ROCK SPRINGS — According to a discussion at the Sweetwater County School District #1 Board of Trustees meeting, the methods regarding teacher evaluations are prone to being unfair because the administrators are rushed.

Sweetwater Education Association President Mark Chollak expressed concerns to the board that teacher evaluations were not being conducted in a completely fair manner due to time constraints on administrators.

“There are 13 different (evaluation) rubrics,” Chollak said. “Our administrators are so stretched thin that they can’t do justice to those rubrics.”

Chollak called for the SEA to be involved in the process of determining what would be a fair system for evaluating teacher performance.

Trustee Max Mickelson responded that he had “some discomfort” with the way that teacher evaluation system was set up, but that the district had to meet state requirements.

“Our teachers are being evaluated under a system that doesn’t work,” Chollak continued. “I question the validity of that system…Evaluations are not consistent from building to building or even administrator to administrator.” He added further that teachers were sometimes intimidated by the evaluation process.

“Discussion, friction and frustration” were some of the results of the current teacher evaluation system, Mickelson acknowledged, but he added that the state legislature had laid down stipulations for what evaluation process districts will have to implement.

Trustee Neil Kourbelas responded that his assumption was that the constructs of the evaluation process were what had some teachers feeling intimidated.

“Evaluations are sometimes done (based) on personal feelings rather than performance,” Chollak said. “No administrator really has time to go through all 13 (criteria).”

“Any system could be corrupted by someone with an unfair bias,” Kourbelas responded.“That’s a very different argument from lack of time, versus an intentional unfair bias.”

“That leaves an opportunity for unfair bias,” Chollak said. “I don’t know what else to say. These kinds of complaints are routine in this district.”

Addressing Kourbelas specifically, Chollak added, “I’m surprised you say that you haven’t heard this before. There are pretty different stories from what you see in the district and what I see.”

And thus the matter sits for now.