An Administrator's Guide to California Private School Law

Chapter 5 – Employee Evaluations

 By not intervening, re-focusing, or re-directing the off-task students, you allowed these off- task students to remain unfocused on the instruction and to disrupt other students. Also, by not intervening and by allowing students to remain off-task you sent a message that this type of behavior is acceptable, which will make it more difficult to maintain an orderly and on-task classroom on an ongoing basis.  Your failure to give your students instructions on how to transition from the read aloud to independent reading time resulted in a loss of instructional time. Your failure to timely instruct students they were to read independently at their desks, not on the library rug, resulted in your interrupting the independent reading, to have the students move to their desks. By not intervening, several students did nothing during independent reading time, and wasted valuable reading time. TIMELINESS Finally, the document should be drafted with an eye toward timeliness. By documenting in a timely manner, a supervisor promptly brings concerns to the employee’s attention and avoids the excuse that if the behavior was so problematic, the school should have mentioned it sooner. Also, by documenting in a timely manner the employee is more likely to recall what occurred and effectively process the feedback. Additionally, by timely documenting the supervisor preserves an accurate record of the incident. This will assist when it comes time to write a final evaluation or when an accurate record of what occurred is otherwise needed. Finally, timeliness gives the employee fair notice of the school’s expectations and an opportunity to correct the behavior. Some important tips regarding timeliness are:  Follow the timelines for evaluations set forth in the faculty handbook or employment contract.  Bring issues of concern to the employee’s attention in a timely manner.  Provide praise in areas of outstanding performance to the employee in a timely manner.  Make notations in your supervisor’s notes, log, drop file, or computer records in a timely manner.  Provide feedback on your classroom observations in a timely manner.  Follow-up on needed assistance in a timely manner. T HE E VALUATION M EETING Supervisors must meet with the employees they supervise to discuss their performance evaluations. To evaluate the employee effectively, the supervisor should provide the employee adequate time for the evaluation, honest and constructive feedback, recognition of accomplishments and improvement, identification of performance deficiencies, and suggestions for tools or resources to help the employee improve, as may be necessary. Section 7

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