Aim is helping district, state schools chief says

Jim Ross, who at the time was still a Little Rock School Board member, speaks to a full house Monday during a forum on the future of the Little Rock School District. Seated right is Sam Ledbetter, chairman of the state Board of Education. The Board of Education took control of the district Wednesday.
Jim Ross, who at the time was still a Little Rock School Board member, speaks to a full house Monday during a forum on the future of the Little Rock School District. Seated right is Sam Ledbetter, chairman of the state Board of Education. The Board of Education took control of the district Wednesday.

When the Arkansas Board of Education took control of the Little Rock School District on Wednesday, state Education Commissioner Tony Wood in effect became the School Board for the state's largest school district, adding that to his other duties as head of a state agency.

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State Education Commissioner Tony Wood in effect became the School Board for the state’s largest school district.

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AP

State Sen. Joyce Elliott (shown in this file photo), D-Little Rock, said last week that she had no confidence in the Education Department to lead the six schools out of the academic-distress designation.

Wood, with support from the Department of Education staff, will now be intricately involved in decisions on the curriculum, instruction, budgets and staffing in the 24,800-student district.

He will do that, he said Friday, in close collaboration with Little Rock Superintendent Dexter Suggs, whom the state Education Board retained on an interim basis while immediately dismissing the locally elected, seven-member School Board.

"I am making every effort to be very clear that I don't like the semantics of a 'state takeover,'" Wood said. "I like 'state partnership' better. I don't see this as being adversarial."

Wood was the longtime Searcy School District superintendent before becoming the deputy commissioner of the Education Department. He has been commissioner since July, when the former commissioner, Tom Kimbrell, left to become superintendent in the Bryant School District. As commissioner, Wood acts in lieu of the school boards in other state-controlled districts, including Pulaski County Special, Helena-West Helena and Lee County.

The veteran educator, who is known for being precise and decisive, and who expects to retire a second time at some point this year, said he doesn't foresee issuing a lot of Education Department directives to the Little Rock district and wants necessary changes in the district's operations to come from within the district.

"I want to reassure parents that if there is any apprehension, Superintendent Suggs and I are working together and not in any way in opposition for an environment that is positive for children and teachers," he said.

The Education Board voted 5-4 to remove the School Board and place Suggs under the direction of the commissioner because six of the district's 48 schools are classified as academically distressed, meaning that fewer than half of the students scored at proficient levels on state math and reading exams in a three-year period.

Individual state board members have said they were particularly alarmed because some students were in jeopardy of attending academically distressed schools their entire school careers -- elementary, middle and high school. Board members also questioned the district's past lack of urgency in correcting deficiencies at underperforming schools and its ability to sustain planned improvements for the long term.

The Education Board's action pleased some and dismayed others.

Suggs said last week that the term "takeover" has a negative connotation.

"I look at it as something that is positive," Suggs said of the takeover. "It gives us the opportunity to write the next chapter in the Little Rock School District. We have the opportunity to do something that many folks thought could not be done in the district.

We have the opportunity to shock every single person that lives in the state of Arkansas," he said about the potential for raising the achievement level of all students in the district.

State Sen. Joyce Elliott, D-Little Rock, said last week that she had no confidence in the Education Department to lead the six schools out of the academic-distress designation.

"There's no track record there whatsoever in turning around a school in academic distress," she said. "If I were placing confidence with either the state board or what were to happen with the Little Rock School District under the elected board, I would certainly have more confidence in the elected board."

She added that she didn't know how "an already stressed Department of Education" would carry out all the work it is now taking on.

She said she preferred a partnership between the district, the School Board and the Education Board.

"The whole idea is for it to be a community effort," she said. "Not to suggest it can't be now, but that effort is certainly made much more difficult. People feel so disenfranchised. They feel like they've just been hit by a psychological bludgeon. People are dispirited by it. I'm dispirited by it."

Wood said in an interview that he and Suggs spent a couple of hours meeting Thursday and again Friday morning, getting to know each other and helping Wood get a clearer understanding of the district.

His work will include drilling into what is happening at the academically distressed schools in terms of teaching and learning, he said, and into the district's budget, which will have to absorb the loss of up to $37 million a year in state desegregation aid after the 2017-18 school year.

"There's a lot of work to do and a lot of reflection that needs to be done to set a course of action," Wood said, adding that he had no action plan just two days after the Education Board vote. He said he expects the department staff and school district personnel to work to reach a consensus on how to proceed with improvements to the academically distressed schools.

Jim Ross, who had been on the Little Rock School Board until last week, is among some district observers who wonder if if there is a plan for turning over any of the academically distressed schools to a charter school management company.

Wood said that's not the case.

A district memorandum was circulated last week regarding the formation of focus groups in Little Rock to generate and respond to ideas for developing a statewide plan for improving student achievement. The memo raised questions about possible charter school initiatives.

