Nearly all of Little Rock School District's 3,900 employees are receiving letters this spring telling them that their current contracts as now written are not being renewed for the coming 2016-17 school year.
Most employees -- including most classroom teachers -- will get new contracts for a shorter work year and an accompanying cut in pay. Teachers, by and large, will work two fewer days next school year, 190 days compared with the current 192. Twelve-month employees, including many central office administrators, will see their work year move from 250 workdays to 245 days.
But the district is also restructuring administrative and support service departments, which will result in fewer positions and eliminated jobs, as well as some realignment in duties.
The employees whose jobs are being eliminated or restructured include some of the district's administrative department leaders, school-based math and literacy specialists, school instructional aides, campus security officers, administrative assistants and financial service employees.
Little Rock Superintendent Baker Kurrus, whose own contract is being allowed by the state to expire June 30, said the contract nonrenewal letters are "no surprise to anybody who understands that the district has to cut more than $37 million" out of its budget. That is being done in anticipation of the district losing that amount in special state desegregation aid after the 2017-18 school year.
"I just hate it," Kurrus said about the impact of the contract changes on employees, adding that the cuts are not a reflection at all on the quality of employees.
"It's very painful, but we have to do better. We don't have any choice about it -- we have to get more efficient," he said.
The personnel changes are projected to generate at least $5.7 million in savings in the district's more than $300 million annual budget, according to district figures, but that amount is preliminary pending some staffing decisions that are not yet finalized.
The largest part of the known savings will result from eliminating most math and literacy instructional facilitator jobs -- $2.9 million. Facilitators typically help classroom teachers with lesson planning and aligning curriculum to education standards. The two-day reduction in the teacher work year will save $1.2 million. The five-day cut to administrators will be about $475,000 and the elimination of elementary school campus security officers will be about $500,000.
Reorganizing the Title I office will save $100,000, eliminating the district's audit office will be a $200,000 savings, while changes in the maintenance and transportation departments will generate $335,000.
No teachers are expected to be left without a job if they want one in the district, Kurrus said, even though eight faculty members at Geyer Springs Elementary -- which is being converted to a prekindergarten center -- and 44 elementary math and literacy facilitators have been told their jobs are being eliminated. Those displaced teachers will have the opportunity to fill vacancies elsewhere in the system.
The departments of curriculum and instruction, special education, personnel, financial services and federal Title I are being reorganized, Kurrus said, resulting in some 48 staff members in those departments -- including top level administrators -- getting contract nonrenewal letters. Names on that list include Robert Robinson and Renee Kovach in the Human Resources department; Chief Academic Officer Veronica Perkins; Director of Title I Leon Adams; Director of Leadership and Teacher Development Lloyd Sain; and internal auditor Sandy Becker.
There are different situations within each department, Kurrus said. For example, some departments currently have co-managers. The intent is to select a single manager for each department and give each newly designated director the ability to assign jobs and organize staff in the way that will prove to be successful for the district.
"It doesn't mean those people won't be back," Kurrus said about the existing administrators and staff members who have been notified of contract nonrenewals. "Some of them probably will.
"I want the whole department to be reorganized so that if I were still I here I would be able to go to the director and say, 'OK, you've got the department and you've got it organized the way you want with the positions created that you think you need, and you place the people in those positions so we can expect success.'"
That approach is preferable, he said, to having a new person come in and say, "'I'm not going to be able to get 'er done because I've inherited a department with positions that are not correctly aligned and I wasn't able to make decisions that were necessary for me to have ownership and responsibility.'"
Kurrus said the district's state-certified employees by law had to be notified by May 1 if their contract terms next year are going to be different. Failure to notify an employee by the deadline of contract changes for the new school years results in the automatic renewal of the old contract with the same terms. Noncertified employees also must be notified of changes in their contract terms for next school year, but the district has until later in the spring to get those notices delivered.
Eleanor Cox, principal at the district's Wilson Elementary School, said she is viewing the loss of two instructional facilitators and a school security officer with some trepidation.
Wilson was a very low-scoring state-classified "priority" school that moved for a while into "exemplary" status. The school has had both a literacy specialist and a math specialist. The math specialist even set up a science laboratory with several kinds of animals as an added resource for pupils. That lab is now packed up and the animals given away.
"It's been well-explained to us by Mr. Kurrus in terms of why we are having to make these cuts," Cox said. "We're having to raise the money and, as a result, we are having to cut corners. Unfortunately, it impacts the schools, the employees and it certainly impacts the children to not have the type of help that they are accustomed to at my school."
The district's plan is to retain a few facilitators, each of whom will be assigned to to rotate through schools, spending as little as one day a week at a school.
"I don't see how that is going to work," Cox said. "They will have kindergarten-through-fifth grade that they accommodate and help. You can't do that in just one day."
Cox, who is retiring after 47 years as as a teacher and principal, said Wilson's next principal will be particularly challenged if he can't have the extra help from the instructional facilitators and from a campus security officer.
"We have one full-time security officer who works throughout the building and on the playground," Cox said. "I could use two."
Kurrus said the district leaders can't get "hard-headed" or "dug in" about the changes.
If changing from four transportation department employees to two "doesn't do it and our level of service isn't what it needs to be, we'll fix it. Same is true with safety and security. If I ever think a kid is not safe and secure or that we haven't done everything we can to be sure that a kid is safe and secure in this world we live in, we are going to fix it, if I were in this chair. I won't be, but if I were, I would."
Arkansas Education Commissioner Johnny Key is replacing Kurrus, an attorney and former School Board member, with Michael Poore, who has been superintendent in Bentonville since 2011. Key appointed Kurrus to the chief executive's job last May at an annual salary of $150,000. Poore, who will be paid $225,000 in each of the next two years, starts July 1.
Kurrus said he will confer with Poore in the coming days and weeks about the administrative personnel changes.
"I regret the disruptions which will be caused by these actions," Kurrus said in a recent letter to employees. "These actions are necessary under the circumstances, but that does not diminish my appreciation for the efforts of all who work for our district and its students."
Metro on 05/11/2016