Dr. James McIntyre

By Mike Steely
Steelym@knoxfocus.com
In a narrative evaluation of Dr. James McIntyre, Jr., posted this month on the Knox County School Board’s website, it appears the Board is recommending extending his contact, but with some wordage reflecting the turmoil from teachers and parents.
Noted in the evaluation is the falling graduation rate, from 90.3 percent to 87.8 and the drop in ACT scores from 20.6 to 20.2.
In the “Relationships with Staff, Personnel and Board Members” the evaluation says that while the superintendent “communicates directly with Board Members” it also says “Dr. McIntyre’s relationship with staff and personnel in the area of this performance evaluation that will require the most focus from him.”
“Although he has done a number of things to communicate with teachers and staff related to evaluations, common core, PLC’s, etc. recent feedback has shown there is a sense that the communication has only been one way,” the evaluation reads.
“Individual Board Members made various recommendations in their evaluations of things Dr. McIntyre could do to begin improving things. He is strongly encouraged to select some of these items to implement,” the evaluation says.
“While communications to parents, staff and the community is at an all time high, the two way flow of communications is not robust,” the evaluation says under the “Family and Community Engagement” heading.
In conclusion the evaluation says: “This past year has been a very challenging year as KCS sought to implement some of the most aggressive educational reform initiatives in the country…The Board appreciates the work done by Dr. McIntyre to date, but expects that the focus now must be on improving the implementation of the initiatives that we have begun. We have confidence that he will now lead KCS through this effort by incorporating many of these recommendations over the next year.
Under a contact being presented by the School Board the superintendant’s agreement would be extended until January 2017, and he would receive a base salary of $222,800 plus incentives. The contract also says that termination of the contract can only be done with a 2/3 vote by the school board members.
In a related matter Dr. McIntyre told the Joint Education Committee Thursday that a teacher survey was sent that day to area teachers, with 15 “bubble” answer questions and a comment section. The survey, on paper, apparently will not identify those responding but would not be received back before his meeting with the school board on his own evaluation.
He said he was hoping for two to three-thousand replies.

Click here to view the survey sent to teachers.