School board meets in secret to evaluate JCPS superintendent

Hargens' first year is being evaluated

This from The Courier-Journal:

The Jefferson County Board of Education met privately for three hours Tuesday afternoon as they began evaluating Superintendent Donna Hargens’ first year on the job.

Following the three-hour executive session, school board chairman Steve Imhoff said no action was taken during the meeting and he expects there to be public discussion of Hargens’ evaluation at the school board’s June 11 meeting.

“We started the process of evaluating Dr. Hargens, and I think we had a really good discussion,” he said. “This process will continue over the next few weeks.”


The school board was allowed to hold Tuesday’s discussion in executive session under a 2010 law that allows portions of the process to be conducted in secret.

Three years ago, after former Superintendent Sheldon Berman's evaluation was discussed in private, The Courier-Journal filed a complaint with Attorney General Jack Conway, contending that the board had violated the state's open-meetings law.

After Conway issued an opinion agreeing with the newspaper, the school board took the matter to circuit court. In December 2009, Jefferson Circuit Judge Irv Maze concurred with the attorney general and ordered the board to pay $20,258 in attorney fees to the newspaper.

During the 2010 legislative session, however, a law was approved to allow preliminary superintendent evaluations to be handled in executive session, with the final evaluations to be discussed and voted on in public.

Imhoff is the only school board member who has not been in favor of holding the evaluations in private. He said Tuesday he still believes that a superintendent’s evaluation should be done in the public “since the school district is funded by taxpayer money.” ...