Called 'ugly,' district-split plans advance unendorsed

Competing plans for splitting the staff between the Pulaski County Special School District and the new Jacksonville/North Pulaski School District will go to the state education commissioner for a decision without a recommendation from a local advisory board.

The district's Community Advisory Board voted 4-2 with one abstention Tuesday night to forward the plans to Arkansas Education Commissioner Johnny Key without stating a preference for how the Pulaski County Special District might reduce the number of its employees to accommodate the loss of 10 schools and more than 4,000 students to the new Jacksonville/North Pulaski system.

The Jacksonville/North Pulaski School District, created last year by the Arkansas Board of Education, remains a part of the Pulaski County Special district for the time being for planning purposes, including the division of the staff, assets and debt. Planners for the detachment of the new district from the Pulaski County Special district expect that the new district will begin operating on its own July 1, 2016.

Lindsey Gustafson, a member of the Pulaski County Special district's Community Advisory Board, said Tuesday that the staffing plans before the advisory group were "all ugly choices." She made the motion to send the varying proposals to Key, who acts as the school board and final decision-maker for the state-controlled Pulaski County Special district.

Earlier this year, Pulaski County Special district Superintendent Jerry Guess and his staff proposed a system in which separate employee seniority lists -- called seniority centers -- would be formed for the Pulaski County Special and the Jacksonville districts.

Beginning with the 2015-16 school year, which starts July 1, employees in schools that are part of the new Jacksonville district and the employees in schools in the other parts of the Pulaski County Special district would make up the separate seniority centers, according to the Guess plan. There would be no movement of employees between the two centers.

The proposal would minimize staffing changes in the Pulaski County Special district schools, Guess has said. But it also would stop veteran Pulaski County Special district employees who work in Jacksonville-area schools from continuing as Pulaski County Special employees and earning Pulaski County Special district pay and benefits. Similarly the plan would stop teachers and staff now in Pulaski County Special district schools outside of Jacksonville from choosing jobs in the Jacksonville/North Pulaski district.

"The intent of this provision is that a person assigned to one seniority center can exercise seniority only within the seniority center to which that person is assigned regardless of the purpose for exercising seniority," the proposals for both the certified staff and the support staff say.

The district's Personnel Policies Committee for the support staff voted to oppose the district's proposal. The Personnel Policies Committee for the district's certified staff went a step beyond voting against the plan by also developing an alternative plan.

Personnel policies committees in a school district advise school boards on employee working conditions. The majority of a committee's members are either teachers or support staff employees who are elected by their peers. The committees also include members who are district administrators.

The Certified Personnel Policies Committee plan would give teachers and principals a choice in the coming school year about the district in which they would prefer to work, Pam Fitzgiven, chairman of the committee, said.

Teachers and principals who would prefer to change from working in a Jacksonville-area school to a school elsewhere in the Pulaski County Special district, or vice versa, would complete the preference forms and turn them in to the Pulaski County Special district's personnel office, according to the alternative plan.

That office would compile a list of those desiring to transfer to Jacksonville and a list of those wishing to transfer to schools elsewhere in the Pulaski County Special district. The lists would then be sent to the appropriate districts to begin the planning and school placement of those on the lists.

Fitzgiven said the alternative plan would permit those employees with the most seniority to have first access to available vacant jobs in the desired district. She said the employees could vie only for vacancies and would not be able to "bump" employees with less seniority in the district out of their jobs.

Margie Snider, another member of the Pulaski County Special district's Community Advisory Board, said Tuesday that she disagreed with Guess' plan because it locks people into positions and it changes the district's existing personnel policies.

"I think it is unfair to take away people's right to choose and change their contractual rights," she said. "I believe we should not send all the proposals to Commissioner Key to choose."

Daniel Gray, both an advisory board member and president of the interim school board for the Jacksonville/North Pulaski district, said he agreed with Snider that the dual seniority center proposal "robs the teachers of choice."

"I also think that the PPC's proposal is no different. It gives no choice. There is no bumping allowed," Gray continued. "Plus I have a hard time thinking that this school district or any policy in this district can be imposed upon a separate school district."

Gustafson said she had struggled with the proposals and they are all ugly choices.

"I'm convinced that the worst choice for the children of PCSSD would a single seniority system because the cost would be immense. The principal of my children's school would have positions bumped. Jacksonville's salary schedule looks like it would be less than PCSSD's."

Guess told the advisory board that the Personnel Policies Committee's plan could cost the district as much as $6 million to $6.5 million in salary if the teachers and other staff members with the most seniority and the highest pay rates are able to choose to work in Pulaski County Special district.

Gustafson said the Pulaski County Special district can't require Jacksonville/North Pulaski district to do anything. She said the Pulaski County Special district can't tell teachers who desire to work in Jacksonville that they can work there because the new district will not be required to honor those assignments.

"That's false," she said. "We have no way of telling teachers that if you tell us that you want to transfer from PCSSD to Jacksonville, we'll put you on a list. That gives them some assurance that we absolutely cannot give."

Fitzgiven said that is the way the district currently operates. When teachers apply for a voluntary transfer to a school, there is a risk and no guarantee of a job at the desired school. There must be an opening at the school for the transfer to be awarded, and even then the job goes to the applicant on the list of voluntary transfers with the most seniority.

"We can't even promise there will even be a list in Jacksonville," Gustafson said.

Fitzgiven said this coming year will be a transition year in which transfers can be made while all the employees are Pulaski County Special School District employees.

Gustafson said, "Are you telling me that there are teachers in the PCSSD who will ask to transfer to Jacksonville knowing that their contract will end at the end of the year and there is no guarantee that Jacksonville will hire them?"

Fitzgiven said there are teachers who are interested in working in the Jacksonville/North Pulaski district.

Guess told the committee that their debate on the proposals is moot if they are going to submit the plans to the state commissioner without a recommendation one way or the other.

In addition to Key, U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr., the presiding judge in a 32-year-old school desegregation lawsuit, is monitoring how staffing decisions and other issues related to the detachment of Jacksonville/North Pulaski from the Pulaski County Special district are accomplished.

A court-approved settlement last year permitted the new district to form in accordance with state laws. However, the parties in the lawsuit and the judge agreed that the new district, once detached, will have to meet the same desegregation requirements that the Pulaski County Special district must meet in regard to inequities of facilities, staffing, student discipline, and student achievement.

Allen Roberts, an attorney for the Pulaski County Special district, told Marshall at a status conference in the case earlier Tuesday that he expects to have a written agreement between the Pulaski County Special and Jacksonville districts detailing all the detachment plans, in the next few days. That plan will be submitted to the attorneys for black students, the state Board of Education and the judge, Roberts said.

Roberts told the judge that the Jacksonville/North Pulaski district won't oppose to the dual seniority centers plan when it is presented to Key but it doesn't want any claim of authorship for it.

Marshall said that any challenges to the detachment plan's effect on desegregation efforts should be referred to him first.

Metro on 05/20/2015

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