The Little Rock School District's Community Advisory Board on Thursday voted to recommend a school board election zone plan to Arkansas Education Secretary Johnny Key that is built around existing election precincts.
The recommended nine-zone plan was one of three zone-plan options developed at Key's request last year. That was done in preparation for a Nov. 3, election of a school board for the district that is operating under state control and has been without a locally elected school board since January 2015.
Advisory board members selected an election zone plan at a meeting in which it also voted to recommend to Key:
• The hiring of SSC Custodial Services for the district's new Southwest High School,
• A 2020-21 school year calendar,
• A plan for contracting with the national Graduation Alliance organization to aid the district in improving student graduation rates.
Key acts in place of a school board in the state-directed school district and makes final decisions on policies, staffing and finances.
[Election zone map not showing up above? Click here to see it » arkansasonline.com/221electionzone/]
The three election zone plans -- each designed by the Arkansas Geographical Information Systems agency -- have been posted on the district's website for several weeks, were the subject of a public forum and an anonymous public survey that drew more than 200 respondents and were widely publicized to district parents, neighborhood associations and others.
In addition to the advisory board's pick of the proposal that clusters election precincts together to form the nine zones, another of the proposals was designed around clusters of elementary school attendance zones and the third option created zones of substantially equal populations -- known as the "low variance" option.
Jeff Wood, chairman of the advisory board, said Thursday night that he preferred the plan built around existing election zone precincts, saying it had "very clean lines and in my opinion it is less open to attacks of gerrymandering."
The zone populations in the election precinct plan range from 19,909 to 20,692. Five of the nine zones have a majority black population and four zones have a majority white population. There is one zone that has a 22.8 percent Hispanic population, with all other zones having a Hispanic population of between 2.11 and 10.4 percent.
Advisory board members seemed to generally agree that there was little public support for the low-variance plan.
Board member Melanie Fox called the low-variance plan "a no-go" based on public reaction.
In contrast, Fox noted that there has been more support in the public for the option that clustered elementary school zones together to form election zones.
However, Shelby Johnson, the state Geographic Information Services officer, said last week and again Thursday that he believed the title for the plan was confusing and attracted support because some people incorrectly understood it to affect student assignments to schools.
Ali Noland, a district parent, urged the advisory board against selecting the elementary school plan, saying that had the potential to hinder the redrawing of attendance zones for schools if school board members believed their election zones and their pool of voter support would be affected.
Wood agreed with Noland, saying that school board members should be a level removed from considering themselves to represent individual schools. School board members represent the interests all the individuals in their zones regardless of whether zone residents are engaged in public schools, he said
"I think separating one level from a direct school relationship fosters better governance on a board," he said.
Community Advisory Board member Michael Mason, who made the motion to approve the election precinct plan, noted that the election zone plan ultimately approved by Key will have to be revised in 2021 or 2022, based on the results of the 2020 U.S. Census.
Mason, Fox and Wood voted for the election precinct plan. Board member LaShannon Spencer was present but did not vote and did not explain that. At an earlier advisory board meeting, Spencer had questioned the state and advisory board's practice of obtaining community feedback and then selecting something different.
If the proposal is approved by Key, the Little Rock district will be the only district in the state with a nine-member board.
Previously, the Little Rock district had a seven-member school board elected from seven, single-member election zones.
Also Thursday, the advisory board agreed to recommend to Key a calendar for next school year that calls for classes to begin Aug. 13 and end May 27, 2021. The winter vacation would be Dec. 23 through Jan. 5 for students. Spring break would be March 22-26. There would be two professional development days, Nov. 5 and 6, in which students would not attend classes.
The advisory board is recommending to Key that SSC Custodial Services be hired to provide janitorial work at Southwest at an annual cost of $667,851 plus one-time startup costs.
Teresa Knapp Gordon, president of the Little Rock Education Association that includes district-employed custodians in its membership, objected to the plan, noting that the district is hiring an outside company at the same time it is directing staff at schools that are being closed to find jobs elsewhere in the district. She also noted that the district's difficulty in retaining custodians is because of a lack of raises.
Kelsey Bailey, the district's chief financial officer, said that many of the district's support staff are benefiting from a state law that has raised the minimum wage from $9.25 an hour to $10 an hour and that will increase to $11 an hour next year.
Metro on 02/21/2020