6 picked as LR district's advisers

City, library, company execs, retirees to give budget input

Former Little Rock School Board member Baker Kurrus (left) and Little Rock interim school Superintendent Dexter Suggs on Friday announce the members of the district’s new Budget Efficiency Advisory Committee.
Former Little Rock School Board member Baker Kurrus (left) and Little Rock interim school Superintendent Dexter Suggs on Friday announce the members of the district’s new Budget Efficiency Advisory Committee.

Baker Kurrus, named by the state earlier this month to head a Little Rock School District budget evaluation committee, on Friday announced his selection of fellow committee members, including City Manager Bruce Moore and Central Arkansas Library System Director Bobby Roberts.

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Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Little Rock School District interim Superintendent Dexter Suggs (left) and new advisory committee head Baker Kurrus said Friday that the district is in sound financial shape as it starts work on improving student achievement.

The committee will advise interim Little Rock Superintendent Dexter Suggs and Arkansas Education Commissioner Tony Wood on ways to achieve balanced budgets and long-term financial stability in the newly state-controlled district that is facing the loss of $37 million a year in state desegregation aid from its $320 million budget. The special state aid will end after the 2017-18 school year.

Also on the committee are:

• Roger Ball, member of the Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce board of directors and chief executive officer of Centuries Industries Inc., which is a manufacturer of folding attic stairs and specialty windows.

• Peggy Nabors, a retired teacher and former president and staff member for the Arkansas Education Association, which is the state's largest teacher and school support-staff union.

• Verma Simmons, retired from the Arkansas Department of Human Services after 32 years, including her final position as administrator of employee relations.

• Steve Strickland, who has degrees in engineering and law and retired last year as vice president of regulatory affairs at Entergy Arkansas Inc.

Kurrus, at a news conference Friday morning, called the small but diverse group with its breadth of experience "a working task force" that "will be looking for the best and most efficient practices to allow the district to achieve at its highest level."

"These people have organizational, management, accounting and budgeting skills," he said. Moore and Roberts, in particular, he said, understand large budgets and organizations that operate multiple facilities such as the school district, which has 48 campuses.

The formation of the district's Budget Efficiency Advisory Committee comes after the Jan. 28 vote by the state Board of Education to immediately dismiss the Little Rock district's seven-member, elected School Board while making Suggs the interim superintendent under the direction of the education commissioner.

The Education Board vote was based largely on dissatisfaction with efforts to improve achievement at six schools -- Baseline Elementary; Cloverdale and Henderson middle; and J.A. Fair, Hall and McClellan high schools -- that are classified as academically distressed because fewer than half their students scored at proficient levels on state math and literacy exams over a three-year period.

Education Board members also expressed reservations about the school district's ability to manage its finances and the eventual loss of desegregation aid in ways that would be most beneficial to students.

"It's going to be a difficult process but, at the same time, I don't think it should be a negative process," Kurrus said Friday about changing the way the Little Rock district spends what amounts to more than $13,000 per student, one of the highest per-student expenditures in the state. Other districts with higher expenditures include very small, rural districts such as the Hughes School District in east Arkansas.

According to the Annual Statistical Report of the Public Schools of Arkansas listing 2013-14 actual expenditures, the Little Rock district's per-pupil expenditure was $13,645. The Pulaski County Special School District had $11,114 to spend per pupil and the North Little Rock district had $10,094 to spend based on state aid and local tax revenue. The average expenditure statewide was $9,457.

"We are not a poor school district," said Kurrus, who served on the Little Rock School Board from 1998-2010. "We have a lot of money. We just have to change the way we spend it."

"I think we can emerge from all this with a district that is invigorated, excited about its job, more efficient, better able to take money and put it where it really matters," he said.

The committee's recommendations will attempt to help the district meet the goals set in the district's 2010-15 strategic plan, Kurrus said.

The "Target 2015" plan includes what its authors call "ambitious, eye-popping" goals for student achievement. The aim of the plan is to have every student reading at grade level by the end of third grade, taking a rigorous course of study in middle and high school, and being prepared for college or a high-wage job.

Other provisions of the plan call for eliminating the racial achievement gap among students, raising the average ACT college entrance exam scores by 1 point a year from 19 to 24 on a 1-36 scale and for starting teacher salaries of $40,000.

"That plan was well thought out and community driven," Kurrus said. "Everything we do should align with the strategic plan."

Kurrus also said the committee's recommendations must be part of a comprehensive effort to improve the performance of schools in academic distress, but the recommendations should not have negative effects elsewhere.

"We do have to do better in certain schools but we have to be mindful of the fact that we have to improve performance everywhere," he said.

Kurrus said that cutting personnel is a hard potential option but "if this is done correctly, this district may run better. It may be more efficient. The lines of communication will be shorter. You can have greater agility as an organization -- able to make decisions more quickly."

There is the potential to cut district expenses in ways that are apart from personnel, as well, he said and suggested that the district might consolidate some of the administrative offices that are housed in different places in the city.

"I think our teachers will have a bright future here, a very bright future here," Kurrus said, " because sustainability and fiscal soundness promotes the kind of long-term commitments that people are willing to make to organizations that drive success. I'm very optimistic about the process and I'm not going to sink into any kind of negative view of it because we can come out of this very strong.

"We spend about $13,000 per student right now. Other districts do the same job with a whole lot less. We're a district with great need but we're a district with great promise and I think this will help us bring forward some of that promise."

Suggs shared the podium with Kurrus at the Friday morning news conference.

"We're in good shape at the current time," Suggs said in response to questions about the status of district finances. "We are basically preparing for the future," he said about the loss of the desegregation aid and the work of the committee.

He said the district administration will collaborate with the committee on the budget planning.

"This is to ensure that we are able to sustain programs within our school district and to ensure that wherever the realignment or reallocation of resources occur, it does not affect the classroom or the students," Suggs said.

He said he expects a leaner administration but special program magnet schools, athletics and the arts will be spared. He called those non-negotiable and necessary for a high-quality education program for students. Last year, the district said it planned to keep magnet schools.

He also said after the news conference that he expects that the district will seek voter approval of an unspecified property-tax increase in 2016 to help finance the construction of new schools in west and southwest Little Rock, replace portable classrooms with permanent buildings and upgrade the district's athletic facilities.

Earlier this year, the Little Rock School Board set priorities for building construction and additions, and said it would like to have a millage election of an undetermined rate by February 2016.

Suggs said the district will do away with the college-style block schedule to return to a more traditional seven-period class day at Fair, Hall and McClellan high schools and all district middle schools in the new school year.

Plans for restructuring and expanding the course offerings at Hall High School, which started with the School Board last fall, are continuing and will likely be put into place in the 2016-17 school year, he said.

Before the state Education Board's vote to take control of the district, Suggs and the School Board had raised the possibility of vacating the jobs at each of the six academically distressed schools and asking for applicants to refill them.

Suggs said Friday that displacing the staffs at the academically distressed schools will not happen because there is not a supply of "good-to-great teacher replacements" available to fill all the jobs.

As of Friday the new Budget Efficiency Advisory Committee did not have established meeting dates.

Kurrus said he is now providing the group with copies of the district's budget, the strategic plan, organizational charts and revenue projections. He said he anticipates that the committee's first meeting will be with Suggs on possible concepts creating a leaner or more streamlined administrative structure. May 1 is the deadline for notifying state-licensed teachers and administrators of any changes or the elimination of their jobs for the coming school year.

Kurrus said he wants the new advisory committee's work to be as transparent as possible to the public while also being sensitive to individuals whose jobs may be discussed for changes or elimination.

Metro on 02/28/2015

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