In schools' split, staff's say sought

Teacher leaders in the Pulaski County Special School District say they have an alternative to the district's proposal for dividing teachers and principals between Pulaski County Special and the new Jacksonville/North Pulaski school districts.

The alternative plan gives teachers and principals a choice about the district in which they would prefer to work once the Jacksonville/North Pulaski district detaches from the Pulaski County Special district, Pam Fitzgiven, chairman of the Pulaski County Special district's Certified Personnel Policies Committee, said Monday.

That detachment -- resulting in the independent operation of a new Jacksonville/North Pulaski system for 4,000 students -- is expected to be effective July 1, 2016. In the meantime the new district remains a part of the Pulaski County Special system so that planning for the division of staff, assets and liabilities can be done.

The staffing proposal is a counter to a proposal made earlier this year by Pulaski County Special district Superintendent Jerry Guess and his staff that would create separate employee seniority lists or "seniority centers" for the Pulaski and Jacksonville systems.

The separate seniority lists would leave teachers and principals now in Jacksonville-area schools largely ineligible for jobs elsewhere in the Pulaski County Special district and teachers in other parts of the Pulaski County Special district largely unable to choose jobs in the Jacksonville system.

Fitzgiven said the Certified Personnel Policies Committee had rejected the initial plan.

She passed out the alternative proposal Monday night to the Pulaski County Special district's Citizens Advisory Board with little explanation, just asking the advisory board members to review it for possible action at a later date.

The advisory board was appointed by the state in the absence of a locally elected School Board in the district, which has been operating under state control for the past four years. Any action by the advisory board to support either staffing plan would ultimately go to Arkansas Education Commissioner Johnny Key for a final decision.

Guess, who is one of three administrative members of the eight-member Certified Personnel Policies Committee, which is for certified staff, said Monday night that he had not yet read it carefully.

"We'll take it and talk about it," Guess said in his role as a district administrator. "I certainly I want to look at it." He said any decisions on the staffing matter would likely be made by the end of June.

In a cover letter, Fitzgiven said the alternative proposal was built on two staffing models used by the Pulaski County Special district in unusual circumstances in the past. One of those was the in the 1980s when Pulaski County Special School District lost most of southwest Little Rock, including 14 of its schools, to the Little Rock School District as part of a federal court remedy in a long-running federal school desegregation lawsuit. The other situation was when the district converted its seventh- through-ninth-grade junior high schools into sixth-through-eighth-grade middle schools and added ninth grades to the high schools.

"Both of these model allowed for one seniority list and for certified personnel to have a choice," Fitzgiven wrote. "Also these models made no permanent changes to the existing staffing policies."

In an interview, Fitzgiven said the alternative plan would not permit more-senior employees to "bump" other employees with less seniority in the district out of desired jobs but would permit those employees with the most seniority to have first access to available vacant jobs.

Guess had said earlier that his initial proposal would prevent "bumping" of less senior employees, which he said minimizes widespread staffing changes in schools throughout the Pulaski County Special district.

The first step of the multistep alternative process would be the distribution next August of district preference forms to teachers and principals.

Teachers and principals who would prefer to change from working in a Jacksonville-area school to a school elsewhere in the Pulaski County Special district, or vice versa, would complete the preference forms and turn them in to the Pulaski County Special district's personnel office.

That office would compile a list of those desiring to transfer to Jacksonville and a list of those wishing to transfer to schools elsewhere in the Pulaski County Special district. The lists would then be sent to the appropriate districts to begin the planning and school placement of those on the lists.

Any vacancies in the Pulaski County Special or Jacksonville districts in this coming school year would not be filled with temporarily employees who are not eligible for rehiring in 2016-17 until all the people on the transfer lists who are qualified for the available jobs have been assigned to work on the basis of their preferences.

All Jacksonville/North Pulaski certified employees who do not submit a preference form will be offered a contract in the Jacksonville district -- subject to any layoffs necessary to avoid overstaffing -- by March 30, 2016.

All Jacksonville employees who submit a preference form to work elsewhere in Pulaski County Special but have not been assigned to a job in Pulaski County Special will be offered a contract for work in Jacksonville in the 2016-017 school year. Similarly, those Pulaski County Special employees who want to work in Jacksonville but have not received a job assignment there will be offered a contract in Pulaski County Special district.

Metro on 04/21/2015

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