State board finishes Little Rock school forums

Decision not expected till October on district’s future, chairman says

FILE — Little Rock School District headquarters are shown in this 2019 file photo.
FILE — Little Rock School District headquarters are shown in this 2019 file photo.

At Tuesday's public forum on the future of the state-controlled Little Rock School District, the Arkansas Board of Education heard from state agency staff members on the applicable law and on the district's efforts toward meeting state academic, instructional and staffing expectations.

The Education Board, joined Tuesday by Arkansas Education Secretary Johnny Key, changed the format of the fifth public forum in three weeks to also include an hourlong board work session on the Little Rock district that is approaching a five-year deadline for correcting the issues that led to its state control in January 2015.

That board work session was in addition to hearing views from some two dozen members of an audience of about 175 at the Arch Ford Education Building on the Capitol Mall. Those included comments from students, parents, a teacher organization leader, lawmakers, representatives of behavioral health workers and a former congressman.

The Education Board -- with six members present, two on the phone and one absent because of a commitment to another school district in the state -- took no votes and set no further public forums on the Little Rock district. However, the state board will hold its regular monthly meeting Sept. 12 and the Little Rock district's quarterly report on its eight F-graded schools is on the board's agenda.

Diane Zook, Education Board chairman, has said she doesn't expect any decision on the school district's fate before the middle of next month when the federal Every Student Succeeds Act scores and state letter grades are announced. The scores and grades are based on 2019 ACT Aspire test results compared with 2018 results and on factors such as student attendance and high school graduation rates.

Courtney Salas-Ford, deputy general counsel for the state Division of Elementary and Secondary Education, recapped some of the history of the state takeover of the district, noting that in addition to having six schools classified as academically distressed under the state's school accountability system, the district in January 2015 had as many as 37 schools categorized at various levels of needing improvement under federal school accountability requirements.

She told the board that state law has assigned to it "the ultimate responsibility for maintaining a constitutional system of public schools."

"While Arkansas Code Annotated 6-15-2917 specifies a five-year period of time for a district to demonstrate it has met the criteria for exiting [state control], the mere passing of a five-year period of time does not absolve the state of its statutory duty," Salas-Ford said. "That is why 6-15-2917 provides the board with options for taking further action to achieve adequacy and equity when it finds that the constitutional standard of adequacy has not been met upon the end of the five-year period."

Those options include "annexation" or "consolidation" of a district or "reconstitution," which is not defined in the state's Educational Support and Accountability Act, she said, but is defined by other state statutes such as the reorganization of the administrative unit or the governing school board, or both.

Salas-Ford also reminded the state Education Board that whatever action it takes on the 22,600-student district, it must be mindful of a 2017 settlement in a federal lawsuit that requires the district to redraw its high school attendance zone lines on a race-neutral basis no later than the fall of 2020.

Salas-Ford also noted that while the Little Rock district had six schools classified by the state as being in "academic distress" by the state in 2015, there were seven schools that were among the 5% lowest performing schools in the state, nine schools categorized as "focus" schools because of the low performance of subgroups of their students and 21 listed as "needing improvement."

Mike Hernandez, state superintendent for coordinated support services, and Stacy Smith, state assistant commissioner for learning services, responded to questions about the Little Rock district's efforts to reorganize its central office administration to better support schools, and to restructure reading instruction to improve reading achievement in a district where only about a third of students are achieving at the desired "ready" or better levels in the ACT Aspire exams in English/language arts. State board members also asked about the district's progress in training teachers in the use of an educator collaboration model to improve teaching.

"There's been a lot of progress made in a short time," Hernandez said about the district's reconfiguring its central administration to provide principals with direct support from top level administrators. That came in the aftermath of a consultant's study in recent months that found that a principal had to make multiple contacts to get assistance. The district has recently eliminated its associate superintendent positions in favor of directors of elementary and secondary education and a director of curriculum and instruction.

Smith said the school district last year selected a new reading curriculum that is more reliant on phonics and aligns with the science on how children learn to read.

They made solid choices about the curriculum and they are implementing the curriculum this year, Smith said, also noting that the district struggled to get its staff members trained on the new reading materials before the start of school last month.

"It won't be easy," Smith said about the changes. "It is not a cakewalk for anyone in the state. They have a lot on their plate and they are doing it."

Sens. Will Bond, Joyce Elliott and Linda Chesterfield, all Democrats from Little Rock, addressed the Education Board on Tuesday as they have in the earlier forums.

Bond, an attorney, said the law allows the return of the Little Rock School District to the management of a locally elected school board.

"We need a smooth transition to a locally elected board," Bond said, calling for "the board to grant the replacement of the [school] board to the whole district and the whole district replaced to the [school] board" and to "get past the chaos."

Elliott said she personally fears that the state Education Board has made up its mind on what to do with the district and that is to separate the schools that are academically struggling from the rest of the district to create a separate system such as was done in Chattanooga, Tenn.

Others who spoke Tuesday were Keeling Thomas Baker and Erica Conley, students at Central High.

Baker, the president of the Central student body, praised the diversity of students at his school but warned that won't last if the district is continued to be held by the state.

Former U.S. Rep. Vic Snyder also called for the return of the district to local control, saying that he wants an elected school board member to whom he can direct his complaints.

Veronica McClane, speaking on behalf of more than 80 behavioral health workers, told the board that if they "aren't harboring nefarious profit-driven plans enacted by large corporations seeking to make a profit off of the children of Arkansas," they will comply with a list of demands that include health clinics to serve schools, licensed social workers, elimination of harmful student punishments, and trauma training for teachers and others.

Michele Linch, who heads a state teacher association but was speaking as a community member, said that state control was effective when it came to prompting changes in literacy instruction.

Linch encouraged the state board to shift the Little Rock district to local control "in a matter that has strong state accountability and monitoring so that parents and students can be confident the district can catch up from being decades behind."

Earlier Tuesday, at a news conference at City Hall, Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott Jr. reiterated his support for local control to be returned to the district and said he has had many conversations with Gov. Asa Hutchinson about it.

In his first State of the City address in March, Scott called for a single school district south of the Arkansas River under city oversight. When asked about that proposal on Tuesday, he said it was still his desire but such a change would require legislative action and that he did not foresee a special session taking place.

State officials have also acknowledged that the boundaries of the neighboring Pulaski County Special School District -- which would make up a substantial part of any combined Pulaski County Special-Little Rock school district south of the Arkansas River -- cannot be altered while the district remains under federal court monitoring of its desegregation obligations.

Scott said the city will assist with the transition to a locally controlled district.

"We remain committed in the short term, that the city of Little Rock will become more involved in the Little Rock School District through these strategic partnerships," Scott said, touting several events and initiatives planned for September, which he has proclaimed "Education Month" in Little Rock.

Information for this article was contributed by Rachel Herzog of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

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Mike Hernandez, the Arkansas Department of Education’s state superintendent for coordinated support services, is shown in this photo.

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Stacy Smith is shown in this photo.

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Sen. Will Bond (shown), D-Little Rock, said in July that he isn’t running for reelection. Little Rock Republican Bob Thomas announced that he will seek election next year to the seat now held by departing state Sen. Will Bond. Former state Rep. Clarke Tucker, D-Little Rock, had already announced his own bid for the Senate District 32 seat.

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Democrat-Gazette file photo

Sen. Joyce Elliott, D-Little Rock, is shown in this 2018 file photo.

Metro on 09/04/2019

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