Agency official to retire in June
Annette Barnes, the Arkansas Department of Education's assistant commissioner for public school accountability, will retire from the agency at the end of June.
Barnes, who said she wants to spend time with her family and increase her involvement in an international education project, has been an agency employee for almost 23 years and an educator for a total of 34 years.
With Barnes' announcement, Education Commissioner Johnny Key will have two assistant commissioner positions to fill.
Earlier this spring, Deputy Commissioner Mark Gotcher announced he will leave the department in June to become superintendent of the Russellville School District. Ivy Pfeffer, the assistant commissioner for teacher effectiveness and licensure, has been selected to be the new deputy commissioner, creating an opening in her current job.
Hospital's clinic shifts to Stephens
The Arkansas Children's Hospital health clinic at Little Rock's Franklin Elementary School will be moved to Stephens Elementary School at 3700 W. 18th St., when Franklin is closed as a school at the end of this school year.
The Little Rock School District and Arkansas Children's Hospital have signed a memorandum of understanding that moves the clinic to Stephens in August and expands the services offered by the hospital at the school-based health site.
As the result of funding from the Arkansas Department of Education and support from 12 partners, the school-based health clinic at Stephens will provide primary care services to Stephens pupils, including former Franklin children.
Additionally, pupils who attend Bale and Wakefield schools in the district and are also enrolled in the University of Arkansas at Little Rock's Children International program are eligible for health care services at Stephens. The siblings of students attending those schools are also eligible to receive services.
Children International is planning to provide transportation for the companion schools through its partnership with the Little Rock district.
Pulaski County OKs 11 transfers
The Pulaski County Special School District board has approved 11 legal transfers of students.
The district had received 19 applications for the interdistrict transfers, four of which came from students wanting to transfer into the Pulaski County Special district.
Of the four, three students got a preliminary OK from the Pulaski County Special board to enroll in its schools instead of the Little Rock School District. Little Rock Superintendent Mike Poore will now make a recommendation on those transfers to Education Commissioner Johnny Key, who is acting as that district's board after the state took the district over in 2015.
The other eight got their first approval to move away from the Pulaski County Special district. The school districts receiving those students must also approve the transfers.
The votes on the legal transfers came after Pulaski County Special's School Board in late March claimed an exemption to a state law that allows students living in one school district to enroll in a different district. At the same time, it encouraged families who could not wait a year to enter or exit the district through the state's Public School Choice Act to appeal to the panel, which would consider the appeals on a case-to-base basis.
Ex-Arkansan gets appeals court nod
One of President Donald Trump's nominees for the bench of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is John Bush of Kentucky.
Bush, who grew up in Arkansas, is a 1982 graduate of McClellan High School -- then in the Pulaski County Special School District, now part of the Little Rock School District. He obtained his bachelor's degree from Vanderbilt University in 1986 and he graduated from Harvard Law School in 1989. In that same year, Bush was first admitted to practice law in Arkansas.
He is a partner in the Louisville office of Bingham Greenebaum Doll LLP. "He practices in complex litigation, including antitrust, securities, financial institutions, insurance, intellectual property and product liability disputes," according to the law firm's website.
Bush has served as president of the Federalist Society's Louisville Lawyers Chapter, according to his law firm's website. He was appointed as a member of the advisory committee on rules to the court, where he served from 2012-15. He is a member of the Jefferson County, Ky., Executive Committee of the Republican Party.
Among his most high-profile cases was one in which he was among former President Ronald Reagan's attorneys during the Iran-Contra investigation. Bush also helped represent former Los Angeles Police Sgt. Stacey Koon in his successful sentencing appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court in the Rodney King case.
The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies' website describes itself as "a group of conservatives and libertarians interested in the current state of the legal order."
Information for this article was contributed by Debra Hale-Shelton, Stacy Hawkins and Aziza Musa of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Metro on 05/16/2017