Minneapolis schools Superintendent Ed Graff earned positive marks in his second job review as the head of the state's third-largest school district.
Overall, Graff was lauded at Tuesday night's school board meeting by his bosses for meeting expectations in each of his top five priority areas: literacy, equity, social and emotional learning, support services for students and accountability.
Siad Ali, chairman of the board's superintendent evaluation committee, said he's pleased with the work Graff has been doing as head of the district. "I'm very excited to see that a majority of my fellow board members evaluated Superintendent Graff positively," Ali said. "This is encouraging."
Boosting Graff's salary was not discussed during the job review process, board members said. The superintendent, now in his third year at the helm, earns an annual base salary of $225,000 in a three-year contract that expires next year.
The Minneapolis School District has been wrestling with chronic budget shortfalls and decreasing enrollment. Minneapolis school leaders also are making a pitch to voters to pass a referendum for additional money — $18 million for operations and $12 million for technology. And Graff is now a couple of months away from signing the district's new strategic plan.
This was the first time the nine-member Minneapolis school board graded Graff using a new system, evaluating him on his work last year to implement his priorities.
At a recent board committee meeting, board members voted to add "operations" as one of the priorities to be evaluated, but they agreed not to measure his performance in that area using the same numbers-rating system they used for the other areas.
Board Member Nelson Inz, who had voted against the proposal, said it was unfair to assess Graff on operations, especially when he wasn't informed about it ahead of time. "It seems like a setup almost for me," Inz said. "We don't want to just set the superintendent up so that we could take shots at him publicly."
