School board members begin self-assessment

Thursday, July 18, 2002 | 10:50 a.m.

To prove they are playing by the same rules they laid out for the more than 27,000 employees they're responsible for, members of the Clark County School Board will meet today to hammer out a plan to hold themselves accountable.

"We can't hold other people to one standard and ourselves to another," said School Board President Sheila Moulton. "Requiring members to complete self-assessments is an excellent way to demonstrate our commitment to accountability at every level."

It's a plan that has critics amazed.

Under a draft of the plan being considered, board members would have to rate themselves, in writing, on how well they deal with the public, whether they are polite to each other at meetings and whether they always thought in terms of "children first."

The plan also calls for the board members to take turns publicly critiquing videotapes of previous board meetings, much the way a football team studies its performance after a game.

"It's a joke," said John Jasonek, executive director of the Clark County Education Association, which represents the majority of the district's 14,000 teachers. "If they want to know how they're doing, they should ask their employees. Having the board members write nice things about themselves is downright goofy."

Board Members Mary Beth Scow, Denise Brodsky and Moulton drafted the proposal, which is expected to be approved in some form at the July 24 board meeting. Self-assessments could begin as early as this fall, Moulton said.

Ted Jelen, chairman of the political science department at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said self-assessments are commonplace in the private sector but unusual for public officials.

The idea of self assessments -- along with holding committee meetings to devise the process -- raises some concerns about the individuality of each board member, Jelen said. Such a process might suggest there is one "right" way of behaving during meetings and interacting with the public and staff, Jelen said.

"There's already an evaluation system in place for the school board, it's called an election," Jelen said. "It's the voters who should making assessments, not the members themselves."

Board member Susan Brager-Wellman said she supported self-assessments, calling the proposal a "brave" step. Her only dissent was on the proposal to have board members review videotapes of prior meetings.

"I don't think we should be Monday morning quarterbacks," Brager-Wellman said. "Our jobs are to be responsive to the public, not to criticize each other."

Two years ago, the board voted to adopt "policy governance," a management concept that seeks to limit outside influence and micro-management by individual board members. The self-assessments are part of the policy governance model, which calls for the board to set specific goals and monitor whether the targets are reached, Moulton said. The school board set goals for itself as well as for Superintendent Carlos Garcia and district staff, Moulton said.

While Garcia's written self-assessment was made public, his annual review in May was held behind closed doors. How the school board members self-assessments would be distributed, and whether the public would be given an opportunity to respond to the written comments, hasn't been decided, Moulton said.

"We're figuring all of this out for the first time," Moulton said. "It's exciting to think that we're setting a whole new standard, but we also want to approach this thoughtfully and without haste."