A Little Rock School District committee created last year to give voice to residents in the state-controlled system issued a set of recommendations Thursday dealing with topics such as school-tax increases, reading programs, school-building conditions, charter schools and even the length of recess.
The Civic Advisory Committee's recommendations and an accompanying 44-page report, publicly presented Thursday at Horace Mann Magnet Middle School, are the result of a year's work that included community surveys and small-group discussions at each of five public forums held throughout the city.
The 30-member committee includes representatives from each of the seven school board election zones, representatives of philanthropic organizations, and teachers and students from the six schools in the district that were classified by the state as academically distressed because of chronically low student test scores.
Those academically distressed schools caused the Arkansas Board of Education to take over the district in January 2015, dismiss the elected School Board and establish the Civic Advisory Committee. The committee's recommendations specifically targeting the academic distress will be released within the next few weeks.
Gene Levy, a co-leader of the group's public-engagement subcommittee, told about 100 audience members at Thursday's release event that people repeatedly asked what good would be done by their participation in the forums and whether anybody would pay attention to what they had to say.
"We heard you," Levy said. "We want you to be assured that this 'talk-back' to you tonight is the result of our promise to get back to you. That's the first part," he continued, adding that the full report will be widely distributed by email and other means to the forum participants and to the superintendent and Arkansas Department of Education leaders
"You will know that whatever you said, however unimportant you think it might have been, it's going to be important to them," Levy told the audience that included state Board of Education members Vicki Saviers of Little Rock and Brett Williamson of El Dorado. "We will just have to see what they do with it," he said.
The Civic Advisory Committee's recommendations are organized into three sections -- the largest of which is made up of some 19 recommendations that garnered unanimous agreement. Some of those are:
• Initiate a millage increase, the money from which would be funneled directly to struggling schools.
• No additional cuts to teachers' salaries, benefits or rights.
• Continue to vocally oppose the expansion of charter schools in Pulaski County.
• Publicize written plans for each distressed school and seek public comment.
• Reinstate Reading Recovery, a one-on-one or small-group supplemental program, in elementary and middle schools.
• Reduce standardized testing at all levels.
• Increase recess time by at least 15 minutes across the district.
• Ensure commensurate facilities and amenities at all schools, including a gym and indoor recess space, library, art studio, adequate restrooms, music room and school garden.
• Hold public hearings about school closings and consolidations before decisions are made.
Other recommendations called for increasing "wraparound" student services such as free school meals and health services, smaller teacher-to-pupil ratios, and a refined system of identifying students who do and don't need help with learning English.
Another section is described as being "more questions than suggestions" and asks that information on selected issues be provided "in the interest of transparency and data-driven decisions."
Requested are comprehensive written plans for each academically distressed school, minutes and recommendations of a budget committee for the district, the criteria that will be used to close or consolidate district schools and the roles that state Education Department leaders have played in the school system in the aftermath of the state takeover.
The third set of topics are those in which there was disagreement among the committee members and the district patrons. Those dealt with the possibility of altering school attendance-zone boundary lines, approaches to student discipline, the reliance on neighborhood schools, extending the length of the school day and year and the role of career and technical education programs.
The content of the actual 44-page report includes information on the formation of the Civic Advisory Committee, its members and how it developed the report. Much of the report recaps and summarizes the views expressed in the small-group discussions at each of the forums. Those views are organized into five categories: barriers and keys to quality education, student realities and life in schools, district infrastructure, teachers and quality instruction and community engagement in education.
Some of the "key findings" in those different categories included "The lack of clarity, transparency and stability in the district is causing families to move their children to other educational institutions," and "Participants pointed out that charter schools perform no better than traditional schools by the numbers, but the perception that charters are superior persists."
"Not one recorded comment was in favor of the current testing regime," was another of the committee's findings. Most teachers at the forums expressed "a noted decrease in support," the committee reported, adding that "many teachers are feeling stressed, drained and hopeless," the report also said.
And "Perspectives on Teach For America were negative across the board," the committee report observed about a program that will be used next school year in Little Rock that places new college graduates in fields other than education into classrooms for a two-year period.
The committee also observed in its report that "there was a sense that the business community was responsible for the state takeover and thus should be sponsoring schools in more tangible ways at all levels, not just supporting elementary schools."
The condition of school buildings was a topic thread throughout the report and the recommendations.
"Many comments centered on outrage over stark disparities between newer and older school buildings," the report said about the forums. "Putting money into new schools is upsetting to families whose children attend school in older buildings that are not being adequately or safely maintained," was another observation. And still another finding was that "The majority of forum participants were opposed to any school closings."
The committee's facilities subcommittee led by Marq Golden and Kathy Webb, attached as Appendix B to the full report, concludes that the school district cannot continue to support 48 campuses and must "carefully" adjust to its projected population.
"We recognize that most of the Little Rock Schools are not in a failing status and many facilities are in fair condition," the subcommittee reported. "Therefore we recommend addressing the most immediate concerns first. This should involve facilities in the worst condition and those within the one-mile radius [of another school]."
The subcommittee, which called for community input on final decisions about school buildings, identified nine schools for review: Hamilton Learning Academy; McClellan and Fair high schools; Cloverdale Middle; Booker, Dodd, Wilson, Watson and Geyer Springs elementaries and Woodruff Pre-kindergarten Center.
Greg Adams, co-chairman of the committee, said the schools were identified for different reasons, including the condition of the buildings, their proximity to other campuses, or for capacity reasons.
Joy Springer, a former Little Rock School Board member and an advisory committee member, submitted her observations on facilities, arguing that the capacity of a school and its proximity to other schools should not be criteria for closing or consolidating a campus.
Metro on 05/20/2016