Andrea Eger
Tulsa World Staff Writer
Superintendent Ebony Johnson got her first job performance evaluation by the Tulsa school board on Tuesday evening.
Last week marked the one-year anniversary since Johnson stepped in as interim superintendent. Her predecessor, Deborah Gist, stepped down Sept. 15, 2023, in an effort to stave off the threat of a state takeover amid relentless attacks on her leadership by State Superintendent Ryan Walters.
In December, a divided Tulsa school board made Johnson’s job a permanent one, contracting with her as superintendent through June 30, 2026. Two no votes were cast by Jennettie Marshall and E’Lena Ashley, and then-board member Jerry Griffin voted to abstain.
On Tuesday, the board voted 6-0 to update the timeline of its own annual process of evaluating the superintendent to match the beginning of Johnson’s employment in that role in the month of September. The previous timeline had the board completing the annual evaluation in October, Board President Stacey Woolley told the Tulsa World after Tuesday’s meeting.
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Ashley was absent for that vote but arrived in time to participate in the nearly hour-long executive session in which the board went over its evaluation of Johnson with her behind closed doors.
Johnson did not divulge any details of the evaluation she received.
She has led the state’s largest school district during a year of extraordinary scrutiny and involvement in local affairs by Oklahoma State Department Education officials, led by Walters himself.
The state’s annual summer professional development conference for teachers, called InspireOK and held in July at the Cox Business Convention Center in downtown Tulsa, opened with a question-and-answer session led by a state Board of Education member from Tulsa. Walters and Johnson discussed on stage before an audience of about 250 people how they moved on from conflict over the state takeover threats to work together toward progress for local students.
Johnson and a contingent of other top TPS administrators have been required to appear monthly before the state board for progress reports, but the state board has yet to determine whether TPS has met Walters’ demands for dramatic turnarounds in academic outcomes and fiscal management.
The school district’s state accreditation status remains from August 2023 as “accreditation with deficiencies.”
Accreditation is the process by which the state Board of Education determines whether schools have met a whole host of minimum state standards and should be authorized or recognized by the state for another year.
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