Staff report

The Union County Board of Education met about 25 minutes in closed session Monday night to discuss Superintendent Patricia Sheffer’s job performance and evaluation before returning to open session and awarding her “exemplary” marks on all seven standards of the annual superintendent’s evaluation.

All Kentucky superintendents are evaluated on seven indicators, and boards of education can choose from four rankings--exemplary (exceeds the standard), accomplished (meets the standard), developing (makes growth toward meeting the standard) and growth required (areas required to be addressed in the Professional Growth Plan).

After board chair Jennifer Buckman announced the board’s finding, she read a brief statement concerning the board’s evaluation of Sheffer.

Buckman said, “We (the board) value the leadership that Mrs. Sheffer demonstrates in leading Union County Public Schools. The board appreciates her honest and open communication. Above all Mrs. Sheffer places the students of Union County as her top priority.”

Following is a summary of each standard and the board’s designation of Sheffer’s evaluation in each.

Standard 1-Strategic Leadership: Superintendent creates conditions that result in strategically re-imaging the district’s vision, mission and goals to ensure that every student graduates from high school, is globally competitive in post-secondary education and the workforce and is prepared for life in the 21st century. Creates a community of inquiry that challenges the community to continually repurpose itself by building on the district’s core values and beliefs about the preferred future and then developing a vision--EXEMPLARY

Standard 2-Instructional Leadership: The superintendent supports and builds a system committed to shared values and beliefs focused on teaching and learning where performance gaps are systematically eliminated over time and every student graduates from high school, college, and career ready--EXEMPLARY

Standard 3-Cultural Leadership: The superintendent understands and acts on the important role a system’s culture has in the exemplary performance of all schools. Understands the people in the district and community, how they came to their current state and how to connect with their traditions in order to move them forward to support the district’s efforts to achieve individual and collective goals...--EXEMPLARY

Standard 4-Human Resource Leadership: The superintendent ensures the district is a professional learning community with process and systems in place that result in recruitment, induction, support, evaluation, development and retention of a high performing, diverse staff. The superintendent uses distributed leadership to support learning and teaching, plans professional development and engages in district leadership succession planning--EXEMPLARY

Standard 5-Managerial Leadership: The superintendent ensures that the district has processes and systems in place for budgeting, staffing, problem solving, communicating expectations and scheduling that organize the work of the district and give priority to student learning and safety. The superintendent must solicit resources (both operating and capital), monitor their use and assure inclusion of all stakeholders in decision about resources so as to meet the 21st century needs of the district--EXEMPLARY

Standard 6-Collaborative Leadership: The superintendent, in concert with the local board of education, designs structures and processes that result in broad community engagement with support for and ownership of the district vision. Acknowledging that strong schools build strong communities, the superintendent proactively creates, with school and district staff, opportunities for parents, community members, government leaders, and business representatives to participate with their investments of resources, assistance and goodwill--EXEMPLARY

Standard 7-The superintendent promotes the success of learning and teaching by understanding, responding to and influencing the larger political, social, economic, legal, ethical and cultural context. From this knowledge, the superintendent works with the board of education to define mutual expectations, policies and goals to ensure the academic success for all students--EXEMPLARY.