Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Walkthroughs & Your Right to Respond


LCEA's Teacher Quality Committee has discussed walk-throughs and the role they play in the overall evaluation process several times.  Through these disucssions, administrators and educators on the committee have concluded and agreed that walk-throughs are indeed "formative snapshots" that directly and indirectly impact the summative evaluation of an educator.

As a result, these walk-throughs, the information gleened from them, the written feedback forms are subject to response from our members. If you would like to formally amend the material collected in a walkthrough, respond to the data, challenge observations, you may do so.  Guidance for this can be found in the Master Contract.  Grievance and Contract Maintenance Co-Chairs, Tom McLaughlin and Dave Bergman, are also willing to assist our members by answering questions.

The timelines are process are outlined in Article I of the Master Contract:


F.             All evaluations described in C and E above will include the following provisions:

1.             The evaluation(s) of the employee will include a personal conference between the employee and the evaluator within twenty (20) working days of completing classroom visitations.  The employee will be given a brief written or oral summary of each classroom visitation within five days of the visitation or a mutually agreed upon time.
2.             The employee shall have the right to submit a written response to any written evaluation he/she may disagree with and file copies with the principal and/or superintendent within five (5) working days of the evaluation conference.  The written response will be attached to the file copy of the evaluation.
3.             The employee will be given the opportunity to sign and receive a copy of any written information, comments, or evaluations to be placed in the employee's file.  Such signatures shall indicate the employee's awareness of the content but will not necessarily mean agreement with the information, comments, or evaluations.
G.            Any comments which may later be placed in the employee's file in addition to those described in F above must be communicated to the employee in writing within ten (10) working days of the occurrence giving rise to the comments.  The employee shall have the right to submit a written response to such comments within five (5) working days of receiving them.  The written response will be included with the comments if placed in the permanent file.
H.            The evaluation procedure herein is but a single method of employee evaluation, and nothing in these procedures is to be construed as precluding evaluation of employees by other appropriate means.
I.             Due Process  Any non-probationary employee who receives two or more "DOES NOT MEET DISTRICT STANDARDS" on his/her summative evaluation may grieve the elements of the evaluation which have not met district standards at the time the summative evaluation causes adverse action on employment status or level of compensation.