandon Cardet-Hernandez, Stephen Alkins and Polanco Garcia rated her general performance lower, in the “developing” category.
Cardet-Hernandez gave Skipper a score of “minimally effective” in the areas of family and community engagement and management and operations.
School committee member Chantel Lima Barbosa, who rated Skipper as “effective,” said she has been calling on the district to improve its community engagement since she was appointed last year, noting missed opportunities for the superintendent to be more involved.
“We still have a lot of work to do, especially when we think about our immigrant families, folks whose first language is not English and our newcomers,” Lima Barbosa said.
Skipper announced that BPS will launch a new district website this fall in an effort to make information more easily available for families and communities.
“We also have purchased two way translation devices that will be distributed across the district to every school, so that families can immediately communicate live to any staff in the building in any language they speak,” Skipper said.
Alkins said Skipper must work to improve family engagement but acknowledged that it is also the “toughest” of the four categories for evaluation.
Overall, the committee expressed confidence in Skipper citing her literacy efforts, lower dropout rates and improving on-time bus transportation.
But a number of BPS and education advocates, like John Mudd of Cambridge, spoke critically about Skipper’s performance during the public comment period.
“I don’t get a sense of urgency in saying that we must change our approaches, and that we don’t have three to five years to wait, to see how I would say many questionable strategies will play out,” said Mudd.
Ruby Reyes and Suleika Soto of the Boston Education Justice Alliance said the results of a community survey they conducted showed nearly 70 percent of respondents didn’t feel like the voices of students, families, educators and community members from diverse backgrounds were part of her decision making processes.
“Overall, Superintendent Skipper received a cumulative average of 32 out of 100,” Reyes said. “According to the grading policy, a student must score at least 80% in summative tasks. We deserve so much better.”
The committee will vote on Skipper’s final evaluation at its Aug. 28 meeting.