Despite six months of juggling academically distressed schools, budget cuts and public skepticism, Little Rock Superintendent Mike Poore insists that better days are ahead for the state's largest school system.
Poore has headed the state-controlled, 24,386-student Little Rock district since July 1. He was Arkansas Education Commissioner Johnny Key's surprise pick in the spring to replace Baker Kurrus, a well-regarded Little Rock lawyer and an earlier Key appointee who served one year as the district's chief.
His entry into the district this summer was "different," Poore acknowledged in a recent interview after his first half-year on the job.
"There was that whole element of trying to show that I don't have a hidden agenda," he said. "I'm just trying to go make us a better district and go do good things for kids. I'm hoping that maybe we are beyond that [mistrust] and people are saying, 'I don't necessarily agree with the guy, but I know he is working [hard] and I know he's working [hard] with other people. He's trying to utilize the strengths and assets of this entire community to make this district better.'"
The former five-year superintendent of the academically thriving Bentonville School District, Poore now leads a larger district but one that is operating under state direction and without a locally elected school board because of chronically low achievement at five schools -- including three high schools.
Additionally, the Little Rock district's enrollment is shrinking -- down 400 from last year. It is also facing increased competition from public charter schools. Its employees gave up workdays, pay and a part of the district-paid insurance premiums for this year.
And the district is staring down $11 million more in cuts for next school year that are likely to include closing five campuses and reducing teacher numbers at the middle schools and high schools. The multiyear budget cuts are meant to offset the $37.3 million a year in state desegregation aid that will end after the 2017-18 school year.
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Poore said he knows there are doubts about the district's ability to prosper in the face of budget cuts, academic distress and state control.
"'How does that work? How in the world are you going to make the district better?'" Poore said people routinely ask him.
"I have it in my heart, my head, my soul, and I hope it is embedded in everyone else's on our staff, that we are going to get better," he responds. "We're going to get better because we are partnering with business groups. We are enhancing our ability to support academics. We are becoming more sound in our use of data. We are getting better tools to our teachers and our kids. So, we are going to be a better district next year. I have no doubt about it."
To relieve the community apprehension and distrust that greeted his appointment, Poore immediately instituted an "entry plan" for himself that focused on listening, learning and high public visibility. Neighborhood walks, telephone calls, one-to-one meetings with principals, community forums, myriad speeches and Twitter town halls were part of that plan.
"One thing that has been locked in for me is that people want to see this district do well," Poore said. "I'm talking about people who could probably be labeled as voices who don't necessarily believe in Mike Poore but, bottom line, they want to see the district do better. They want to see good things happen for kids. That's universal.
"Secondly, they want local control back," he added. "There are going to be people who don't believe this is a true statement, but the commissioner and the governor have told me that is what they want to see me do. Their charge to me was very simple: One was to get local control back; the second was to be as collaborative and inclusive as I possibly could; and the third one was to establish career development centers."
Poore, 55, who moved to Arkansas from Colorado, speaks quickly. In his speeches he is at ease, animated and is quick to smile and joke. He deflects disagreement by those in an audience by listening to their comments up to a point before retaking control of a session. He frequently introduces a hot topic by saying. "I know not everyone agrees with this, but...." and he continues his statement.
Cathy Koehler, the longtime president of the Little Rock Education Association employees union, cited Poore's education background, his congenial temperament and his willingness to listen to employees and others as "huge positives." She also called him collegial and exceedingly observant.
"I think highly of him," Koehler said. "Over the last six months he has become very invested in Little Rock and its students and the success of the district. I do believe he is going to move the district forward."
Former Little Rock School Board member Greg Adams also said he has been "positively impressed" despite early wariness.
"In my experiences with him, I have found him earnest, thoughtful, willing to listen, collaborative and committed to moving the district forward even when it's difficult, such as wrestling with the needed budget cuts. I am glad that he appears convinced of the need to go forward with the new southwest high school.
Adams said that state leaders need to offer assurances that the Little Rock district will be returned to local control as soon as possible.
"Mr. Poore needs those kinds of actions from the commissioner to give him the support and room he needs to be most effective," Adams said.
In an interview before the Christmas break, Poore -- wearing dark-blue jeans and an open-collar navy shirt under a mostly blue plaid sport coat -- talked about specific ideas and plans for resolving district issues and meeting the directives of his state bosses.
Regarding the academically distressed schools -- J.A. Fair, Hall, McClellan high schools and Cloverdale and Henderson middle schools -- Poore has created "achieve teams," an improvement strategy he developed in the Colorado Springs, Colo., public schools.
The superintendent and other district administrators meet with the faculty of an academically troubled school. The faculty members make presentations to the administrators on student achievement levels, parent and community support, and the availability, or not, of necessary resources for students and teachers.
Together, administrators and faculty members identify ways to address the needs. District administrators make commitments to support the faculty with resources such as providing training programs, extra staff, or even laptop computers for students.