Last summer, the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation and the state Board of Education joined forces to develop a plan with help from the Boston Consulting Group, which has done some charter school work elsewhere in the country. Public surveys and focus groups are going to be used to help form that plan.

The learning curve for Wood in the Little Rock district is eased a bit because he worked for one year, 24 years ago, as the Little Rock district's deputy superintendent, when Ruth Steele was superintendent. His office then is now the office that Suggs uses.

Wood said he was greeted by some of his former co-workers in the district, and he talked with Chris Heller of the Friday, Eldredge & Clark law firm, who was then and is now the district's lead attorney, particularly in regard to school desegregation matters.

Wood said he expects that law firm to continue to represent the district on a range of matters, including student and personnel matters.

As for the future of the district's recognition of the Little Rock Education Association as the collective bargaining agent for teachers and other employees, Wood said there is absolutely no consideration of any action that would be adverse to the association.

The Little Rock teachers' multiyear contract will expire at the end of this school year, and negotiations with the Little Rock Education Association, the union for the employees, are to begin soon on a replacement contract. He said he expects those talks to go forward and the two sides to work together productively.

Cathy Koehler, president of the association, said she and Suggs had agreed to hold off on negotiations until the Education Board made its decision in regard to the takeover.

"Dr. Suggs has now reached out to me and clearly said we will go forward," she said. "We will sit down and have the conversations about potential areas of concern on both sides. We're going to want to see the impact on students," she said. "What can we do better to ensure that whatever time we have is used to impact student learning. Those are the kinds of conversations we will have."

On another matter, Wood said Friday that he and Suggs will work quickly to establish a community advisory committee as called for by the state Education Board last week. The selection of members -- to include parents, students, business leaders and representatives of philanthropic organizations -- will not be done in isolation and will likely be drawn from a pool of applicants and/or from nominations, he said.

The district also will use forthcoming town hall meetings to give the public an opportunity to have a say in how the district is operated.

Those public forums are set for:

• 5:30 p.m. Feb. 9 at Chicot Elementary, 1110 Chicot Road.

• 5:30 p.m. March 9 at The Centre at University Park, 6401. W. 12th St.

• 6 p.m. April 20 at Central High School Media Center, 1500 S. Park St.

The state has a lengthy record on taking over and assisting school districts in fiscal distress. Many of those have been removed from fiscal distress and returned to local control within two years. Pulaski County Special and Helena-West Helena districts, however, are in their fourth years of state control.

The record on taking over a district based on academic distress is far shorter.

The state board voted April 10, 2014, to take over the academically distressed Lee County School District, dismissing the local board members but leaving Superintendent Willie Murdock in place to answer to the state education commissioner, who was Kimbrell at the time.

Kimbrell has since left to become Bryant School District superintendent. Wood replaced him.

Strong-Huttig is the other academically distressed district in the state. While it has been scrutinized by the state Education Board's Academic Distress Committee, Strong-Huttig has not been subject so far to a takeover vote.

The Little Rock district -- now the second to be taken over by the state for academic distress -- differs from Strong-Huttig and the Marianna-based Lee County district in that the whole Little Rock district is not labeled as distressed. Little Rock's six distressed schools are part of a 48-school district.

Statewide, there are 26 academically distressed schools in places such as Augusta, Blytheville, Dollarway, Fordyce, Helena-West Helena, Marvell-Elaine, Osceola and Watson Chapel. Districts that have more than one school classified as academically distressed include Pulaski County Special, where Jacksonville High, Mills High and Harris Elementary are so labeled; Pine Bluff, where Belair Middle, Oak Park Elementary and Pine Bluff High are labeled; and Forrest City, where Lincoln Academy, Forrest City Junior High and Forrest City High are labeled. Covenant Keepers Charter School in Little Rock is also among the 26.

Between 2010-11 and 2013, 48.25 percent of Baseline Elementary pupils scored at proficient levels on the Benchmark math and literacy tests. At Cloverdale Middle, 41.47 percent; Henderson, 46.05 percent; Hall, 40.64 percent, J.A. Fair, 43.30 percent; and McClellan, 40.75 percent.

All six of the schools are also classified by the state as "priority" schools, meaning they are among the 5 percent lowest-achieving schools in the state and are reported as such to the U.S. Department of Education.

Before that, the schools were classified in various years as "need improvement," a classification that was required by the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 if schools didn't meet yearly achievement goals.

The Little Rock district schools now labeled as academically distressed need to shed that label before the Little Rock district as a whole can regain its locally elected school board, Wood said Friday.

"I can't answer that in terms of time," he said about the return of a school board, "only in terms of production of improvement. When there are no longer any academically distressed schools, then the district will be turned back to local control."

Information for this article was contributed by Aziza Musa of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

A section on 02/01/2015

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