Part five
Re “Gourley’s Negative Rating of Coté’s Performance”
School Board member Steve Gourley said that before learning over a holiday weekend last May that Supt. Dr. Myrna Rivera Coté was resigning, effective very soon, she unwittingly had hemmed him into a corner.
As weight-bearing President of the School Board, he was openly appalled (away from public scrutiny) by what he has described as her abysmal, repeated refusal to carry out directions from him and his colleagues.
“My evaluation of Myrna was going to be negative,” Mr. Gourley said. “She was by no means acceptable.”
Well, maybe a tiny bit.
“I was afraid, I have to admit, that if we came down on her too hard, she would just quit and leave us in the lurch.
“What I did not know was that she already suspected she was going to get an unsatisfactory review, and that she was out looking for a job.”
Did she receive the same failing grade from the other four School Board members?
The answer, at least for now, resides in limbo.
“I never got the other evaluations,” Mr. Gourley said. “She resigned 29 days ahead of me giving her the evaluation. And so I had put it off until the very lost possible moment.
“She jumped before I had any chance at firing her. And I don’t know if I would have had two other votes. I don’t know.
“None of us had any idea she was job-hunting until she announced she had another job.”
By Mr. Gourley’s account, Dr. Coté nearly flipped the tables on her bosses.
“I don’t remember the exact date she resigned,” he said. “But it was less than 30 days before July 1. If we had enforced her poorly written contract to stay for 30 days, we would have had to pay her all of her benefits, health benefits, days off, vacation days, as of July 1. So it was in our interest to not insist that she stay until July 1.”
(To be continued)
