Little Rock School District leader says new changes in place

Little Rock School District Superintendent Baker Kurrus gives a monthly report on the state of the district to the State Board of Education on Thursday, Feb. 11, 2016.
Little Rock School District Superintendent Baker Kurrus gives a monthly report on the state of the district to the State Board of Education on Thursday, Feb. 11, 2016.

A year after voting to take control of the Little Rock School District, the state Board of Education was presented Thursday with a list of reforms by the new superintendent. The panel also heard criticism from charter-school opponents who said the state wasn't putting the needs of the poorest-performing students first.

A series of completed changes presented by Superintendent Baker Kurrus included distributing laptops to every fourth- and fifth-grade student in the 24,000-student district, adjusting the school year to 190 days and reaching an agreement with the teacher's union to buy back sick days for teachers if they announce their intentions to retire.

Kurrus was scheduled to present a monthly progress report required by the district as part of last year's takeover. During a nearly two-hour presentation, the board also heard comments from the president of the Little Rock Education Association, an official from the Department of Education Accountability Office and representatives from the Civic Advisory Council that was set up as part of the takeover.

Facing questions from the members of the state board about the performance of low-income children, Kurrus said "there is no gap; we do better" than other districts.

Representatives from the education association and the advisory council criticized proposals to expand charter schools and and a federal program to bring in recent college graduates to teach in struggling school districts.

Sending high-achieving children to charter schools makes it more difficult for academically distressed schools to improve the performances of all their students, they argued. They also noted the low retention-rates of teachers brought in through the Teach for America program.

"If you allow the expansion of charters, you are undermining the moral imperative you took upon yourselves," to improve the district, association president Cathy Koehler told the board.

The board also hard a report from the new superintendent of the Dollarway School District in Pine Bluff, which was taken over by the state in December.

Superintendent Barbara Warren said that in her first two months in charge of the district, she identified "a lack of systems" as the primary cause of problems at the district.

One of her first steps has been to create a standard operating procedures manual, Warren said, adding she hoped to present results in later progress reports.

See Friday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.

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