Leaders in Little Rock meet with incoming superintendent Michael Poore

School-chief pick pays visit

 Michael Poore
Michael Poore

The Little Rock School District's superintendent-to-be, Michael Poore, is in the city this week to meet with state and local leaders, including the district's current chief executive, Baker Kurrus.

Poore is resigning after five years in the superintendent's job in Bentonville to take the Little Rock position at a salary of $225,000. He spent part of Wednesday in different meetings with state legislators from Pulaski County and the Legislative Black Caucus.

He also met privately later in the afternoon with the Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce's education committee.

Arkansas Education Commissioner Johnny Key last week named Poore, 54, to succeed Kurrus, 61, as superintendent in the state-controlled, 24,000-student Little Rock district.

Key, who last year appointed Kurrus to head the district, notified Kurrus on April 13 that his one-year, $150,000 contract will not be renewed when it expires June 30. Key has invited Kurrus, a lawyer and businessman, to continue to work with the district in either a formal or informal role.

Poore is expected to remain in Little Rock at least through today.

Cathy Koehler, president of the Little Rock Education Association union of teachers and support staff, said Wednesday that she is scheduled to meet with Poore this evening, after the regular monthly meeting of the district's Civic Advisory Committee. But Poore's complete itinerary has not been released.

Kimberly Friedman, a spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Education, said she did not have an official schedule for Poore.

"The meetings he is holding are not public meetings, and everything is tentative and subject to change," Friedman said Wednesday afternoon.

Sen. Joyce Elliott, D-Little Rock, said Wednesday evening that in her large- and small-group meetings with Poore, "He spent some time talking to us about his idea of some things he would like to do, some things he would like us to consider and put in place."

Elliott described the discussions with Poore as candid. She said he was told that the dispute over leadership in the district was not about him personally but about a process in which decisions were made about what will happen in Little Rock without any input from the community. Poore has a responsibility to meet the community not on his terms but on the community's, because it is the community that has been harmed, she said. She said he has to recognize that people have grievances that are long-standing.

Poore made the rounds of the different offices on a day in which supporters of Kurrus and a return of the district to the local control of a school board held their second rally in five days to make their positions known.

First United Methodist Church pastor David Freeman; Cloverdale Middle School teacher LaKeitha Austin; former teacher Charles Zook; Rep. Charles Armstrong, D-Little Rock; and Christopher Kingsby, a former district student and now a 10th-grade home-schooled student, were among the speakers at the rally in front of the Arkansas Department of Education.

Bill Kopsky, executive director of the Arkansas Public Policy Panel, urged the sign-carrying, chanting crowd of about 150 to call Key and Gov. Asa Hutchinson to ask for the return of a locally elected school board, a freeze on the development of charter schools and a reversal of the decision to fire Kurrus.

"We want specific plans for every school in Little Rock," Kopsky said. "We need a process to engage and unite our whole community in a positive direction forward for education."

Emailed messages to Key and Poore on Wednesday were not returned, nor was a phone message left for Kurrus.

Metro on 04/28/2016

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