A new motto, a set of 10 guiding principles, a laptop for every fourth- and fifth-grader, and a gifted-education academy are the features that new Superintendent Dexter Suggs Sr. plans to make part of the Little Rock School District over the next two years.
Suggs, who began his job as the chief executive in the state’s 25,000-student district on July 1, revealed the plans to the School Board at a weekend work session. Those plans also include increasing the enrollment to 30,000 students within seven years in what is now billed as “The NEW Little Rock School District Where WE put Children First.”
The platform for what Suggs said will be the transformation of the district into one of the nation’s top-performing public-school systems are 10 guiding principles, or “Cultural Imperatives,” that will be displayed on billboards, posters, calendars and T-shirts in the coming days and weeks.
The first and most important of the imperatives, he said, is “Children come first!”
“Everything that we do will come back to that,” he said.
The second imperative is that all employees are accountable for student achievement that meets or exceeds state standards. Others include “student success is the only option,” “an academically rigorous environment is evident in all classrooms,” and “students, parents, families and community members are all partners.”
Suggs said he and other district administrators developed the principles as the result of the conversations he has had with district officials, and parent, church, business and community groups since his selection for the Little Rock job in March.
He said the emphasis on putting students first will benefit the whole city.
“When I came here from Indiana, in my conversations, I saw that this place has more separation than any place I’ve seen outside of Chicago,” Suggs said.
“Everything is black, white, Latino. There was no unity whatsoever. Therefore,we have to value diversity, not only in ethnicity, but also in regard to economics and beliefs. We have to work together. That’s why we are on this push to put children first. The kids are our common thread. Everyone in the city wants kids to be successful. By putting kids first, it will unify the whole city to work together. This is not a Little Rock School District issue. This is a citywide issue.”
Suggs found things to praise about the school district, some of it contrary to perceptions, he said. While the district’s middle schools are labeled at times as being “bad,” he said that there are good ones.
And he said some of the district’s elementary schools - as many as 15 of them or about half of the number in the district - are nationally competitive and have been “holding the district together.”
Suggs is targeting elementary schools for some innovations. He described in very general terms his plans to equip the district’s fourth- and fifth-graders, starting in January, with laptop computers that they will use at school and take home in the afternoons and on weekends.
He said he envisions starting that with a small group of high-performing elementary schools and then expanding into a second group of schools in August 2014 and to all elementary schools in January2015.
Eventually all students in fourth through 12th grades will have district-issued electronic devices. That will expand the learning environment beyond the four walls of a classroom and a textbook to one that is seven days a week and 24 hours a day, he said.
Suggs also announced plans to establish a gifted-and-talented education academy in 2013-14 that would initially serve pupils in grades three through six and expand to grades three through eight. Pupils would qualify for enrollment in the school by earning a qualifying score on an admissions test.
The curriculum, designed to attract and keep the city’s brightest students, would include robotics, science, technology, engineering and mathematics. He said he hopes demand for the seats in the school will be so great that it will be necessary to open a second academy.
School Board member Greg Adams asked whether such a school might “skim” the highest-achieving students from the district’s other schools.
Suggs said he is working to make every school in the district an excellent school, but that no school owns a student.
“Is it the kid making the school or the teacher making the school?” he said. “If the child is making the teacher look good, then send the teacher home,” he said.
Suggs was complimentary of the district’s staff.
“We have an excellent staff,” he said, but also warned the board that he is going to hold all district employees accountable for student learning and that there are going to be times when staff members “with tears in their eyes” will appeal to board members.
“You must be strong,” Suggs told the board. “We must hold people accountable for student learning,” he said and added that he also plans to visit all the high schools to tell students of their responsibilities in regard to their educations.
He put the School Board on notice that central office administrators are going to be hard to find at the central office in the coming months. That’s because they are going to be working in the schools.
Even some central office staff meetings will be held via face-to-face features on computers to minimize the time spent away from the campuses, he said.
Arkansas, Pages 7 on 07/29/2013