The Superintendent's 2004 Evaluation and why it still matters
In 2004, then School Committee member Heather Pineault wrote an evaluation of Wayland's Superintendent that could best be called "scathing", where nearly every point in it is a criticism of the Superintendent. That's not to say that the comments are mean-spirited. Good reasoning seems to support each one, and it is obvious that considerable thought and due diligence went into this evaluation. It is just brutally honest.
Beyond the evaluation itself, there are some important points to note from this:
• in spite of its contents, Dr. Burton went on to get a good review and a raise that year and every year since.
• Ms. Pineault became quiet on the subject and in later years, her committee voted unanimously to give Dr. Burton rave reviews and big raises, even in an economy where virtually no one was getting a raise, many people across the state and the country were getting laid off, taking pay cuts, or having their hours cut.
• Six years after she wrote those words, two members of our current School Committee expressed similar concerns about not having enough information from the administration in February, 2010, Barb Fletcher and Deb Cohen stated that they don't understand enough about the Central Office administration to make cuts there, so they participated in a unanimous vote to approve a budget that cut 7 teachers in order to save nearly a million dollars, while only cutting $22,000 for the adminisrtation budget. And it is important to note that it is the administration who drew up this proposed budeget that the SC voted unanimously to approve.