The Little Rock School District's Rockefeller Elementary School and early childhood education program for infants through fifth grades will continue to operate as is for the foreseeable future, the district's top brass said Thursday.
"Why fix something that isn't broken?" Deputy Superintendent Marvin Burton told about 75 teachers and parents at a late-afternoon meeting in which he and Baker Kurrus, the district's state-appointed superintendent of two days, answered questions on topics such as accountability and a seven-period high school class day.
"I want to apologize to you on behalf of the Little Rock School District for surprising you," Kurrus told the audience in the Rockefeller school cafeteria. "That was wrong, and it should not have happened. I'm not casting dispersions or placing blame but we should not surprise you. I want to be engaged with you."
The announcement, greeted with applause, represented a reversal of plans sprung on Rockefeller school families in early April. Then-Superintendent Dexter Suggs revealed plans to convert Rockefeller Elementary into a stand-alone prekindergarten center for 3- and 4-year-olds. Those plans initially called for suspending the infants-through-2-year-olds program for the summer and discontinuing it after the 2015-16 school year.
Suggs, who reported to Arkansas Education Commissioner Johnny Key, had offered the plans as part of an effort to raise student achievement while increasing efficiency and cutting expenses on a districtwide basis.
Kurrus, who now reports to Key, acknowledged that the district, which has a $325 million budget, must cut expenses in anticipation of the loss of $37 million a year in state desegregation aid after the 2017-18 school year.
"I'm wrassling that bear," he said, adding that it is his intent to cut costs as far away from schools and instruction as possible.
In response to a question about what is on his drawing board, Kurrus said the first project is to make "dramatic systemic changes in the way we educate in the schools that are not working -- systemic changes, not programmatic changes and not run in another group of out-of-state consultants with the latest and greatest thing."
The state assumed control of the district in January because more than half of the students at six of the district's 48 schools failed to score at proficient or better on state math and literacy exams over three years.
Kurrus said he wants "to integrate into the district's very existence a relationship between a qualified teacher, a willing student and an interested adult, and [let] nothing interfere with that, and then somehow get the best instructional assistance and support we can possibly get. That may be a little different in different places. For example, we may have to extend school days where we aren't being successful."
He said the district has great teachers everywhere, but that doesn't mean the job is getting done.
"That's where I'm starting from," he said, adding that he will have an organizational chart prepared within the next few days that promotes accountability. It will include clear goals, and ways to measure results and consequences.
Metro on 05/08/2015