A bill proposed by a Hot Springs lawmaker would broaden the authority of the state Board of Education and allow it to create a state-operated district for academically troubled schools.
The state's education commissioner would have the authority to assign a public school or school district in academic distress to an Achievement School District, a newly formed unit of the Arkansas Department of Education, according to a bill introduced by Rep. Bruce Cozart, a Republican.
House Bill 1733 gives the commissioner the option of operating the Achievement District or contracting with one or more not-for-profit entities to run the academically distressed schools or school districts under the Achievement School District.
The bill, filed Friday by Cozart, has drawn opposition and prompted an emergency meeting Monday night by Jefferson Elementary School's Parent Teacher Association, one of the Little Rock School District's 48 schools. The meeting drew nearly 300 parents, teachers, legislators and recently displaced School Board members.
Opponents said the bill would lead to resegregated schools, eliminate teachers unions and allow for charter school operations that some say have had mixed results at best.
Cozart said his bill gives the state Education Board another option to explore.
"It is something to try to help the districts that are not achieving," Cozart said. "If we can't get them to achieve in a normal fashion, we've got to do it another way."
Currently, 22 schools are labeled by the state as being in academic distress. Of those, six are in the Little Rock School District: Baseline Elementary, Cloverdale and Henderson middle schools and J.A. Fair, Hall and McClellan high schools.
The six schools were at the center of the Education Board's 5-4 decision to take control of the state's largest district by removing the elected School Board and placing Superintendent Dexter Suggs under the direction of the education commissioner on an interim basis.
The proposed bill would leave a school or district in the Achievement School District for a minimum of three academic years or an initial term of five years. If the district has achieved sufficient academic results for two consecutive years, the commissioner can then choose to remove it from the Achievement School District, returning it to local control, or to allow it to become an independently operated charter school.
Cozart said Monday there were no special interest groups behind the bill, but said that he did not want to disclose the writers of the proposed legislation quite yet. He added that the bill wasn't aimed at the Little Rock School District.
"There's a lot of others in the state that are having that issue," he said.
Other academically troubled schools are in Blytheville, Dermott, Dollarway, Forrest City, Helena-West Helena, Pine Bluff, Pulaski County Special School, Strong-Huttig and Watson Chapel school districts. Covenant Keepers Charter School is also labeled as academically distressed.
But opponents of the bill say otherwise.
Rep. John Walker, D-Little Rock, and former Little Rock School Board member Jim Ross said they knew something was brewing once the state took control of the 24,800-student Little Rock district. Walker said it was as though Brown v. Board of Education -- which desegregated schools -- doesn't matter.
They point to a clause that states: "A public school or school district that is classified by the State Board of Education as being in academic distress and taken over by the state board as of the effective date of this act is eligible to become part of the achievement school district at the discretion of the Commissioner of Education."
Walker and other legislators urged the people gathered at Calvary Baptist Church to press their representatives and those on the House Education Committee to vote against the bill, and to have friends and family do the same. Rep. Fredrick Love, D-Little Rock, called out four names -- names of fellow Democrats that parents and teachers should call.
"Hammer these Democrats into submission," he said. "Hammer these people until we tell you to stop."
According to the nine-page bill, employees at the academically distressed schools or districts would stand to lose protections offered by the Arkansas Teacher Fair Dismissal Act, the Public School Employee Fair Hearing Act and/or through union representation and collective bargaining rights.
Cathy Koehler -- president of the Little Rock Education Association, a teachers union -- said Monday that the bill would not only dismantle her group, but it would also get rid of a district's personnel policies board.
"Nobody wants to hear from the very people who are with your children every day," she said.
If the academically distressed school or district is operated by a not-for-profit entity, that entity would be exempt from the state laws on: teacher licensure, school board elections and school boards, uniform school start and end dates, length of school day, daily planning periods, personnel policy committees, teacher fair dismissal, collective bargaining, and minimum salaries for licensed and nonlicensed employees.
The bill further directs that the commissioner may receive and spend federal, state and local funds for schools -- including local property tax revenue.
The bill also would require a school district with an Achievement School in its jurisdiction to provide support services to that Achievement School. That would include transportation, food service, building support and maintenance, alternative school environment, special education services, and athletics and other interscholastic activities.
The commissioner would have the authority to use at no charge any school building, facility or property of an achievement school. The Achievement School District would be responsible for paying for utilities, but extensive repairs would be the responsibility of the public school district.
A not-for-profit organization that requests and receives an open-enrollment charter for an Achievement School may rent the school building from the school district for $1 a year.
"We've worked too hard and we've worked too long to allow folks to come in here for $1, take over our schools, not pay taxes on it ... and all will be right with the world," Sen. Linda Chesterfield, D-Little Rock, told the audience at Calvary Baptist on Monday. "This is about a charter school movement. This is going to require us to fight to the very last."
Gary Newton, the executive director of the Arkansas Learns organization that advocates in the Legislature and elsewhere for parent choice for their children's schools, backed the bill Monday.
He said in an interview he envisions the language in the bill will be changed to allow the state to contract with third parties for the management of individual schools, not a whole district.
"This affords the possibility for nontraditional providers to come in," Newton said, pointing to organizations such as the University of Arkansas or the Clinton School of Public Service or Pulaski Tech community college as examples of organizations that could operate an academically distressed school if the bill is passed.
He said Arkansas law prohibits for-profit charters and they are not contemplated.
"If the state is handcuffed in its ability to turn around a district, than what is the use?" he said. "Now that the takeover [of the Little Rock district] has happened, [the state] needs to have maximum flexibility to do the work. This allows the state to have flexibility with individual schools within a taken-over district ... bringing in a portfolio approach rather than an either/or approach."
Some opponents to the proposed bill say charter schools aren't always the answer, citing troubled charters in Tennessee and New Orleans. Sen. Joyce Elliott, D-Little Rock, said she's seen pockets of success, but nothing systemic.
Rep. Clarke Tucker, D-Little Rock, said he's got a proposed a bill, HB1605, that would increase transparency should the state contract with a third-party person or entity once the Education Board assumes control over a district. His bill would allow school documents under that contract to be releaseable under the state's Freedom of Information Act, even if no public funds were expended.
He was surprised to learn that some legislators opposed his bill, he said Monday, adding that those same legislators are the ones backing HB1733.
Chesterfield, a former president of the Arkansas Education Association, said HB1733 was in line with a "slow erosion of public education."
"[They] don't care anything about Lake View," she said, referring to the school-funding equity case. "They don't care anything about fairness for our children. They don't care anything about whether you and I as taxpayers care. I believe that the American Revolution was fought for no taxation without representation. Let's get our representation back."
Metro on 03/10/2015