By Delayna Earley
The Island News
Beaufort County School District (BCSD) Superintendent Frank Rodriguez has received a rating of highly effective overall following his fourth annual evaluation on the 2022-2023 school year during a Special Called meeting of the Board of Education on Monday, Oct. 30, 2023.
This is the same rating that he received during his review last year, as well.
The information was released in a press release on Tuesday, Oct. 31, along with a copy of the 2022-2023 Superintendent Annual Evaluation Instrument, which explains the breakdown of how the school board members score the superintendent during an evaluation.
There are 32 questions included in the five components of Professional Practice.
Government and Board Relations are 20%, Community Relations are 15%, Staff Relations are 15%, Business and Finance are 20% and Instructional Leadership is 30%.
Superintendent Rodriquez scored a 3.68 for Governance and Board Relations, a 3.35 for Community Relations, 3.52 for Staff Relations, 3.72 for Business and Finance and a 3.5 for Instructional Leadership with a total composite Professional Practice score of 3.56.
The average scores for the three Measurable Components were Student Achievement he got a 3.39, Teacher Recruitment and Retention he got a 3.10 and Financial Oversight he got a 4.0.
He scored the highest in the areas of Business and Finance and had a perfect score in Financial Oversight.
The budget this year was spent with 0.1% remaining and the BCSD maintains a Moody’s Aa1 bond rating, which is the highest rating, along with Greenville, for the 73 public school districts in S.C. according to the press release.
The Board also considered the construction projects of the $344 million 2019 school bond referendum, in addition to his oversight of the development of the $439 million 2023 bond referendum that will be on this year’s ballot on November 7.
Other supporting evidence that was taken into consideration for Rodriguez’s emphasis on quality classroom instruction included BCSD being ranked first in the state for teacher compensation for the second year running, maintaining staff childcare, providing on-going professional development for educators and continued improvement in student’s English Language Arts (ELA) scores.
Delayna Earley lives in Beaufort with her husband, two children and Jack Russell. She formerly worked as a photojournalist for The Island Packet/The Beaufort Gazette, as well as newspapers in Indiana and Virginia. She can be reached at delayna.theislandnews@gmail.com.
