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NATCHEZ — Superintendent Frederick Hill took home something Thursday night worthy of putting up on his refrigerator.

After 45 minutes of being evaluated by the Natchez-Adams School District Board of Trustees, Hill received a satisfactory rating for his performance during his first six months as superintendent.

Last year, the Mississippi Legislature passed House Bill 477 that required the district to perform an annual evaluation of Hill and any future superintendents using a uniform system implemented statewide and approved by the Mississippi School Board Association.

“I was definitely satisfied with the outcome of the evaluation,” Hill said. “The goals we have set as a district are goals that will get us to a level of successful or high performing school district and nothing short of that.

“In a case where I’m being evaluated, I want to get that feedback that’s going to help us move forward.”

The evaluation followed a rubric established by the MSBA that was based around goals Hill and the board created at the beginning of the school year.

The rubric included 50 indicators divided up into eight different categories ranging from providing leadership to the school board in implementing the district’s vision, mission and goals to providing accurate data to assist the school board in financial management. Board members chose satisfactory, unsatisfactory or not applicable to each question.

Board President Wayne Barnett said Hill received satisfactory on all the questions except one that both the board and Hill felt had not yet been accomplished.

“That was something (Hill) is planning on implementing, but he even said he was not satisfied with it now,” Barnett said. “That indicator had not been accomplished yet, but we hope it will be soon.”

Since the matter dealt with personnel, the board met in executive session during the evaluation. Both Barnett and Hill declined to comment on which indicator had been marked unsatisfactory.

“I don’t want to accept anything that I know I haven’t performed to the best of my ability on,” Hill said. “Being truthful about those things is the best thing, and that way they know it’s also something I’m not happy with either.”

Three of the indicators were marked not applicable because they involved annual goals set by Hill and the board, Barnett said.

“Those were marked accordingly simply because he has not been here long enough to achieve those,” Barnett said. “Those will be looked at again during next year’s evaluation.”

Barnett said the NASD already had a policy of evaluating their superintendent before the legislation was passed and that those evaluations were always done in January.

“If you nonrenew a superintendent’s contract you have to give them notice by Jan. 30, so that’s why we always had the evaluations around this time,” Barnett said. “If we were going to nonrenew our superintendent’s contract at the end of his contract we would have to give him notice by the end of this month.”

The successful evaluation, Barnett said, is a testament of the right direction Hill is leading the school district.

“The bottom line is that we’re extremely satisfied with the job our superintendent is doing,” Barnett said. “We will get to where we want to go if we continue on the path we’re on and get the community support that we need.”

Hill said he will continue to work with the board to ensure the district reaches their ultimate goal of becoming a high performing school district.

“I will work to continue to improve the district and make sure all of these standards are performed to the best of our abilities,” he said.