COMMENTARY

The governor and LR schools

Gov. Asa Hutchinson nominated on Monday a former religious preschool operator from Mountain Home to run the Little Rock public schools.

That’s one way to put it.

Here’s another way: Hutchinson submitted for state education commissioner the name of Johnny Key, a former state senator from Mountain Home who formerly ran child-care centers that once got investigated for religious activities on state time, but who, for the last several months, has been a lobbyist for the University of Arkansas System.

And now that the state Education Board has taken over the Little Rock School District because of the officially distressed academic status of six schools, Key would essentially replace the current director of the Education Department, Tony Wood, as the de facto school board of the capital city’s district.

So it’s big, any way you put it.

There are two arguing constituencies among local supporters of the Little Rock schools. One holds that the state takeover is a golden opportunity to break through a cycle of dysfunction to fix what’s wrong and then restore the schools to local control. The other is that the state takeover is a conspiracy of rich businessmen to transform the Little Rock schools in a dramatic way featuring charter schools, union-breaking, performance-based pay for teachers and even privatized management.

All previous signs had pointed to a narrow focus, a targeted fix, and no major restructuring.

But at this point, based on this nomination, things could go either way.

Basically it’s up to Hutchinson, first with this personnel choice, which is subject to Education Board approval and passage of legislation letting Key serve though he lacks a master’s degree.

Then we’ll get Asa’s telling selection later this year of a board appointee to replace Sam Ledbetter, the liberal Little Rock lawyer who cast the tie-breaking vote for the takeover, but who did not remotely intend to invite those dramatic business-style reforms.

Finally, there’ll be the matter of what Hutchinson ends up telling those agents he wants for Little Rock.

It had previously been thought that Wood would stick around until summer. His plan for Little Rock was becoming evident.

He had brought in the highly regarded Baker Kurrus to head a committee to reform a mess of a budget, especially considering the imminent loss of extra state desegregation money. Then he wanted to introduce new leadership and teachers to the six distressed schools. Then he wanted to reinstate the school board and turn the district back to local control.

Key? Hutchinson? Don’t know. Can’t say. They are prime candidates to go either way.

As a state senator heading the Senate Education Committee, Key revealed himself as an advocate of business-style reforms such as school choice and performance-based pay. But at the same time, he won plaudits from Democratic colleagues and regular public school officials for working in a conciliatory, consensus-seeking fashion.

And all we can say about Hutchinson on these issues at this point is that he’ll surprise you sometimes and has nominated Key.

Key says all the right things—that he has no preconceived notions for Little Rock except to work to restore trust in the way he came to work in the Senate with colleagues like the liberal Joyce Elliott.

This much we know: Arkansas has a famously anemic governorship, limited in power by a state Constitution that distrusts consolidation and centralization. But on this historic matter—the future of public schools in the Little Rock district— circumstance has made Asa practically a czar.

They say elections have consequences. As regards no less than public education in Little Rock, that has never been more true.

It’s just that voters didn’t know at the time that they were electing a man to hold the Little Rock public schools in his hands.

John Brummett’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.

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