Jackson Falconer
BRADENTON – Six months into Dr. Diana Greene's tenure as Superintendent of the Manatee County School District, reviews of her performance thus far were submitted by school board members–and herself–at
Tuesday's workshop. Proposed revisions to the board's
public comments bylaw were also discussed during the workshop.
Graded under 15 different performance categories and bearing a grading scale of numbers from 1 to 10, the submitted evaluations from board members were unanimously positive, with several 10's, 9's, 8's, and 7's, and one 6 given. That 6, as well as many of the 7's, were accompanied with explanations from board members that those particular numbers were due to the short period that Greene has been in her position so far, as opposed to negative views of her performance.
The evaluations were a stipulation in Greene's one-year contract that was agreed to in June.
"As much as I appreciate everything I see (of Greene's performance) ... we're at six months," said Bob Gause. On his score of 6 that he gave for the 'Integrity' section, Gause said he disliked having to put a score for that particular trait, and advised, "For me it's a 'yes' or 'no' when it comes to integrity ... 6 is as high as you can get if you meet my expectations."
Greene, who rated her performance an '8' in several categories, said, "I don't think there's anything I can say in six months that I'm a complete expert ... I don't have any 10's."
On the subject of revising bylaws to public comments, proposed edits were presented that would limit the number of 3 minute comments that a citizen could make during a meeting to two, and that comments should be limited to issues on the meeting's agenda. Dave Miner called such revision "suppression" of public speech.
Charlie Kennedy expressed disagreement with the idea that revising the bylaw with the suggested wording reflected suppression. If a citizen doesn't like what was discussed during one part of the meeting, he said, they could currently "run out and take a public comment card ... then speak about the legal update for one sentence, then something else for the rest" of their comment time. "(Public comments are) supposed to be about board board business, not your personal axe to grind," he added.
The proposed final revisions to the public comment section stated: "Members of the public shall be given a reasonable opportunity to be heard on a proposition before the board concerning school matters of community interest. For the purposes of public participation there will be two opportunities. A member of the public may speak during the public section of the agenda. A member of the public may speak on one or more specific propositions."
This story was last updated at 12:15 p.m.
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