Hodges hired to fill post in Jacksonville
Gregory Hodges, principal at Wooster Elementary School in the Greenbrier School District, is the Jacksonville/North Pulaski School Board's choice for assistant superintendent for support services in the Jacksonville system, starting July 1.
The School Board selected Hodges to replace Bryan Duffie in the job. Duffie will become the superintendent of the Jacksonville/North Pulaski district next summer, after the retirement of the district's current chief executive, Tony Wood.
Hodges has bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Mississippi. He began his career as a special education teacher and coach in the Marion School District. He also worked in the Stuttgart School District before moving into the Greenbrier system.
Board of Education OKs license waivers
The Arkansas Board of Education last week approved for five years a waiver of teacher licensure requirements for 12 school districts that are members of the Southeast Arkansas Education Service Cooperative.
The board action was a renewal of a one-year waiver, granted last year to 13 cooperative-member districts as permitted by Act 1240 of 2015. The act allows traditional school districts to apply for and receive waivers that open-enrollment charter schools receive. For a school district to be eligible for state waivers, at least one student living in the applicant district must be enrolled in an open-enrollment charter school. One district wasn't eligible for renewal.
The 13 cooperative member districts -- including Crossett, Dermott, and Dumas -- that received the teacher licensure waivers for this school year hired a total of 268 new teachers, 58 of them under the Act 1240 waiver. Forty-one of those 58 are now enrolled in programs to acquire their state teacher licenses, Karen Eoff, the cooperative director, told the Education Board.
"The cooperative member districts recruit fully licensed teachers," Eoff said. "The problem is that the demand for fully licensed teachers exceeds the supply in our area."
Stuttgart loses bid for co-op transfer
The Stuttgart School District will remain in the Arkansas River Education Cooperative, the state Board of Education decided last week.
The district asked to join the Beebe-based Wilbur D. Mills Education Service Cooperative, which would result in a change in the boundary lines for the two cooperatives.
Stuttgart Superintendent Nathan Gills told the state Education Board last week that his district would benefit more by being part of the Wilbur Mills organization, as Stuttgart is frequently one of the few actively participating districts in the Arkansas River cooperative's services and events.
The Arkansas River cooperative opposed the requested transfer, saying that the change would result in the cooperative serving fewer than 20,000 students in seven districts in two counties. Cooperatives are supposed to serve at least 20,000 students, in at least 10 districts in at least three counties.
Teacher-shortage projection released
The state Board of Education last week identified the teaching fields in which there are projected shortages of state-licensed teachers for the 2017-18 school year.
The shortage areas are based on supply and demand calculations that are done annually by Department of Education staff members.
The shortage areas are in the fields of art, computer science, family and consumer science, journalism, library/media science, mathematics, music, physical science, social studies, Spanish and special education.
Metro on 02/12/2017