Last April, the Hernando County School Board opted to hire its next superintendent on a 1-year interim basis, wanting to wait for the election of two new board members to make a more permanent decision.
Now, the time has come to evaluate whether Ray Pinder, who has served as interim superintendent this school year, will merit the opportunity to take on the post moving forward.
At a Feb 25 workshop, the board outlined the process and timeline for evaluating Pinder.
“The evaluation timeline is definitely different than what we’ve done in the past,” board member Susan Duval said. “The situation we find ourselves in right now is that we have a superintendent who does not have a multi-year contract. That being said, the evaluation, which normally we did in the past in September, October had to be moved up in order to give everybody a chance to take the time and provide due diligence in this evaluation.”
What the board will continue doing is using an evaluation rubric listing nine standards: leadership and district culture, policy and governance, communications and community relations, organizational management, curriculum planning development, instructional leadership, human resources management, values and ethics of leadership, and labor relations. Each board member will fill out the rubric, rating Pinder for each standard on a scale of 1-3.
“This all came out of research in superintendents’ evaluations that we did many, many years ago, and it still holds true today,” Duval said.
Each board member must meet with Pinder individually to discuss their evaluations by April 21. Those final evaluations will then be discussed and made public record at a workshop on April 22.
Initially, the plan was to create an agenda item for the April 22 regular school board meeting to approve a contract with the superintendent. However, board vice chairperson Mark Johnson argued that more time was needed.
“At that point, if it’s yes, we want to go forward, we should have someone who is going to negotiate with Mr. Pinder come up with the terms of a contract and then bring that into a meeting in June sometime,” Johnson said. “That follows a more logical sequence in my mind. Because how can you the same day know how much we’re going to give Mr. Pinder if we haven’t done the evaluation in public on the 22nd?”
It was agreed to move the vote to approve a new contract if the board agrees to stay with Pinder on May 6 but no later.
“I don’t think it’s fair to Mr. Pinder to not give him as much opportunity to work out a contract and/or if Mr. Pinder for some reason does not like the agreement, then it gives him enough chances to make decisions for his future and we have to look out for both in my opinion,” Duval said.
Also, it was determined that chairperson Shannon Rodriguez would lead contract negotiations with the superintendent. Duval had handled previous negotiations.
Duval is the only remaining board member who voted to pick Pinder, who had been the assistant superintendent of business and support services, in an at-times heated process last summer that frequently had Rodriguez at odds with then-board member Gus Guadagnino, who initially endorsed Pinder.
Pinder was chosen by a 3-2 vote last June, though he was essentially the only choice after Rodriguez’s nominee, Brent Gaustad, a retired principal at Parrott Middle School and Moton Elementary School, pulled out of the running just prior to the vote taking place.
