The Currency Of Trust

In their quest to pass a budget over the past month, Newtown’s elected leaders have come to learn that winning the hearts and minds of voters requires something more than winning arguments. No matter how many facts and figures one might bring to bear in an effort to persuade, there is little to be gained in the absence of trust. If people are not convinced of your good faith, they will never be convinced by your words.

No elected board has had a steeper road to climb toward winning the trust of the community recently than the Board of Education, which is still addressing public suspicions over the fairness of its abandonment of the popular owner-operator bus transportation system. The lingering anger and frustrations from that issue have spilled over into other areas, including the district’s special education and fiscal policies.

To its credit, the current school board has taken significant steps since last November’s local elections to re-engage with the community it serves through coffees, meetings, and information sessions after years of arm’s-length relations with the public. The idea is to let all of Newtown have a stake in educational excellence beyond merely paying the bill. The Board of Education now has an opportunity to take that effort a step farther by opening up a process that has taken place largely out of view in recent years: the evaluation of the district’s top administrator, the superintendent of schools.

Late last year, a senior staff associate of the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education (CABE) advised the local board on its pending evaluation of the superintendent, noting that his organization does not typically recommend formal written evaluations because such documents are, under the state’s sunshine laws, public documents. The implication was that school boards might not want the public to know what they really think about their school administrators.

The only problem with that approach, as one school board member pointed out at the time, is that when there is a turnover in the Board of Education membership, as there was in Newtown last year, new members have no context in which to consider subsequent evaluations. What were the past recommendations? Have they been met, or even addressed? Not only does the lack of a written evaluation of the superintendent keep the public in the dark, it keeps elected school board members in the dark as well.

Last week, Board of Education Chair Debbie Leidlein reported that the school board would initiate a written review of the superintendent in its current evaluation, which is due in June. “This review will permit the board to be very open and honest, and it will provide the board with an opportunity to make decisions going forward,” she told The Bee. It was a gesture of good faith to the community. We are confident it will be justly rewarded in the currency of trust.