Sadly, Baker Kurrus did not get to finish fixing a bloated school district. For comparison, take a look at the Clear Creek Independent School District in League City, a town within Houston that has an education village.
Clear Creek has 41,000 students and spends about the same per year as the Little Rock district that has 25,000 students. The organizational chart for LRSD shows a bloated, top-heavy, clumsy structure compared to the well-organized, sleek Clear Creek district. The communications director holds the third-place position on the Little Rock district chart, showing more concern for informing the public than operating the schools.
With only nine positions shown, the Little Rock chart looks modest until you slide down the page. In the next section, you find bulleted department boxes, but no staff. You cannot tell how many people are involved with each box. A good guess would be many titled positions and their accompaniment of underlings.
The website address for Clear Creek is www.ccisd.net, but first, please look at the YouTube video of their education village at tinyurl.com/jlp6smq. Also, please set a tab for the Little Rock School District website (www.lrsd.org) so you can easily make comparisons. Please do a lot of "blipping and clicking" on both websites to get the feel for the districts.
When you study the websites of the two districts, it is sad to see the bland Little Rock pages featuring many words and few children compared to the exciting Texas district with a lot of children and activities. Remember, Little Rock has an almost identical budget, but far fewer students to serve.
The editorial page continues to crow about "the revolutionized Baseline Elementary" though the Democrat-Gazette recently printed a letter from Sharra Hampton pointing out that Baseline was removed from the list for progress before the revolution began.
This writer believes the change at Baseline came because much was expected of the children, and they were treated like family. Baker Kurrus was quoted in the Democrat-Gazette as saying we just need to love on the children. Treating the children well resulted in Baseline being removed from the academic distress list, not any invented revolution.
This writer earned both a master's and doctorate proving that what you think about a person affects how that person thinks about himself or herself. Common sense brings one to the same conclusion as did his eight years of academic work. For example, how did you feel when no one picked you at a dance or to be part of a game? The Amish use shunning as punishment because it is so hurtful. My research and related studies show low expectations produce poor achievement, bad behavior, and can even lower IQ.
How do you think that roughly 20,000 regular Little Rock School District children feel, knowing that thousands of families want to use charter and private schools to avoid being with them? Do you think saying, "We just want the best education for our children" makes it hurt any less?
Much of the bad teen behavior happening in Little Rock results from the community having low expectations for the offenders. Only the few gifted athletes get treated well because of their talent. Please consider the damage done to our children by such a large number of the community rejecting them for so many years. Rejection of minority children has been continuous for well over 60 years, hurting multiple generations.
Imagine children today listening to their grandparents tell about army bayonets and the horrible words hurled at them in 1957 because they wanted to attend white schools. Imagine their feelings as their parents tell them about private schools filling up, despite high tuitions, to avoid integration. And today's children see the push to build charters so selected children can get a supposedly good education while they must accept what is left.
Village schools would unite the community, letting the children know how much we care about them, and end the hurt.
The villages should be built along major transportation corridors, ending the problem of some neighborhoods having good schools and the others not so good. When we create a positive educational environment, we will get positive results.
If Hillary Clinton becomes president, think how she would react to the headline, "In LR, it takes a village." If we continue to use segregation schemes and manage schools the same old way, we will get the same bad results. It is time to do something big and bold.
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Richard Emmel of Little Rock is a retired teacher.
Editorial on 07/29/2016