An Administrator's Guide to California Private School Law

Chapter 5 – Employee Evaluations

where improvement is desired. High standards are encouraged and employees can be told that “cruising” is not adequate.  Performance evaluations often help support termination or other forms of employee discipline. Performance evaluations that show a history of documented performance problems increase the school’s ability to discipline and terminate employees, when needed. Where employees see a well-documented history of poor performance they may be more likely to not fight a termination. A well-documented history of poor performance may also prompt an employee to look for another job and/or resign.  Well-written performance evaluations help defend against litigation involving employment issues. Performance evaluations that contain a documented history of performance issues sometimes prevent litigation from being filed and provide solid evidence to support employee terminations and contract non-renewals which are challenged in court.  Well-written performance evaluations benefit a school in many ways, not the least of which is to set a culture of fairness and openness in how performance issues are addressed. They also give the school flexibility to take necessary actions and effectively manage its workforce. TWO: Assessing Performance The performance evaluation should reflect performance over the entire period, not just the few months before the evaluation is prepared and given to the employee. This makes it important for the evaluator to address and document the employee’s performance throughout the year. The employee needs to be made aware of the problems as they occur, so he or she is not surprised by feedback at the annual evaluation. A. S UPERVISOR ’ S L OG O R N OTES An effective supervisor should regularly document employee performance. This documentation may be done in a notebook, calendar, file folder, computer, iPad, smartphone or other device where supervisor notes are confidentially kept. Record anything that demonstrates less than or greater than expected performance. For example, document when the employee comes in 10 minutes late, has conflicts with parents or other employees, or writes particularly great grading comments for students. Each detail of what the supervisor writes does not necessarily need to be shared with the employee, though the supervisor should discuss the performance issue with the employee in a timely manner and record the supervisory comments and the employee’s responses. A sample supervisor’s log or note might say:

John Jones reported to work on June 9 at 8:10 a.m., 10 minutes late. I reminded him work starts at 8:00 a.m. He said he was sorry, but traffic was terrible again. I explained that because he was late, I needed to cancel a scheduled parent meeting to

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