A Park City School District teacher evaluation committee has been selected by the school board for the upcoming year and consists of administrators, principals, teachers and parents.

The committee met once earlier this month and started discussing a plan to present to the school board.

Bob Edmiston who serves on the committee as a representative of the district’s administration said the committee has a daunting task ahead.

“The challenge is creating a teacher-evaluation system that will include the evaluation regulations for the state that won’t make it too uncomfortable for teachers.”

He added that it’s necessary to come to a consensus and communicate the components that make an effective teacher.

“When you are connecting someone’s pay or continuing employment, that’s a scary proposition,” he said.

Edmiston expects the meetings to initiate some challenging conversations.

“I feel like it’s a good group of people. We’re going to have to create a system that I hope improves the capacity of instructional work,” he said.

According to committee member Lori Gardner, the committee’s goal is to design an evaluation system consistent with the new teacher evaluation standards in Utah.

“Our job this fall will be to consider research and analyze what we’re doing in light of that research. We’ll be looking at evaluation programs elsewhere in other school districts,” Gardner said.

The pilot program for teacher evaluation standards is required to be in place by fall 2012.

Dr. Sydnee Dickson, director of teaching and learning for the State Office of Education, presented at the first committee meeting.

“She spent about two and a half hours with the group, outlining the state’s new teaching standards and what the goals and objectives are on a state level,” Gardner said.

The committee discussed evaluation methods that Gardner said include parent and student feedback, student performance, professional growth goals, classroom observations and progress toward district initiatives.

The committee will meet monthly and make recommendations to the school board throughout the year.

Park City Education Association President Heidi Matthews said the state legislature and the State Office of Education will be updating the teacher standards and creating a new administrative set of standards so that all teachers are held to the same bar.

“They also said that the evaluations that are created must contain a certain amount of assessment based on student growth, test scores, and also parent input,” Matthews added.

The Park City committee has yet to determine what percent each category will represent.

The state school board recently set the standards for the evaluation tools, which Matthews said will require each school district to have a system that fits the state’s standards.

“By setting these standards, the districts will have to go through and show how their quality instrument and tool is proven to be reliable,” she said.

The State Office of Education will provide support to guide the evaluation committees according to Matthews.

“I think having the direction from the state office is really going to help that committee move forward. I see it as positive. It gives them some framework to start from.”

Matthews said she is interested to see what percentage will be placed on each evaluation category.

“I’m glad that people are going to be grappling with those things, but I’m concerned that it could end with potentially ridiculous outcomes,” she said.

Sara Jones, director of educational excellence and community outreach at the Utah Education Association, said the project for high quality education was started more than a year ago as a part of a multi-year development.

Jones said improving teaching standards and creating administrative standards is tied to other projects such as the Common Core Initiative, which is plan to align the curriculum taught in schools throughout the state. The multi-year effort will be fully implemented by 2014 or 2015.

The state board passed a standard that requires each evaluation system to include teacher observation and student growth along with parent and student input.

Jones said that the state has not made a recommendation for how each of these categories will be weighed in the evaluation.

“Evidence of student growth can be problematic. There was no weighing or percentage assigned at this point so they can come back at a later date with the student growth measure,” she said.

The evaluation system will apply to all licensed educators.