Metro school board evaluates Pedro Garcia's performance
By Pinky Kansupada
Diversity Institute Fellow
07.24.03
The Metro Board of Education evaluated the job performance of Davidson County’s director of schools at its July 22 meeting and seemed to give him a passing grade.
The evaluation considered how Pedro Garcia was meeting board policies as he begins his third year on the job. Garcia stood behind a lectern before a table of nine board members and discussed his ability to comply with a list of about 20 policy items.
Board members agreed that Garcia met most of the goals, including efforts to pay Metro teachers competitive salaries. But how teachers are compensated and media communication policies remained issues of concern for board members.
During this year’s salary negotiations, teacher salaries were compared to those of other school districts in Tennessee to ensure that the county attracted and retained talented teachers, according to a report released during the meeting.
“All of our teacher salaries reflect the top 10 in the state; thus we are able to attract the best teachers,” said Garcia, the district’s first Hispanic director.
Although the school district did not meet its goal of linking teacher compensation with performance, the board said that Garcia had made reasonable efforts to help the district do so.
Some board members questioned, however, whether reasonable efforts had been made in the area of media communications. They cited an unflattering news report in The Tennessean about school diversity in the district, which caught them off guard.
Some sources quoted in the story seemed unprepared to answer questions, board members said.
That is unacceptable because the district has the resources to provide spokespersons with information and material that adequately prepare school officials to address media questions, board member Kathy Nevill said.
“I feel like it is obvious to us that communication remains our largest problem,” said board Vice Chairman Pam Binkley Garrett. “It is frankly pretty embarrassing that we don’t know what is going on. The better informed we are, the better we can represent the constituency of our district, and I think that is our No. 1 job.”
Communication was not the only problem board members had with The Tennessean news report.
“We have had a retreat for every issue,” board member Edward Kindall said. “We have not had a retreat to talk about the issues that came out in the paper, socio-economic issues…We have to take some responsibility for it.”