In Memo, Zullinger Sheds Light On Firing

He said that School Board members had unfair or "not equitable" expectations of how a school district should fare in meeting the federal goals. He said in the School Board's eyes, a superintendent "needs improvement" if at least one school in his district does not make AYP and if the division does not make the benchmark.

"In fact," he wrote, for the 2003-04 school year, "only one school failed to make AYP. All other schools made AYP. Also, not all subgroups division wide failed. Only the special education student subgroup failed to make AYP division wide (as is the case with all surrounding jurisdictions)."

Although the Manassas city school division did not make AYP for tests taken in the 2003-04 school year, it did meet the benchmark for this past academic year.

The School Board also wanted the superintendent's staff to prepare more frequent financial reports, but Zullinger said that the process to estimate expenditures and prepare the data as often as they wanted is unrealistic. "Unfortunately, we do not have the staff resources in the finance office to be able to forecast year-end expenditures on a monthly basis," he wrote.

Zullinger's memo reveals numerous other problems that the majority of School Board members raised in his evaluation. He defended himself against their questioning of his ability to "provide inspiration" to students and staff by saying that "on average" he visits four to six schools a week, including attending night meetings and extracurricular activities.

"The fruits of these efforts are evidenced by the exemplary performance of our students this past year in a wide range of areas from academic achievement to athletics to teacher and staff retention rates," he wrote.

In a sign of how strained relations grew, Zullinger wrote about how one School Board member reprimanded him for meeting with board members individually, even though he had apparently been told not to.

"I cannot reasonably be expected to refuse a requested meeting with any of you," he wrote. "If the Board would like me to stop meeting with members, then the Board must decide that and then be willing to enforce the decision by policing its own members."

Manassas School Board Chairman Arthur P. Bushnell and Mary E. Andersen, the board's vice chairman, did not return phone calls left at their homes Friday.