Despite some objections, the Mexico Public Schools Board of Education (BOE) will start collecting data from exit interviews of employees.

The BOE voted 5-2 in favor of the idea with Board President Keith Louder and Treasurer Michelle Stephens voting no. Both gave their reasoning for not supporting the idea. Louder wanted to make his position clear before the vote that he was not trying to restrict information.

“I’m going to vote no because I don’t see the need,” Louder said.

Stephens said she believes the idea is going beyond the scope of the BOE. She said the district has a chain-of-command policy that this may interfere with.

“I also believe this is out of our purview. We have an HR (Human resources) director who then answers to the superintendent and it's her job to handle the staff,” Stephens said. “It is not our job to deal with the staff.”

The BOE is currently in the process of coming up with goals to measure the district’s superintendent’s office performance. Board Member Scott Nichols said he thinks having exit interview information could help with that process.

“I just feel like that would be another piece for this evaluation,” Nichols said about the information helping the BOE in that process. “Not a game changer but maybe that could be one of our goals in the future like, ‘Hey maybe we need to direct something a little more this way.’”

Board Member Jessica Ekern said the information will not interfere with HR and will help board members make better decisions.

“This is not to step on what HR is doing,” Ekern said. “It’s to find out why people have resigned or if they were fired their feelings. It gives us sort of an insight into climate and culture which is one of the things we need to do evaluations on. 

“Since I’m not here all the time, I’m not a teacher, and I don’t have a child here, the more information I have I can make better decisions with more information and that’s why I like to compare things and why I think this is an important component,” Ekern continued. “It’s not stepping on HR.”