APS board committee recommends new protocols for how to evaluate the panel's new superintendent

A committee of Albuquerque Public Schools board members on Monday recommended new protocols revamping how the full board will evaluate its superintendent.

The recommendation comes after the school board — which saw three new members join its ranks this year — selected a new superintendent, the district’s current chief operations officer, Gabriella Blakey.

“I think ultimately, the goal is to implement an evaluation tool that is student outcomes-focused governance,” board policy committee chair Josefina Domínguez told the Journal ahead of Monday’s committee meeting.

That convening was aimed at coming out with a draft of the protocols for the full board to take up. If adopted, Blakey would face annual summative evaluations based on a rubric developed by the board after meeting with her at the beginning of each evaluation cycle.

That process will culminate in the board president’s drafting of an evaluation letter, which would be discussed with the full panel, and a vote on whether to extend or change the superintendent’s contract.

Currently, board members and the superintendent still mutually decide on goals and metrics, but fill out “superintendent performance evaluation forms,” which are then aggregated and presented to the superintendent as summative feedback.

Under the policy committee’s recommendation, Blakey’s formative assessments would now happen every month in the form of sessions monitoring APS progress on the board’s goals and guardrails, adopted last year. Those sessions already have been happening for months.

Evaluating Blakey’s performance through the progress monitoring sessions, Domínguez said, will help keep the board and superintendent accountable to the community.

Another strength, board Secretary Janelle Astorga added during the meeting, is that the formative evaluations will keep everyone on the same page throughout the evaluation process, and the superintendent will know what’s coming when it comes time for the annual summative report card.

“We have continuous progress monitoring throughout at the board meetings, so that the superintendent is not shocked at any of the expectations that we have, but also the feedback that we’re giving,” she said.

When asked why the board’s protocols for evaluating the superintendent weren’t taken up before the selection of a new one, Domínguez said the board has had a lot on its plate, that garnering community engagement “had to take precedence” during the superintendent search and that the board “could not have done it any differently.”