Arkansas Education Commissioner Johnny Key on Thursday approved Little Rock School District budget cuts that will close down three of the district's schools and repurpose a fourth in the 2017-18 school year as a way to cut about $4 million in expenses.
Key, who acts as the school board for the state-controlled 24,000-student Little Rock district, read a lengthy statement about his reasons for supporting the contested school closures, his words coming shortly after 5:30 p.m. at a meeting of the Arkansas Board of Education.
Franklin Elementary, Woodruff Early Childhood Center, and W.D. "Bill" Hamilton Learning Academy will be closed, and Wilson Elementary will become home to Hamilton's alternative-education program for secondary-school students who are not successful in their regular schools.
"Spending reductions are absolutely necessary to give LRSD the best chance of success in the years to come, and, yes, those reductions must involve closing underutilized facilities," Key said. "Despite the highly charged and emotional atmosphere surrounding these issues, the urgency requires action that is immediate and certain. Delaying these decisions would be irresponsible. I have therefore approved the recommendations submitted by Superintendent [Mike] Poore."
Poore recommended closing the schools, which have a current enrollment of about 800, as part of a plan to cut about $11 million in costs for next school year in the district, which has about 24,000 students and a budget of more than $300 million.
The 2017-18 cuts, combined with budget cuts this year and in past years, are necessary to adjust for the loss of $37.3 million a year in state desegregation aid to the district, Poore has said. That special funding is to end after the 2017-18 school year as the result of a January 2014 settlement agreement in a 34-year-old Pulaski County school desegregation lawsuit.
The Pulaski County Special and North Little Rock school districts also are facing the loss of state desegregation aid and resulting cuts to their budgets.
Poore sent the budget proposals, which also include streamlining middle and high school staffing and cutting school bus transportation costs, to Key in late January. He held public forums in each of the district's seven school board election zones last fall, and additional forums at Wilson and Franklin last month. After the fall forums, Poore removed the Carver Magnet Elementary School as a candidate for school closure. Parents and staff members from the school attended most of the forums in significant numbers to object to that plan.
According to the plan, the Woodruff pre-kindergarten seats will be divided between Carver and Martin Luther King elementary schools. Woodruff has an enrollment of about 150 3- and 4-year-olds.
Franklin Elementary pupils, of which there are currently 269, will be reassigned to Stephens Elementary School.
The Wilson pupils, of which there are 316, will be reassigned to Western Hills, Romine, Brady and Bale elementaries.
The Save Our Schools community coalition, which has worked in opposition to the school closures, has scheduled a 12:30 p.m. news conference today at Franklin Elementary to respond to Key's decision.
Earlier Thursday, Acadia Roher, a district resident who has been participating in the Save Our Schools grass-roots organization's efforts, told the state Education Board that the superintendent's community engagement efforts were "textbook cases of manipulation and placation thinly disguised as community involvement."
She called the "frustration and outrage" shown by parents and others at the Franklin and Wilson forums "an outpouring of grief and anger" from areas of the city that have been marginalized and ignored." She also said the affected schools are "beloved community centers and provide loving families" for some students.
Thursday night, Roher said in response to Key's approval of the closures that she and the Save Our Schools coalition "reject the statement that school closures are a necessary part of budget reductions.
"Many people begged for ways to assist in finding legitimate alternatives, but Superintendent Poore refused to provide the information needed to make educated proposals, and rejected proposals that were made, providing no explanation of why they would not be viable," Roher said.
Jeff Wood, chairman of the Little Rock district's state-appointed Community Advisory Board, said the decision-makers made thoughtful and responsible choices in what he said was a very open and sensitive process that included making adjustments to the original proposal.
"When you're in the third and fourth year of budget cuts and you have to get to over $35 million, the last $11 million aren't easy," Wood said. "It's been a long process but thoughtful, and the community has been engaged in the process," he said.
Maria Chavarria-Garcia, also a member of the Community Advisory Board, said that the school closings are imminent.
"Talking from the Latino community, the school closing is not a big issue for us because for our families, they can move from one school to another," she said.
State Sen. Joyce Elliott, D-Little Rock, who as part of the Save Our Schools coalition, has opposed the school closures, including Franklin in her own neighborhood. She met with Key last week about the proposed cuts.
"I feel as if he heard us, but I certainly feel he didn't listen with any degree of empathy," she said. "I think this decision is just rife with the irony of this is Black History Month and this is a neighborhood that has struggled to be all that it used to be in so many ways with a diverse population."
Elliott said that the cuts will not help the district in its plan to ask voters later this year to approve a tax extension of 12.4 mills to help pay for a new high school and repairs to other campuses.
"Just imagine that: 'We'll close your schools. You don't have elected representation. And now, what we'd really like to do is tax you.' Can you really imagine putting that sequence of events in order and thinking the response is going to be positive? It is taxation without representation," she said.
In his statement, Key said he had reviewed all the documents from the district about the cuts, as well as watched videos of the news conference and public meetings. He noted the demand by the Save Our Schools coalition for a community-impact study regarding the closures. He said such a study would be informative but it is something that could have been done earlier and it would be better if it evaluated school-building use through the entire district, including areas of growing population, as well as declining student population.
Key also said that the outcry against school closures and the fears about loss of community are reminiscent of school and school district closures and consolidations that occurred throughout the state in the early 2000s, the result of the Lake View school funding lawsuit in the Arkansas Supreme Court.
He noted that the Little Rock district was taken over by the state because six of its schools were labeled as academically distressed for chronically low achievement, but his role as the district's school board makes him responsible for all aspects of the district's operation.
"As focused as I must be on working with the LRSD and Education Department teams to address the academic issues, I am equally responsible for the budgetary component of the district's operations. And these budgetary decisions must be made now," he said.
Key said he has directed Poore to take steps "to solicit proposals from the community regarding the repurposing of Woodruff Early Childhood Center and Franklin Elementary School, that the submitted proposals be evaluated for their impact on the overall viability of LRSD, and that no proposal shall be adopted that would pose a risk to that viability."
Education Board member Jay Barth of Little Rock asked Key for a timeline for finding a purpose for the vacant schools, saying that empty buildings are damaging psychologically and physically to a neighborhood.
Board member Diane Zook of Melbourne said that history of school closures in other parts of the state show that "children were still educated, and as time passed, adult feelings and loyalties subsided. They did not miss a beat with the children being taken care of with expanded opportunities. This isn't the first time something like this has happened. It will be OK over time."
A Section on 02/10/2017