Carreiro, Ross vie for Zone 5 position

Schools’ finances seen as top issue

Jody Carreiro and Jim Ross, candidates for election Sept. 16 to the Little Rock School Board's Zone 5 position, have expertise in different areas of a school board member's job.






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Little Rock School District Zone 5 biographies.

Carreiro, who is seeking a third three-year term on the board in the 25,000-student school district, is a mathematician whose business focuses on developing and managing employee benefits plans and pensions.

Ross, the challenger for the seat, is a former Accelerated Learning Center and Parkview Magnet High teacher and now a university associate professor of history, making him knowledgeable about instruction, academic programs and research.

Early voting for the board seat that represents part of west Little Rock begins Tuesday and extends through Friday -- then will be offered again Sept. 15 -- at three sites in Pulaski County, including the Pulaski County Regional Building, 501 W. Markham St. Government-issued photo identification is required to vote.

The top vote-getter for the unpaid office will be a policymaker in a district that has an annual budget of more than $330 million but is facing the loss of as much as $37 million in state desegregation aid after the 2017-18 school year.

It is also a district that has six schools -- including two middle schools and three of its five high schools -- classified by the state as academically distressed because fewer than half of the students scored at the proficient level on state exams over a three-year period. Failure to raise achievement at those schools puts the district in jeopardy of being taken over by the state Department of Education.

Districts that are taken over by the state typically lose their locally elected school boards for a period of time, and the superintendent is replaced with a state-appointed leader.

Ross, 48, the father of three children in three district schools, said last week in an interview and at a candidate forum sponsored by the Arkansas Community Organizations that he sees the Little Rock district as being in financial and educational crises, and operating with a School Board that has "abdicated" its authority to set policy and programs and employ personnel.

"I have an overarching vision for what it takes to educate every kid in this city," said Ross, who is on the faculty at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. "When I'm elected, I will provide a strong 'no' vote on all the waste that is coming from this administration. I'll provide a strong 'yes' vote to programs and policies that teachers need to succeed in the classroom with kids. I'll hold everyone accountable."

Ross said he will be an advocate and watchdog for children and a tough questioner who won't "be baffled by the education-speak that so many of our administrators come forward with. I won't allow that to shut down any discussion."

Carreiro, 54, a partner in a downtown actuarial firm and the father of two Central High graduates, said the seven-member School Board needs a collaborator, not a crusader.

He said his School Board record includes collaboration with board members and staff members that resulted in a newly developed superintendent evaluation form; the expansion of a program to provide thousands of low-cost, refurbished computers to students and their families; the revamping of the middle school educational program to include targeted academic interventions and course elective; and the development of the Artistry in the Rock districtwide art exhibition program.

He also is the chairman of the district's audit committee of local business members who review the district's annual audit -- which has been found "clean" of financial management problems in the past three years, he said. And he pointed to his efforts to simplify financial reporting to better show to the public the allocation of program and financial resources to each campus.

"We're sitting on the brink of great opportunities or very difficult times, however you want to look at it," Carreiro said in an interview. "When I was first elected, I wanted to see us come to a reasonable conclusion to [the 31-year-old desegregation lawsuit]. "We have accomplished that, and it is such a huge accomplishment," he said of the agreement approved by the presiding federal judge in January.

That agreement continues $70 million a year in state desegregation aid to the three Pulaski County districts for four more years and phases out the interdistrict student transfer programs for desegregation.

"Little Rock School District led the way on that," Carreiro said. "Everybody had thrown up their hands and had gone to their corners. This board gave [Superintendent Dexter Suggs] the ability to go to the attorney general and start having that conversation."

Carreiro said it is now important to budget "to live through that transition and come out healthy." He said his background in finance enables him to delve into the budget and to seek more efficient ways to provide employee benefits packages. He also wants to use a newly completed facilities study as the basis to "right size" school campuses to promote operating efficiencies and avoid half-time teachers, counselors and nurses, or employees who have to travel between small schools.

"It is important to me that we get our priorities set and we pass some millage increase to be able to go from a district with good facilities to a district with great facilities," he said.

Ross said that if he is elected, he will call for a hiring freeze and a stop to the expansion of the district's 1-to-1 student-to-computer initiative. He said he wants a line-by-line review of the district's 800-page budget to seek out expenditures and explanations for multiple six-figure administrative salaries and what he called pet programs.

"I don't mind spending money on quality stuff if it is done in a smart way -- tied to curriculum, tied to research," he said. Neither the computer program nor a new, district-created reading support program for struggling readers meet that criteria, he said.

The reading support program, which includes the assignment of a reading teacher to each elementary school plus a literacy facilitator to work with pupils and staff members at the lower-performing schools, was initiated largely in lieu of the internationally used, one-on-one Reading Recovery help program for struggling first-graders and small groups of older children.

Suggs -- whose hiring Ross championed last year -- has said the schools can choose to use Reading Recovery, but must use Title I federal money or other auxiliary funds. To date, no schools are using that program.

Ross said at least one elementary school principal was refused permission to use the proven program, and administrators should be made to explain why. Suggs said that denial did not come from him.

Speaking at the candidate forum, Ross said graduating from high school knowing how to read, do math and be a critical thinker is a civil right. Yet only Terry Elementary met its state-set achievement goals on the 2014 Arkansas Benchmark Exam last spring. Ross said the district's school improvement plan announced last year "failed," and he called for district leaders to explain that.

Carreiro said the board holds district administrators accountable and that conversations are held in private sessions and adjustments made. He also said the district's academically distressed schools "are never off the agenda" but that the district can't "re-generate" every school at once.

Last year the district converted Forest Heights Middle School into a math and science academy, and Geyer Springs Elementary into a gifted and talented academy. The board is now considering a redesign for the program at Hall High, Carreiro said.

Metro on 09/07/2014

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