Finalist: School choice OK

But entire LR district must offer quality, aspirant says

June Rimmer (left) talks with senior executive assistant Beverly Griffin Monday morning while meeting with district staff members. Rimmer is the sole finalist for the Little Rock School District Superintendent job.
June Rimmer (left) talks with senior executive assistant Beverly Griffin Monday morning while meeting with district staff members. Rimmer is the sole finalist for the Little Rock School District Superintendent job.

— June Rimmer, the Little Rock School District’s lone finalist for superintendent, said Monday that she had no objections to offering school choice options to parents and students but - first and foremost - every school must offer a high-quality education program.

The lone finalist for the superintendent position at the Little Rock School District talked about her vision for the district at a news conference Monday.

LRSD superintendent candidate shares vision

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“The bottom line is this, ladies and gentlemen, when it comes to choice and charter and magnet schools, they are all fine. They are all important,” Rimmer told about 50 Little Rock School District community members before her interview with LittleRock School Board members Monday night.

“But parents should never have to choose quality,” Rimmer said. “Parents should neverhave to say, ‘The schools are generally not good. Which one is the best? That’s the one I choose.’ Our job as educators and the community is to ensure that we have a set of schools where every one of them offers the quality education our students need. Then we have choices. But the school is good, no matter which one you choose.”

Rimmer of Renton, Wash., is the only one of four finalists for the Little Rock job not to withdraw from consideration before Monday’s 14 hours of school tours and meetings with district employees, parents, the news media and community members, as well as the School Board interview.

The School Board plans to meet Thursday to decide whether to immediately offer the job to Rimmer or to extend its search for a successor to former Superintendent Linda Watson. Watson had been superintendent for 3 1/2 years when she left the district in January as the result of separation agreement with the board that included the buyout of the last few months of her contract. Watson earned a salary of $198,000 in the 25,6000-student district.

“I am interested in Little Rock because I believe throughout my journey I have [acquired] a set of skills that will make a difference in a school district,” Rimmer told a group that included parents, clergy, retired educators, neighborhood association representatives, business leaders, plus civic, education and advocacy organization leaders.

“The district matters because I have to be in a place where they are ready to do the work that needs to be done so that students can be successful,” she said. “My sense is that Little Rock is that place. There have been some barriers, but people are ready to work, willing to work and willing to come together. I think that I have the kind of skills that can help bring those groups together, and working together we can get it done.”

Rimmer, 61, is program director for the Stupski Foundation, a San Francisco organization devoted to enhancing education opportunities for students who are poor or are members of minority groups.

From 1999 to 2004, she was the chief academic officer in Seattle’s public schools. For 29 years before that, she worked in the Indianapolis public schools in multiple jobs, including teacher, high school principal, and ultimately assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction. She was born in Fort Smith, grew up in Indianapolis and has a doctorate from Indiana University.

Rimmer appeared at ease Monday, stating at one point that she likes to talk, pausing at other times to think about answers, sometimes telling audience members that there were underlying questions to their questions and then trying to answer them both.

There were flashes of humor. When told by the facilitator that someone had a “pointed” question, she said, “Oh, you allow those? We should have talked beforehand.”

Rimmer said she was inspired to be a teacher by her father, who wanted her to use her English degree to earn a salary, and by a Jonathan Kozol book about his first year of teaching in the 1960s in Boston and the inequalities he encountered.

She said she was devastated that one-third of her first high school students were functionally illiterate and she didn’t have the training to teach them to read. But that difficult first year convinced she was in the right profession.

“I share that to underscore what I have been saying. I’m so serious about this. Students are my first focus, my primary focus. I have very little tolerance for those adult issues that people put in the way sometimes. Our young people are in a generation where they are going to change jobs 10 to 14 times before they are 40. And most of the jobs they come across are yet to be developed. We have to make sure they are grounded in the academics ... and they know how to apply that learning to real-world situations.”

Rimmer prepared for the Little Rock visit in part by reading through the district’s strategic operating plan, Target 2015, “a couple of times.” She proposed that goals in the plan needed to be prioritized, tasks assigned and timelines set. She also said the plan needs to address technology as students are “digital natives” who often come to schools where littletechnology is used.

She declined to respond fully to a question about the “whole western flank of this city” being in need of new secondary schools. Rimmer said it is important to neighborhoods to have accessible educational opportunities but she needed to learn more about the specifics in Little Rock.

Asked whether limits should be placed on independently run public charter schools in Pulaski County, Rimmer said again she needed more information but charter schools can pilot innovations on a small scale that may be transferable to larger school systems.

She said she pushes for “complete transparency” in district operations. She said she seeks out community involvement and government partnerships.

Rimmer said she is committed to teachers and principals, who need to have a large say in the training they need and receive. That training should be job-embedded and delivered by well-trained teacher coaches.

As for merit pay for exceptional teachers, Rimmer is not a fan: “We need to pay people upfront for the work they do, and teachers are woefully underpaid nationally,” she said. “We shouldn’t have to give them remuneration for a score their students made on a test. We need to pay them well. One of the things we do to reward teachers is to make sure there is a career path that allows them, as their skills grow, to grow as professionals.”

Later, in response to questions from a consultant assisting the board with the superintendent search, audience members Monday had many positive reactions toRimmer.

Retired Assistant Superintendent Marian Lacey said Rimmer came across as trustworthy, credible and knowledgeable.

“She didn’t try to mislead us. She was knowledgeable about what she was talking about, and if she didn’t know, she told us,” Lacey said.

Afterward, retired teacher Lou Ethel Nauden said in an interview that she feared that Rimmer’s administrative experience is not wide-ranging and “I could see her being overwhelmed here ... by all the factions pulling at her.”

Lisa Black, executive director of the Public Education Foundation of Little Rock but speaking as a parent of two district students, said she didn’t immediately get from Rimmer a sense of urgency about the need for big changes at district middle schools that have been on the state’s list of schools needing improvement for several years because of low test scores.

Arkansas, Pages 7 on 05/10/2011

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