The commitments create a sense of urgency and responsibility among district leaders and school faculty members to get the tasks done, Poore said. Follow-up meetings are held to gauge progress and make adjustments.
"The first reaction is 'I can't believe all these people are here,' and there are questions about whether the district administration is trying to overpower a school into doing something," Poore said about the achieve team approach. "There is almost a distrust factor you have to break through. In education we've had so many things that if you don't get the results you want, people come in and tell you what to do. Those directives generate very little buy-in from the faculty, and any improvements are generally short term.
"There's got to be a better way," Poore continued, pointing to the benefits that can come from dialogue among intelligent people who are passionate about students. "You quickly rise to a level where you can say, 'Wow, that can work if we do these things all together.'"
Poore said the strategy works faster at elementary schools than at high schools that have larger, departmentalized faculty members who are confident in their expertise in their fields.
"The reality is we aren't trying to take away your expertise," Poore said. "We are trying to draw out what are the challenges in delivering that expertise to the students you are serving."
The initial achieve team meeting at Little Rock's Hall High earlier this year was a particularly difficult one until nearly the end of the session, he recalled. The Hall faculty felt beaten down, he said.
"But what changed the tone for everybody was a conversation that asked, 'What are the commitments that you have to each other and what are the commitments you have to kids?' That created an icebreaker. All of a sudden everyone was thinking about it in terms of 'This is what we can do.' 'This is what we can control.' 'We get to choose who we get to be.'"
The second meeting at Hall was "dynamic," Poore said, in terms of numbers of people speaking up, offering solutions and describing ways to engage students. Giving students a greater voice and more leadership opportunities at a school is a sure way to reduce discipline infractions and increase attendance, he said.
The Little Rock district was taken over by the state in January 2015 because fewer than half of the students at six schools scored at proficient levels on state math and literacy exams over the course of three years. After the state tests were given in the spring of 2015, Little Rock's Baseline Academy was removed from the distressed list.
State tests were given again in the spring but the Arkansas Department of Education has not yet announced whether any of the academically distressed schools -- the five remaining in Little Rock and 20 others in the state -- improved enough to be removed from the distressed list.
Annette Barnes, the Education Department's assistant commissioner for accountability, said the agency is working vigorously to identify the schools statewide that remain in academic distress using the results from the ACT Aspire tests in 2016 along with results from two different testing programs used in the previous two school years.
"It needs to be legally defensible," Barnes said about the school labeling system. The state is working with the ACT company and the agency's technical assistance council on testing "to be sure we are maintaining the integrity of the process," and "looking at an as accurate a picture as possible."
Key, the education commissioner, has said that removal of the distress labels is essential to the district's release from state control and the return of an elected school board.
"I'm still hopeful that we might get one or two taken off," Poore said about the distress labels. "We feel McClellan is really close and we feel Fair is pretty close. That's just us looking at it. We think there is a chance there. That would be wonderful to get them out of that scenario."
Any celebration for a high school or middle school is a celebration for the elementary schools, too.
"Somebody has done the right things," he said. "If we have a problem we have to say it is a K-12 problem. If we have solutions and things that go right, we want to celebrate all the way up. People think that Hall or Fair or McClellan are terrible schools. Well, the reality is they are not terrible schools. They have some challenging things to work through themselves and we have to do things within the pipeline to better support them as well."
Among the efforts to help the schools will be the establishment of career education centers in or near the high school, or in local places of businesses. Technology, aeronautics, medical professions, teaching, and construction trades are the focus areas. Law enforcement is another possibility that has come to the forefront in recent weeks, Poore said.
For the middle schools, Poore has talked of building partnerships with organizations such as banks, hospitals, the Little Rock Zoo and Heifer International to create hands-on, problem-solving course work that will be attractive to middle-school students who tend to leave the district schools after the elementary grades.
At the same time as the academic planning, there is planning for cutting the district's $300 million budget by as much as $11 million for the coming year. That, paired with cuts made this school year and in the past, are meant to offset the scheduled loss of state desegregation aid. Poore called the last $11 million cut an "ouch point."
Five schools -- Carver Math and Science Magnet, Franklin, Wilson elementaries, along with Woodruff Early Childhood Center and Hamilton Learning Academy -- are proposed for closing.
Carver, 2100 E. Sixth St., would be converted to an early-childhood education center. Wilson would become the alternative school now housed at the Hamilton campus, under the current proposal.
"I'm going to play my cards pretty close to me, but I honestly think about it every hour," Poore said about the potential school closings. Those have to be announced in early January to adequately prepare for the 2017-18 school year.
"What is the right thing to do? What are the options? Even to the point, if you took out every bit of school closure, what would you do to generate the $5.6 million you are anticipating in savings?" he asked. "It's just really a difficult thing to take a school away because parents and kids love their schools."
Metro on 12/31/2016