The Little Rock Education Association, which represents Little Rock School District employee groups, sued the district Tuesday on behalf of 20 Reading Recovery program teachers who have been told they must reapply for their jobs.
The employee union’s lawsuit, assigned to Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen, names Superintendent Dexter Suggs and the Little Rock School Board as defendants.
The suit asks the judge to prevent the defendants from terminating the employees’ existing contracts and making them reapply for jobs in the Reading Recovery support program for struggling readers in elementary school.
“Defendant Suggs is in the process of making financial decisions regarding teachers,” said the lawsuit filed by attorneys John Walker, Shawn Childs and Austin Porter. “Defendant Suggs cannot assure the Reading Recovery teachers that their right to continued employment will be honored.”
The teachers’ reapplications could be denied because of lack of funding, the attorneys wrote.
“He may also indicate that he has no teaching jobs which meet their skill set,” they said of Suggs.
The lawsuit states that the district has not allowed the affected employees to have hearings before the School Board on the terminated contracts, despite their requests for those hearings.
The district is violating the employees’ rights under the due process clause of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the Arkansas Teacher Fair Dismissal Act and the Professional Negotiations Agreement between the district and the employees, the suit says.
“Absent intervention by the court as requested, the Reading Recovery teachers stand to be constructively terminated by Defendant Suggs in that he has given them notice of same without affording them any semblance of any kind of required due process. He has not afforded them any written reason nor any alternative process by which they may seek redress of their discharge,” the attorneys said.
Suggs declined in an interview Tuesday to comment on the lawsuit.
Suggs in January told the 20 teachers in the elementary school reading-support program that their 2013-14 contracts would not be renewed under the same terms and conditions for the 2014-15 school year.
His letter said the Reading Recovery teaching positions were being eliminated as a way to reduce district costs and to permit a reorganization of the instructional staff.
“You will be offered another position commensurate with your education and skills,” Suggs wrote in the letter that is included with the lawsuit as an exhibit.
“Your compensation will be aligned in accordance to your 2014-15 position, which will not be less than a 9.25-month teaching assignment,” it said. “You must make application to be considered for advertised positions greater than a 9.25-month teaching assignment.”
But Suggs last month announced to the School Board a change in his plan, saying elementary school principals would be given the opportunity to keep Reading Recovery or choose a district-created reading-support initiative- a decision that would be influenced by the funds available to a school.
Reading Recovery, which originated in New Zealand, features a teacher working one on-one with struggling first grade readers as well as small groups of struggling readers.
The district’s reading initiative calls for a school’s reading teacher to work with up to six groups of as many as nine children on reading skills taught in the classroom. If that help is not effective, children who are still struggling would be placed in a smaller group of up to three children to work with an instructional facilitator.
Regardless of a school’s choice, current Reading Recovery program teachers would have to reapply for their reading-support program jobs, Suggs said at the board meeting and again Tuesday.
That’s because the job responsibilities for the Reading Recovery teachers will be revised and could include some new terms regarding accountability, he said. Even if the employee is not rehired as a reading specialist, the employee is guaranteed a teaching job in the district, Suggs emphasized Tuesday.
Cathy Koehler, president of the Little Rock Education Association, said Tuesday that the union felt it had no other option but to file a lawsuit against the district. She said the teachers who undergo extensive training in the Reading Recovery methods have proved themselves.
“If you have fidelity to the Reading Recovery program, then the job description is not going to change,” Koehler said. “They should remain in their positions if Reading Recovery remains in their schools.”
The lawsuit over the reading teacher positions is the second suit Walker and Porter have filed against Suggs and the School Board in the past two weeks. On March 19, the attorneys filed a race and age-discrimination lawsuit in federal court against the district on behalf of Karen DeJarnette, the district’s director of planning, research and evaluation.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 04/02/2014