Baker Kurrus, a Little Rock attorney and businessman, is being considered for a top management position in the state-controlled Little Rock School District.
The Arkansas Board of Education is meeting at 2 p.m. today to vote on waiving state laws affecting administration of the district, an action that would enable Arkansas Education Commissioner Johnny Key to promote Kurrus to a more formal role -- possibly as a chief administrator -- from Kurrus' current position as volunteer chairman of a financial advisory group to the district.
Neither Key nor Kurrus could be reached on their cellphones Monday evening for comment on today's meeting or Kurrus' possible role change.
However, Arkansas Department of Education staff notified Education Board members of the special meeting in a very brief email Monday afternoon and in that email directly linked Kurrus to the board's work.
"The Chair has called a Special Board Meeting for tomorrow (5/5) at 2:00 pm in Room 303-B of the ADE Building," Chief of Staff Deborah Coffman wrote to the board. "I am attaching Mr. Baker Kurrus' resume."
Copies of the email were provided to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on Monday night by members of the Education Board.
The email was followed with a news release issued just before 6 p.m. publicly announcing the meeting and its sole agenda item: "Consideration of Arkansas Department of Education Recommendation Pursuant to Arkansas Code Annotated 6-15-430 Regarding the Administration of the Little Rock School District."
Publicly released background information on the agenda item did not mention Kurrus but cites the statute as the basis for the Education Department recommending that the board "waive the application of certain laws and corresponding State Board of Education rules regarding the administration of the Little Rock School District."
The statute is one that details the Education Board's authority over a public school or school district in academic distress. The board's authority includes appointing an individual in place of the superintendent to administratively operate the school district under the supervision and approval of the commissioner.
The statute also allows the waiving of Arkansas law and corresponding state board rules with the exception of the Arkansas Teacher Fair Dismissal Act and the Public School Employee Fair Hearing Act, both of which give school employees the opportunity to defend themselves when their jobs are changed.
The Arkansas Education Board voted 5-4 on Jan. 28 to assume control of the state's largest district, which has 24,000 students, dismissing the locally elected School Board and making Superintendent Dexter Suggs the district's interim leader under the supervision of the commissioner, who was Tony Wood at that time.
The state takeover was based on the fact that six of the district's 48 schools are labeled by the state as academically distressed, but board members have also said that they did not have confidence in the district's efforts to prepare for the loss of $37 million per year in state desegregation aid. That aid will be eliminated after the 2017-18 school year.
Key replaced Wood as commissioner in March and, as such, became Suggs' supervisor.
Suggs resigned suddenly April 20 in the face of allegations that he plagiarized parts of his doctoral thesis at Indiana Wesleyan University. On April 21, Key appointed Marvin Burton, the Little Rock district's deputy superintendent, to be interim superintendent but also said that a search for a more permanent superintendent was underway.
Kurrus, 60, who served on the Little Rock School Board for 12 years -- from 1998-2010, has been serving since February as the chairman of a Little Rock district "financial stability committee," an unpaid position to which he was appointed by Wood.
That committee of education, civic and business leaders was to make recommendations to the Little Rock district's superintendent and Education Department leaders. The committee met a few times with Suggs and other district administrators and was working to find suggestions for cutting costs and creating more efficiency in the district with a budget of more than $300 million.
Metro on 05/05/2015