What's at stake?
Additionally, FUSD is building a new model to attract more feedback from parents and community members.
Beefed up training evaluation standards for Fresno Unified Superintendent Misty Her and the district’s teachers and staff took center stage at this week’s school board meeting.
Specifically, the superintendent shared details on the district’s effort to make staff evaluations consistent across the district, including a dashboard that will track required and completed training for employees conducting evaluations.
“Since COVID, training has been inconsistent and we have not had a way [to] track which leaders have gotten training and which leaders have not gotten training,” said Her. “So what we decided to do as a system is we’re going to start at 0%.”
The efforts are part of the district’s “goals and guardrails,” a detailed plan aiming to improve student outcomes and staff performance across multiple areas by 2030.
The superintendent also rolled out FUSD’s new plans to get more consistent and greater community feedback on “all major decisions.”
FUSD looks to improve evaluation quality and training
FUSD wants to raise the percentage of supervisory staff who complete relevant evaluation training from 0% in June 2025 to 100% by June 2028.
According to Her, the district is implementing new required training for supervisors on how to properly evaluate employees. Now, supervisors are expected to complete training relating to FRISK evaluations, the district’s bargaining agreements and new anti-bias training added for the 2025-2026 school year.
On top of this, Her shared that by January of next year, assistant superintendents from human resources will be hosting weekly meetings with school site leaders to assist with evaluation questions. Also, a mandatory week-long training seminar will be developed by June 2027 for new supervisors to complete before assuming their roles.
New community engagement forms
Her also showed off new community engagement forms, in line with the district’s guardrail that requires the superintendent to seek community engagement before proposing major decisions to the board.
The forms are meant to create an overview of proposals that must include a timeline, strategies for outreach to target audiences and how success will be measured.
Along with the new forms, a baseline level and 2026 target was established for the district’s interim guardrail that seeks to raise the use of community engagement plans in major board decisions impacting more than 25% of targeted groups.
With an established baseline level of 0% for 2025, the district is now aiming to raise the level to 50% by June of 2026. Target levels were also set for subsequent years, with a final goal of 100% by 2029.
The new superintendent evaluation tool
The board adopted a draft template for a new evaluation tool that will be used to measure the superintendent’s performance on reaching annual targets for the district’s goals and guardrails.
The template was originally discussed at a board meeting earlier this month, but was revised after receiving feedback from board members.
Now, the board is expected to adopt the final metrics for the template in December before finalizing the evaluation details by January.
The board will conduct their first evaluation of Her by May 2026.
At the Wednesday meeting, Trustee Veva Islas said May could be too soon to evaluate Her, noting that the board may not have enough information and data to evaluate the superintendent.
“My worry is, based on the timeline that we’ve established for Superintendent Her’s evaluation, are we really going to have concrete, robust data to do the evaluation?” Islas said.
Ambra O’Connor, the superintendent’s chief of staff, said that the board may choose to amend Her’s contract to move the evaluation data towards November.
“Historically, the fall worked better because you have your SBAC data [and] your state data dashboard,” O’Connor said.
Some board members and Superintendent Her expressed favor in moving the evaluation date into the Fall and substituting the May evaluation with a self-evaluation. While the board did not take action during Wednesday’s meeting to change the initial evaluation date, O’Connor mentioned that it may come as an agenda item at the Dec. 17 board meeting.
