The Northport Public School Board of Education (BOE) unanimously voted December 11 to approve the rating of superintendent Neil Wetherbee as “effective” for his 2023 district leader evaluation. Unlike other school districts in Leelanau County, Northport does not produce an evaluation document with specific ratings of each domain. However, Wetherbee said the district continues to follow the Marzano Teacher Evaluation System, one of the evaluations recommended by the Michigan Council of Educator Effectiveness.
Wetherbee is rated on various “elements” in six different domains as a district leader. The domains are: Domain one is “A data-driven focus to support student achievement,” domain two is “continuous support for improvement of instruction, domain three is “continuous support for a guaranteed and viable curriculum,” domain four is “community of care and collaboration,” domain five is “district core values,” and domain six, “resource allocation management.” Also assessed during the evaluation is student growth.
“I provide evidence to the board of those domains (throughout the year) and then at the November board meeting, I recommend an evaluation. The board debates the recommendation, and in December they vote on it,” Wetherbee said. “Then there’s our growth data for the district, which is the same for our teachers, and that was also effective… So the combination of those six domains plus the growth data was a recommendation of ‘effective,’ which the board accepted.”
