Superintendent Christina M. Kishimoto is a Million Dollar Superintendent! “How did she achieve this awesome title?” you wonder. Simple: ANOTHER 3-2 vote, wherein Her Three Votes gave her 100% across-the-board marks on a super-secret evaluation that occurs behind closed doors as part of her three year superintendent contract of 2014.
On June 28, 2016, Her Three Votes on the Gilbert Public Schools governing board gave Superintendent Christina Kishimoto ANOTHER three year contract. Each year, Kishimoto is paid more than $200,000 for doing heaven knows what … it’s so super secret they’d have to kill you if they told you.
Let’s take a look at how the 3-2 vote (the norm for GPS for the past several years) made Christina Kishimoto a millionaire, if she wasn’t already a millionaire by virtue of her time in Hartford, Connecticut. Those years in Hartford were controversial, just like the past two years that Kishimoto has spent in Gilbert, Arizona.* Funny thing, though, Christina Kishimoto took quite a pay cut when she moved to Gilbert, Arizona; her successor in Hartford received a higher initial salary and then was rewarded with a pay raise after her first year as superintendent. Hartford was really, really glad to get rid of Kishimoto, as their reaction to their new superintendent showed:
The Hartford Board gave new Superintendent Beth Narvaez a great evaluation, but they still bash Christina Kishimoto for the harm she did to that school district. We’re already seeing the same old stuff here in Gilbert: more district administrators, less communication with parents and an incredible level of arrogance in general.
***************
“Beth [Narvaez] came into an organization with little appetite or capacity for real community engagement, as well as a very top-down and opaque method of dealing with parents and community stakeholders,” stated the board, which often faulted the administration under former Superintendent Christina Kishimoto. On Tuesday night, the board spent 2 1/2 hours in a private meeting to discuss her job performance and later voted to tack on an extra year to her original three-year contract with annual 3 percent raises. Narvaez, whose salary is $257,500, said later that the board was being “really thoughtful.”
Why in the world would Kishimoto’s pet board members decide to give her another contract a full year before the existing contract ends? Because Christina Kishimoto told them to. First, Her Three Votes gave Kishimoto grades of 100% across the board so she could collect five figures of so-called *performance pay.* That *evaluation* was done in secret; the public knows only because the controversial maneuver was discussed during the board meeting. Then Kishimoto’s Three Votes decided to give her a NEW contract.
We don’t know what’s in the contract because it was not made public. We won’t know for a long, long time what’s in the contract, because GPS hasn’t even acknowledged Westie’s request to review, let alone copy, that public record. All we can infer is that Kishimoto’s salary of more than $200,000.00 continues, based on president Tram’s comments during the meeting.
Board member Julie Smith explains how this new contract came about: Kishimoto told the board on Monday that she wanted this contract approved on Tuesday night. Christina Kishimoto dictated the terms. Julie Smith tried to table the agenda item so the board could discuss certain terms of the dictated contract, but alas, that failed on a typical 3-2 vote. Watch as Julie Smith describes what actually happened about Kishimoto’s new contract:
As board member Daryl Colvin pointed out the hypocrisy of giving Christina Kishimoto ANOTHER three year contract when all other employees are offered only single year contracts, Christina Kishimoto smirked and nodded. Watch her smirking face. Applaud Daryl Colvin for NOT saying “Some pigs are more equal…” He has more self-restraint than Westie’s Keyboard!
In addition to these stupendously stupid *reforms* imposed on a once highly rated school district, Christina Kishimoto’s emotional outburst, in public, during a video archived school board meeting shows just how unsuited she is for the job she will hold until June 2019.
This occurred BEFORE the public discovered her *alleged* inappropriate relationship with her subordinate became public knowledge. No wonder Superintendent Christina Kishimoto is the subject (you could say, The Butt) of snickers, laughter, finger pointing and all sorts of disrespectful behavior. And that’s from her own staff. Heaven knows what other school districts and their top level leaders say and do in private when Christina Kishimoto’s name comes up in conversation!
The amount of stupidity going on in Gilbert Public Schools keeps Westie busy. Keep sending your chirps, beloved birdies!
*****************
*Big Fat Asterisk: When Christina Kishimoto asked to have her Hartford contract renewed, the Hartford Board of Education said, “No.” The vote was 7-0 to NOT RENEW her contract. Maybe this had something to do with the fact that Christina Kishimoto’s evaluation was so bad, she was rated at 56%. … so she demanded 56% of the performance bonus! <banging head on desk>
Her total evaluation rating was a disastrous 56 percent and the Board of Education announced that no performance bonus was in order, although [Kishimoto’s] salary for this year had already been raised from $205,000 to $231,000.
But last week, despite her unsatisfactory performance evaluation, Kishimoto’s lawyers wrote a letter to the Hartford Board of Education demanding that she be given $15,450 in bonus compensation. According to her attorneys, when the percentages were calculated, the Superintendent deserved $6,180 of $12,000 for the qualitative measures and $9,270 of $18,000 for the quantitative factors. In response, the Chairman of the Hartford Board of Education reported that the board was “incredulous” that Kishimoto thought she deserved a bonus, considering she had already received a pay raise and her evaluation was so poor.
There’s more: Christina Kishimoto did not like that her bosses rated her so low; Kishimoto sent a nasty letter to the Hartford Board of Education complaining about it.
Superintendent Christina Kishimoto issued a statement Thursday disagreeing with the school board’s performance evaluation that criticized her for issues ranging from poor communication to minimal student progress. “I do not find it to be an accurate reflection of the work done under my leadership,” Kishimoto wrote in a letter addressed to board Chairman Matthew Poland and released publicly through her lawyer.
Pretty dumb@$$ thing for a self-styled *professional* to do, right? But there’s more:
“We can’t continue with this dysfunctional dynamic because now it has hurt the kids,” Wareing said. “The superintendent needs to ask herself whether she wishes to continue to treat this board as an unpleasant necessity or as a true partner in the work of reform. And we must ask ourselves whether she is the right person with whom to entrust the education of more than 20,000 kids.”
Kishimoto later called Wareing’s comments “inappropriate.” Poland, however, also suggested that the board has reached a crisis point in its partnership with the superintendent.
Kishimoto’s complaints against her bosses went over well. <sarcasm> So well that Kishimoto was run out of Hartford before her contract expired hired to run Gilbert Public Schools by a 3-2 vote. Thus Christina 7-0 Kishimoto became Christina 3-2 Kishimoto. Obviously, she can’t get along with more than three people at a time. Cue Einstein’s definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.