Burnsville superintendent is critiqued

Six months after paying more than a quarter of a million dollars to buy out the contract of the district's former human resources director, the Burnsville-Eagan-Savage school board has rebuked the man who hired her.

The board last week gave Superintendent Randall Clegg, who is in the final year of a three-year, $180,000-a-year contract, a mixed job review, saying that in the past year he has failed to meet three of the seven job standards for such things as ethics, management, vision and goal achievement.

In 2011 and 2010, before the buyout of Tania Z. Chance became an issue, the board gave Clegg perfect scores in the same categories, according to district records.

"The review speaks for itself," said school board Chairman Ron Hill, one of four incumbents on the board seeking reelection this fall.

Hill refused to say which three standards Clegg failed to meet. He and the rest of the board also refused to identify which board members voted for and against Clegg on the seven review questions.

In a statement last week releasing a summary of the review, the board noted that Clegg was given a "meets- standard" mark even if the board was not unanimous in agreeing that he met the standard.

"This is how we felt it needed to be presented," Hill said.

Along with Hill, the incumbents running for another term are DeeDee Currier, Sandra Sweep and Robert VandenBoom, who is seeking a two-year term in November.

During the Chance debate, which led to the changing of a state law to make school boards more accountable for how they spend money in contract buyouts, parents, residents and the board clashed at public meetings over why the money was paid to Chance and why the board would not more fully explain its actions.

Part of the problem was that the board appeared to be buying Chance off because she filed two complaints with state agencies, at least one of which involved Clegg, according to the district's final settlement agreement with Chance.

"It doesn't surprise me that the school board would have an unfavorable review of Mr. Clegg," said Tom McCasey, one of the candidates running for the school board this year. "They should all be removed, including Clegg."

Clegg did not respond to requests for comment.

Hill refused to comment on whether he thinks Clegg's contract will be or should be renewed. He also refused to discuss what role, if any, the Chance settlement he and the board authorized would play in the campaign.

But several candidates criticized the board for not disclosing which standards Clegg failed to meet and why he got a less-than-perfect score compared with previous years.

Multiple candidates claimed that the board, and thus the incumbents, are protecting Clegg over his involvement in the Chance scandal. Others said they would either not support keeping Clegg or at the very least take a critical look at his role in connection with Chance.

"It was his ultimate responsibility," said Mark Traikoff, a former district employee now running for one of the four-year terms on the board. He believes that Clegg and Chance will be "huge" campaign issues.

"I'm running on the assumption to help push him out," said Traikoff, who has among his campaign slogans "a new school board of four to show Clegg the door."

"It was embarrassing for the entire district and the community," Steve Dove, a former school administrator in Edina who is running for a four-year seat, said of Chance's exit. "I think the district was in damage control."

Seema Pothini, another challenger, said the media circus created by the Chance debacle, which resulted in the board battling news organizations over what it had to disclose about its reasons for agreeing to the payout, was a distraction the district did not need.

"The dismissal of Tania Chance was, and continues to be, a distraction," Pothini said in an e-mail. "With significant issues in our district such as declining enrollment and the achievement gap, we need to move past that distraction and focus on providing an excellent education for all our students."