Central school chief rates highly

Superintendent Michael Faulk has once again received a good annual performance evaluation from the seven-member Central Community School Board.

The board on Monday rated Faulk as “higher than satisfactory.” That works out to a score of between 2 and 3 on a 3-point scale where 2 is “meets expectations” and 3 is “exceeds expectations.”

Faulk was rated in nine separate areas, ranging from instructional management to community relations, to how well he delegates authority.

Board President James Gardner said the board gave Faulk both an average score and a mode, or most-common, score.

Gardner said Faulk received a range of scores, but “there were more threes than any other numbers.”

Gardner would not give more precise numbers, citing Louisiana law that allows schools boards to keep confidential much of their work evaluating superintendents.

Faulk has been Central’s superintendent since 2007 when the school district was formed by breaking away from the East Baton Rouge Parish school system, following Baker and Zachary, both of which broke away in 2003. His contract does not expire until December 2015.

The final evaluation tallies were not given to Faulk until Monday, but the superintendent and board members met for almost two hours on June 25 to go over the praise and concerns of individual board members.

In an interview, Faulk said he appreciated the care which board members took to evaluate him and he got some good feedback.

“They were very thorough,” he said. “I wanted it to be very thorough.”

The next step is for the board and Faulk to settle on new performance objectives.

Heretofore, Faulk has had objectives to maintain healthy financial reserves and get a satisfactory annual evaluation.

Now, Faulk is going to be getting additional, more-specific academic goals.

Faulk and Gardner said the new goals flow out of a new strategic plan that the School Board is nearly finished devising, and the two parties will likely reach agreement on those goals in August.

Gardner said possible goals include increasing student performance at all levels on state standardized tests, increasing the number of ACT test-takers, getting more students to seek National Merit scholarships, and seeing more students demonstrating higher-order thinking skills.