Mayor picked for community panel
The Arkansas Board of Education last week approved the appointment of Mike Kemp to the Community Advisory Board for the Pulaski County Special School District to represent that district's election Zone 1.
Kemp, the mayor of Shannon Hills, is an unopposed candidate for election on Nov. 8 to the all-new school board for the 12,000-student district.
Kemp replaces Fatima Garcia, who has resigned from the advisory board.
The advisory board, which meets at 6 p.m. Tuesday for its regular monthly meeting, advises Arkansas Education Commissioner Johnny Key about policy changes and personnel and student discipline matters in the district, which is operating under state control for fiscal distress.
The Arkansas Board of Education voted earlier this year to return the district to the control of a school board once that board is elected in November and trained.
U.S. schools chief to visit NLR center
U.S. Secretary of Education John B. King Jr. will visit Pike View Early Childhood Center in the North Little Rock School District on Thursday morning as part of the federal agency's annual Back-to-School Bus Tour.
The tour, highlighting education initiatives during the administration of President Barack Obama, stops in Washington, D.C., Virginia, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, in addition to Arkansas.
Pike View is a former elementary school that was remodeled as part of a districtwide capital improvement program. The center serves more than 635 pre-kindergarten children this year.
The agenda for the secretary's visit includes visiting the Pike View classrooms and participating with his staff and others in a roundtable discussion about education issues.
King was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in March. He previously was principal senior advisor in the agency and, as such, oversaw all pre-kindergarten through 12th-grade education policies, programs and initiatives, according to information on the federal agency's website.
King is also a former commissioner of education for New York.
Meeting set over desegregation suit
U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. has scheduled a status conference Thursday in the long-running Pulaski County federal school desegregation lawsuit.
Topics to be addressed at the quarterly conference include the July 1 detachment of the Jacksonville/North Pulaski School District from the Pulaski County Special School District, staffing in the two districts, school facilities in the two districts, and the methods the two districts will use to pay the court's expert, Margie Powell.
The federal court continues to monitor the districts for their compliance with the Pulaski County Special district's desegregation Plan 2000 and related court orders.
The two districts have yet to attain unitary status and release from court supervision in the areas of school buildings, student discipline, staffing, student achievement and their own monitoring of their desegregation obligations.
Metro on 09/12/2016