The Fresno County Civil Grand Jury is calling on Fresno Unified School District to modernize outdated job descriptions and enforce consistent employee evaluations.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Last week, the grand jury published a report titled \u201cA Sharper Focus for Fresno Unified,\u201d detailing the district\u2019s inconsistencies with employee performance evaluation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Driving the news: The grand jury received a complaint concerning how taxpayer money was spent on severance payments to a non-certified, non-union employee.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The report did not name the former employee at the center of the complaint, but former communications chief Nikki Henry received a $162,000 severance payout after resigning following an artificial intelligence scandal.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The big picture: While the grand jury determined that Fresno Unified appeared to follow its specific policies, it discovered that the district was not rigorously enforcing its policies regarding personnel evaluations.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The grand jury discovered that the district is implementing a program known as Student Outcome Focused Government (SOFG) to change the direction of the district so that every employee is working toward the same four goals. One of the guardrails implemented by the Board of Education was the principle of effective staffing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yet the grand jury found that one impediment to effective staffing was the lack of consistent and timely personnel evaluations, which are supposed to occur at least once every two years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring the interview process, the Grand Jury learned that perhaps as little ast 12% of the entire staff at FUSD had been evaluated in the last 10 years,\u201d the report reads.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Go deeper: Another issue the grand jury discovered centered on the district\u2019s job descriptions, which need to be updated to current standards.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cJob descriptions needed to be updated to reflect the latest computer technology, including the use of current computer programs and the application of artificial intelligence (AI),\u201d the report reads.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What we\u2019re watching: The grand jury recommends that FUSD develop a procedure for completing personnel evaluations so that they can be completed at least once every two years and that all evaluations should be completed by the end of the 2027-2028 school year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The grand jury also recommended that the district update job descriptions for all full-time employees by the end of the 2027-2028 school year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fresno Unified is required to issue a formal response within 90 days. The grand jury said in its report that the district was responsive and acknowledged its evaluation and job description issues.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Fresno County Civil Grand Jury is calling on Fresno Unified School District to modernize outdated job descriptions…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":152383,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113],"class_list":["post-416159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}