Dracut School Committee postpones Espindle’s evaluation

By Dennis Shaughnessey, dshaughnessey@lowellsun.com Lowell Sun

DRACUT — The School Committee put off discussion of Superintendent Elaine Espindle’s evaluation last night until they can meet with her privately and go over the specifics.

“We had every intention of doing it tonight but we just didn’t have the chance to sit down with her,” said committee Chairman Ron Mercier Jr. following the abbreviated meeting.

Mercier said the five individual evaluations were compiled, after which he and committee member Joseph Campbell met yesterday afternoon to draft a composite of scores and comments. The draft is then supposed to be given to the superintendent as a courtesy. Mercier and Campbell wanted to meet with Espindle before last night’s regularly scheduled meeting but there wasn’t enough time, Mercier said.

“The soonest we would be able to do it now would be at our next meeting, which is sometime in March,” Mercier said.

The committee voted last night to cancel the next scheduled meeting of March 12, because it would conflict with the annual Dracut Scholarship Foundation Telethon. The next scheduled meeting is March 26 unless a special meeting is called. Committee member Dennis “D.J.” Deeb said he would like to have a meeting on March 19 but is not optimistic.

“I think it’s safe to say we’ll have to wait until March 26,” Deeb said. “It’s always been our practice in the past to go over the evaluations with the superintendent before releasing it to the public. It’s not fair to release it without giving her to opportunity to look at the individual scores and comments from the committee, and there just wasn’t enough time to do that.”

The evaluations rate the superintendent on a scale of 1 to 10 in six categories. In 2006, she scored an overall 7.6 in her evaluation. In 2004 and 2005, she scored 7.9 and in 2003 her overall performance was rated as 8.2. Espindle, who was hired to replace Christos Daoulas in 1997, has a little more than a year remaining on her contract. Her evaluation is seen as an indicator as to whether the committee will renew or renegotiate her contract in 2008.