In response to recent confusion over charter schools’ teacher evaluation obligations, the state Board of Education’s human resources committee decided today that the onus is on the charter school commission — not the school board — to establish its own evaluation guidelines.

The vote, made at the HR committee’s meeting this morning, effectively settled the uncertainty among charter school officials over a new, controversial performance evaluation system that is already being implemented this year at traditional public schools and will factor into most teachers’ pay starting next school year.

Charter school officials at a meeting last month said they needed to know as soon as possible how much they were bound to the DOE model because their supplemental contracts with the state teachers union, which are being negotiated right now, are contingent on teacher evaluation agreements.

The previous supplemental contracts expired more than two months ago.

A BOE policy established last year requires that the state develop a consistent system for schools to evaluate teachers. But the policy is written in a way that it’s unclear how charter schools fit into that expectation. And the state’s agreement with the federal government is also unclear because it allows charter schools to choose whether to use the state-developed model or come up with its own comparable system but doesn’t define what criteria that charters have to abide by if they go with the second option.

Charter school officials said they wanted to make sure they’re in compliance with federal requirements.

The BOE members told the charter school commission’s Executive Director Tom Hutton today that it’s the duty of the commission, not the school board, to decide what those criteria are.

Hutton said the commission start developing guidelines at a meeting scheduled for Thursday.

Courtesy of Fotalia

—Alia Wong