The seven-member Washoe County School Board gave Superintendent Traci Davis an overall job approval rating of “minimally effective” for the 2016-17 school year, according to a draft report detailing preliminary results of Davis's review.

The board gave Davis a preliminary grade of 2.67 out of 4, down a half point from her 2015-16 score of 3.17 out of 4. Last year, Davis's score was considered "effective."

The board rated Davis on six areas: strategic district leadership, instructional leadership, systemic leadership, collaborative leadership, organizational leadership, and board relationships/professional ethics.

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“It’s a different board this year than last, and so people have different perspectives,” said Angela Taylor, board president, who didn’t want to comment directly on the downgraded rating until it is made official.

That will happen during a public presentation at a specially scheduled trustees meeting at 4 p.m. Thursday at district administrative headquarters, 425 E. Ninth St.

The review, conducted by third-party human resource firms OnStrategy and The Human Resource Connection for a fee of $19,500, consisted of a staff and community survey, a superintendent self-evaluation and one-on-one interviews with each member of the board of trustees.

This is the final review of Davis’s job performance before her three-year contract ends on June 30, 2018. Davis’s contract will not be on the table at Thursday’s meeting, but members of the board confirmed discussions surrounding that topic will begin in the coming months.

The results of the review will play a role in those discussions, including whether trustees opt to renew Davis’s contract in June. But the key word to remember when looking at the preliminary results is the word preliminary: Davis’s score is not final until the board accepts and approves the results at Thursday’s meeting.

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Davis earned her lowest score from the trustees in organizational leadership, which averaged a 2.2 out of 4 — a drop of more than a full point from last year’s score of 3.3 out of 4.

Trustees, who are identified only as Trustee 1 through 7 in the report, submitted written comments in addition to their survey responses, though they have been heavily edited and aggregated into common themes in the preliminary report.

In the case of organizational leadership, Davis’s lowest scored category, trustees were critical of her willingness to acknowledge failures and shortcomings, specifically referencing her defensive response to negative feedback given during a town hall meeting concerning last year’s $40 million budget crisis.

The Reno Gazette-Journal has submitted a public records request seeking the full, unedited comments submitted with surveys.

Multiple trustees gave her a score of 1 across multiple categories. Last year, Davis’s lowest score was a 2.4 out of 4.

Surveys were also distributed to all WCSD staff, members of the community and select parents and students.

Though the 1-4 rating given by the trustees correlates with a specific level of job effectiveness, the survey distributed to staff, parents and community members has no such designation.

Erica Olsen, chief operating officer of OnStrategy, one of the firms hired to facilitate the review, said this is because those surveys are only meant to inform the ratings given by the trustees. They’re not supposed to be a form of review themselves.

“The board of trustees wanted those data points to help them make their assessment of the superintendent,” she said.

The results of the surveys were provided to the trustees prior to them filling out their assessments or being interviewed for the review.

The survey posed a multitude of questions to staff and community members directly pertaining to the same six dimensions posed to trustees. But, differing from the 1 to 4 scale utilized by trustees, respondents to the survey were able to rank Davis on a scale of 1 to 5.

The perceptions of 106 respondents who identified themselves as district leadership, those within Davis’s leadership team and administrators working at a central district office, consistently fell by at least 10 percent from last year's score in almost every category.

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But the perceptions of the 124 site leaders, including principals and vice principals, and 708 certified staff, which includes teachers, were consistently in the lowest rungs of those who approved of Davis’s job performance.

Overall, district staff, parents and community stakeholders rated Davis’s job performance at 2.6 out of 5.

In a standalone question on the survey, where respondents were able to rate the overall effectiveness of the district leadership on a scale of zero to 10, WCSD earned a 5.67 out of 10.

That figure, Taylor said, is entirely new to this year’s review so it’s difficult to interpret as good or bad.

“It’s the first time we’ve had that,” she said. “So it’ll be interesting to trend it and see how it’s changing over time.

Olsen of OnStrategy said that question is likely a better indicator of the public’s perception of district leadership as a whole, rather than the specific job performance of Traci Davis.

More than 7,600 surveys were sent with 1,191 being completed during the survey period of Aug. 2 to Aug. 13, 2017. Surveys were sent to all WCSD staff, district communications staff and the board of trustees.

The survey also went out to these community partners and stakeholders approved by the board of trustees at their June 27 meeting:

The equity and diversity task force

Parent leaders by school

The WCSD student advisory board

The gifted and talented advisory panel

The council on family engagement

The Washoe County citizens advisory board

The South Truckee Meadows/Washoe Valley citizen advisory board

Community partners (including non-profits, advocacy groups, working groups and faith organizations)

Community leaders (including legislators and city and county officials)

Taylor said she hopes this review points Davis and the district toward areas in need of improvement.

“Let’s find some of those opportunities to get better; what are those opportunities for growth?” Taylor said. “At the end of the day, the bottom line, that’s what we’re looking for.”

Read the full preliminary report On Traci Davis's job performance review: