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Schools

Wilcox contract extended one year

Three board members don't agree with adding the year for the superintendent, who admits he must make changes in his leadership style for the future.

By THOMAS C. TOBIN
Published June 21, 2006

It is the second contract extension for the 50-year-old educator, who originally signed a four-year deal ending in 2008.

Board members Nancy Bostock, Mary Brown, Carol Cook and Jane Gallucci said the decision gives the district stability. They also voted for last year's extension.

"One of the strengths of Pinellas County has been the consistency of our leadership,'' said Cook, the board's chairwoman. At a time when education is in "such flux,'' she said, it is important to give Wilcox another year "so that we can start making some long-range plans.''

Board members Janet Clark, Linda Lerner and Mary Russell voted against the extension. Although Lerner gave Wilcox a generally good evaluation earlier this month, she and Clark oppose changing the superintendent's original contract.

Russell said Wilcox suffered a "big decline" in performance since last year and had not earned an extension.

"I just haven't seen the kind of results that I would like to see as an individual board member,'' she said. "I'm concerned at this point. I think three years is enough time to turn it around.''

The extension follows the board's annual evaluation of Wilcox. Aside from low marks by Russell and Clark, he generally drew good reviews.

Wilcox's annual salary increase will be determined later because it is tied to teacher raises, which will be announced soon. He earns about $182,000 this year.

After Tuesday's vote, Wilcox said he wished the board was not so divided over his future.

"Clearly, I'm probably never going to win one or two of them over,'' he said. "But I want to. I'll keep trying.''

From the day he met board members as a candidate for the superintendent's job in early 2004, Wilcox has said he wanted to stay in Pinellas at least until his two children graduate from high school. His daughter is entering fifth grade and his son the seventh.

Wilcox has since guided the district through an often turbulent 19 months that included budget cuts, school bus problems that resulted in two student deaths, and a massive reorganization of the transportation department.

While instituting changes, he pressed long-time district staffers to work with more urgency to improve student performance.

But many of the district's 15,000 employees have resisted him.

"I'm very pleased that the board saw that stability was an important piece,'' Wilcox said in an interview. "I hope that it says to people, 'You know what? Some of these changes, while they're hard, you can't just kind of hunker down and wait till the next guy.' "

Part of the change has been style as Wilcox prodded employees toward better performance with a mixture of praise and candid talk about shortcomings.

Several board members have asked him to curb his penchant for biting remarks, and he has already started to comply.

"I clearly understand that there's a time to push and there's a time to just kind of gently coach and move people forward,'' he said. "In terms of the system, I'm moving into a phase where I'm much more into a coaching mode and trying to get people gently to move forward, as opposed to kind of shocking, pushing, provoking, if you will.''

He added: "This has been a tough year for me in a number of ways, not so much professionally but personally. To have your leadership style subjected to the level of criticism - and I mean that in a constructive way - makes you think a lot. And I'll be a better superintendent for it.''

Also Tuesday, Wilcox gave the board an improvement plan for the coming year. He said he will develop plans to improve employee morale and work to enhance communication, both inside the district bureaucracy and with the public.

He also said he will work more closely with the board to review policy changes and develop a "strategic planning document'' that will set a clearer direction for the district.

A recent St. Petersburg Times poll found teacher morale to be declining in Pinellas schools. But Wilcox said in recent days that the district is working on several improvements that should go a long way toward improving teacher morale.

Among them: a reduction in the practice of classroom "walk-throughs'' by teams of administrators, which many teachers find demeaning.

Wilcox said administrators weren't learning much from walk-throughs anyway because kids and teachers tend to act differently when six people go through a room.

He also said a controversial program to assess students' academic progress throughout the year has been drastically modified. The program, devised by the district and Kaplan Inc., will be hard to recognize by August, he said.

Teachers also should be buoyed by positive trends in scores on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, Wilcox said.

"It's hard to argue with the fact that we have a little better results,'' he said. "And I would hope people find some heart in that. For me, I feel pretty good about it.''

[Last modified June 25, 2006, 11:29:24]