Survey: Most principals given good grades

By Emily Richmond (contact)

Tuesday, June 1, 2004 | 10:51 a.m.

Of the more than 5,000 Clark County School District teachers who responded to a union survey, 73 percent said they were satisfied with their principal.

The surveys asked the district's 15,200 teachers to grade their principals on 29 factors, including leadership, responsiveness and emotional maturity, said Mary Ella Holloway, president of the Clark County Education Association.

Only schools where at least 50 percent of the teachers responded were counted. Of the district's 289 schools, all but 80 campuses met that threshold.

"The survey tells us that two-thirds of our teachers are happy and the vast majority of our administrators are good people," Holloway said. "It also tells us there are a few rogue folk out there messing things up and creating adversarial situations."

Bendorf Elementary School in the southwest region had the lowest rating, followed by Reed and Brinley elementary schools in the northwest region and Piggot Elementary School and Clark High School in the southwest region.

Allen Coles, superintendent of the southwest region, said he planned to review the union's survey. Coles said he was surprised to learn Bendorf had topped the list of low-rated administrations. Bendorf is one of the region's high-achieving schools and the principal, Jerre Moore, is "a real dynamo," Coles said.

"We have our own district surveys that go out to parents and students as well as teachers, and we also look at various factors such as attendance, test scores and discipline," Coles said. "This (the union survey) would be one additional piece of data for us to consider."

Moore said Friday she was surprised by her ranking on the survey.

"This is a good school with great kids, and parents are as involved as any place I've been," Moore said. "Our teachers work hard and they know they are being held accountable."

The school has a governance committee that provides teachers with a forum for raising concerns, Moore said.

The lowest-rated schools by region were: Bendorf (southwest); Miller Middle School (southeast); Mackey Elementary School (northeast); and Reed Elementary School (northwest).

Tam Larnard, principal of Miller since January 2003, said his low rating may be teachers expressing dissatisfaction with the changes he brought to the Green Valley campus.

Larnard said he expected his teachers to go beyond rote facts and figures and find ways to stimulate their students' appetites for learning. He has also reversed the long-standing policy that any missing homework assignment be graded as a permanent "zero," a move that some teachers resisted, Larnard said.

"We had some of our highest-achieving kids crying in my office because they spent days on an assignment but left it in their lockers and now had no chance to turn it in," Larnard said. "We have to balance our rules with common sense."

The union also provided a list of schools that received the highest ratings in each of the five regions. The highest-rated principals were Alamo Elementary School (southwest), Walker Elementary School (southeast), Dailey Elementary School (east), Elizondo Elementary School (northeast), and Rogich Middle School (northwest).

Alamo Principal Jerri Mausbach on Friday described herself as elated with her school's ranking.

"It's wonderful news but it's not due to me, it's due to our staff," Mausbach said. "I would describe our school as a democratic partnership. We make almost every decision by consensus, and my teachers know I trust their judgment."

Alamo has 1,225 students, the largest enrollment of any nine-month school in the district, Mausbach said.

"It's very crowded over here and our teachers are very, very busy," Mausbach said. "I was concerned that would be bad for morale, but instead everyone's made a concerted effort to make it work."