Petoskey school board to review superintendent's contract

PETOSKEY — The Petoskey school board may be looking at either reassigning Superintendent Chris Parker, or terminating his contract, amid continuing concerns over the climate of the school district and community support.

Members of the Public Schools of Petoskey Board of Education haven’t made any final decisions on that issue. They only took a preliminary step in that direction at their meeting Thursday when they gave one board member, Kathy Reed, the go-ahead to meet with their legal counsel and gather information about those potential steps.

Meanwhile, Parker indicated he may already be in the process of seeking other opportunities beyond Petoskey, if the need to take that step arises.

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This comes after the release of a report that indicated 90% of district staff believe the culture to be “broken,” and amid an evaluation process which points to the conclusion that Parker has been “minimally effective” in his role. School board members began their evaluation with the aid of a facilitator in a closed session meeting April 15. They reopened the subject at their regular meeting this week after Parker provided them with different data suggesting his scores on two categories — student growth and district goals — should have been higher.

Those followup discussions Thursday could have occurred in closed session once again, but Parker agreed to having them in public. Board members reviewed the information at length, but raised concerns over the metrics Parker used, while noting that they did not have the facilitator on hand anymore to help them parse the data. They tabled any final decisions on the evaluation Thursday, but indicated that other categories remained on the evaluation which scored even lower, continuing to pose a cause for concern.

“There were some areas that were really good, and there were some areas that needed a lot of improvement,” said board president Mary Ling. “In combined, that score was ... ‘minimally effective.’ … The student achievement (category), it is what it is, but the more leadership areas. It could be warranted to have an improvement plan."

That sentiment was backed by board member Mark Ashley, who said there weren’t many individual categories near the median of the scale.

Both student progress and district goals were marked as a three out of five, with Parker suggesting the data should come out to a four.

Reed, however, questioned the approach of an improvement plan, instead proposing the contract review options, which ultimately won the favor of the other board members.

“We have got issues with mistrust and severe communication issues,” she said. “Really foundational issues that I'm not sure we'll be able to address with a performance improvement plan, and over the last couple of weeks, as some people have noted, we haven't really seen any effort or leadership on Chris's part to take ownership. … It's just been deflected, not taking ownership for it, so I don't have a lot of confidence that that is going to be an effective way to move forward.”

Many in attendance applauded after the board members voted in favor of reviewing Parker’s contract, and appointed Reed to be the one to meet with legal counsel.

“I just want to say this is a difficult time for the district,” Ling said. “This is nothing to be celebrating. This is very serious. We take our leadership and we take the progress, the movement forward for our district, very seriously, and the board wants to really look to see what our options are and what is best for the district moving forward.”

Parker is the sixth superintendent the district has had in the span of a century. He was hired in April 2019.

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Parker and the school district have come under scrutiny in recent months amid parent concerns on a variety of issues, including school safety. The district also received pushback after placing its three band teachers on leave with little communication to the community about the reasons. Two of those instructors have since returned.

Staff members in the district indicated concerns about behavioral issues, curriculum changes, and a “we” versus “they” dynamic between faculty and the administration.

During public comment portions of the meeting, some attendees criticized Parker for not publicly responding to the reportedly “broken” culture of the district, while some questioned his dedication to the community and made claims that he was interviewing for positions at other districts.

Parker responded, at least in part, to some of those criticisms, later in the meeting during his superintendent’s report.

“Obviously this has been a very difficult challenging time for the district, for the board, and for myself.” he said. “Since the Washburn report was read on this stage, I've done a lot of thinking, reflecting, a lot of soul searching. I've thought about many things that I could do, many conversations that I can have, many different ways to try to help to mend relationships and to help to move the district forward in a positive direction.”

He said it was “evident” he does not have the board’s support, and that he would welcome the opportunity to work to fix those issues. But, he also said he owed it “to myself and to my family to explore other opportunities.”

“For as long as I'm serving as your superintendent, I will continue to work hard to meet the needs of all students and staff and help out in any way I can here at Petoskey,” he said.

This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Petoskey school board to review superintendent's contract