Pulaski Special's finance chief quits
Doug Brown, who started in January as the Pulaski County Special School District's chief financial officer, has resigned for personal reasons, district spokesman Deborah Roush said Monday.
Bill Goff, who preceded Brown in the position and has remained a district employee through Brown's transition into the job, will serve as the chief financial officer until the vacancy is advertised and filled.
Goff, a former assistant commissioner at the Arkansas Department of Education, had planned to retire at the end of this school year.
In addition to training Brown, Goff has been doing financial planning for the upcoming separation of the Pulaski County Special and Jacksonville/North Pulaski school districts and for the discontinuation of $20.8 million a year in state desegregation aid payments to the Pulaski County Special district after the 2017-18 school year.
Brown's annual salary was $130,052.
LR union's leader wins another term
Cathy Koehler is the newly re-elected president of the Little Rock Education Association, a union and collective bargaining agent for teachers and support service employees in the Little Rock School District.
Koehler, 54, won re-election to a three-year term in a three-person race.
She has been the organization's president since Aug. 1, 2007. At the time she was first elected, she had been the library media specialist for 15 years at Little Rock's Baseline Elementary School. She worked in parochial schools before that, including four years as the librarian at Little Rock Catholic High School.
Koehler has a master's degree in library science from the University of Central Arkansas, where she also earned her bachelor's degree. She has held national certification from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.
She is the mother of two Little Rock School District graduates and the grandmother of a current pupil in the district.
Teachers group re-elects Fitzgiven
Pam Fitzgiven, a teacher for 21 years, has been re-elected in a contested race to a second two-year term as president of the Pulaski Association of Classroom Teachers, whose members are employees in the Pulaski County Special School District.
The Pulaski Association of Classroom Teachers was the contract-bargaining agent for teachers in the district but lost that recognition in 2011 after the state takeover of the district for fiscal distress and the failure of the district and the union to come to an agreement on contract terms, including cuts in benefits.
In addition to her leadership role in the association, Fitzgiven is also the chairman of the Pulaski County Special School District's Personnel Policies Committee for certified employees. She was elected to that role by her teacher colleagues in the district. The committee advises district leadership on matters related to teacher employment.
Fitzgiven, 44, is a fifth-grade teacher at Oakbrooke Elementary School in Sherwood.
Metro on 04/01/2015