A three-member Arkansas Board of Education committee tasked with examining achievement and financial concerns in the Marianna-based Lee County School District agreed Wednesday that a state takeover of the district is warranted.
The committee, led by Education Board member Vicki Saviers of Little Rock, will report its findings and conclusions to the full board for possible action on a takeover at a 10 a.m. meeting today.
Committee members vacillated only on whether a takeover of the district should include the removal of the locally elected School Board and the superintendent - or just the School Board, leaving Superintendent Willie Murdock to run the district under the direction of state Education Commissioner Tom Kimbrell.
“I just don’t see a sense of urgency or outrage on the part of the School Board and superintendent,” Education Board member Toyce Newton of Crossett said at a committee meeting Wednesday afternoon. “I don’t see that anybody thinks the building is on fire,” she added.
Her committee colleagues Saviers and Sam Ledbetter of Little Rock agreed. Ledbetter proposed that the committee recommend a takeover that retained second-year superintendent Murdock. Saviers was more inclined to dismiss the board and the superintendent.
The state Education Board last April declared the 880-student Lee County district to be in academic distress because less than 50 percent of its students had scored at proficient or advanced levels on state exams over a three-year period. The board has the legal authority to take over an academically distressed district that is not making satisfactory improvement. The district, which has been losing dozens of students a year, is now on the brink of being labeled as fiscally distressed, as well.
The Education Board committee met Monday with Murdock, Lee County School Board President Kendon Gray, several state Education Department staff members who have provided technical assistance to the district, and former U.S. Deputy Secretary of Education Ray Simon, who is now a consultant for a school-improvement company - all to determine the degree of progress in the system.
Murdock, who could not be reached at the school district or on her cellphone Wednesday, reported Monday that the district had all new principals this school year and they were being trained to evaluate teachers.
She highlighted a new and supportive School Board and the recent voter approval of a millage increase to support the district.
But Murdock also acknowledged some teacher resistance to changes in the district and some divisiveness among the faculty.
Others reported to the committee that there had been no kindergarten-through-12th-grade curriculum in the district before this school year and that teachers instead relied primarily on textbooks for what was taught.
A master schedule of courses developed by the Education Department was not put in place, and students started the school year without class schedules. Courses were improperly coded, and 42 of the 67 high school seniors were not on target as of January to graduate this spring.
Other problems included the School Board’s failure to dismiss ineffective faculty members. There were training programs that did not focus on teacher and school needs. The district’s declining enrollment had resulted in over staffing and the loss of state funding, making employee layoffs necessary for the coming school year.
The Education Department and outside consultants provided assistance to the district, but there was not always good communication among those providers, resulting in duplication of services and conflicting directives, officials said.
Kimbrell established the Office of Intensive Support in November to assist districts in academic and fiscal distress. That office, headed by Andrew Tolbert, has the authority to make binding directives to the districts, and it is taking steps to coordinate all the services to the Lee County district.
Committee member Newton said Wednesday that she would like to make the retention of the superintendent in a state-controlled Lee County district contingent upon the recommendation of the Office of Intensive Support and Kimbrell.
She said Murdock’s being a Lee County native could be beneficial in that the superintendent has institutional knowledge of the community, but that familiarity would also make her subject to public pressure.
Saviers said she wants “to create a runway for success” in the district.
“I could go either way,” she said about the superintendent. “We have worked so hard to get to this point. I want what we do to be the absolute best for Lee County.”
The Lee County district spent $12,785 per pupil in 2012-13, the latest year available, according to the Arkansas Annual Statistical Report. That was the seventh-highest expenditure per pupil in the state.
The district is planning to reduce its workforce for next year to reduce expenses. Education Board committee members have questioned whether the district’s policy for laying off employees with the least seniority can be circumvented.
Ledbetter said Wednesday that that is a question he hopes to have answered today. Murdock said earlier this week that the key to the district’s improvement is quality instruction and that the expected layoffs could result in the loss of some of the district’s better teachers.
Besides Lee County, the Strong-Huttig School District was also labeled as academically distressed last April. The Education Board committee plans to examine academic progress in the Strong-Huttig district in the coming weeks.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 04/10/2014