LITTLE ROCK — While serving as a member of the Little Rock School Board in 2004 and in 2005, the board's current president, Katherine Mitchell, received payments totaling $6,400 from the Little Rock School District.
Arkansas Code Annotated 6-13-616, which has its origins in 1935, says, "No person who is elected to a school district board of directors shall be eligible for employment in that same school district."
Little Rock School District policy on board member qualifications, adopted in 1999 and based on the 6-13-616 statute, says that to be eligible for board service, a person cannot be employed by the district.
The Little Rock School District payments, reflected on IRS 1099-Miscellaneous forms for Mitchell, were made for work Mitchell did for the district's professional development office.
Mitchell on Thursday acknowledged that she did work and received payments, but she said she believed the program for nontraditional licensure of teachers was funded with an Arkansas Department of Education grant.
According to documents obtained from the Little Rock School District under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act, Mitchell was paid $1,600 in 2004 and $4,800 in 2005 by the district.
Mitchell, who is an education professor at Philander Smith College in addition to being a School Board member since 1988, was usually paid in increments of $400 a day for providing professional development - or training - in the nontraditional teacher licensure program.
Nontraditional teachers are those who have college degrees in fields other than education but become teachers, often as second careers. To earn their state teacher licenses, nontraditional teachers are typically required to take a series of summer and weekend workshops while holding down regular teaching jobs.
The payments to Mitchell were approved by Marion E. Woods, the Little Rock district's staff development coordinator, according to the documentation.
"I didn't realize I was working for the Little Rock School District," Mitchell said Thursday about the payments. "It was a nontraditional program that came from the state Department of Education. When I was approached to do the classes, Betty Dixon - who works in the education department at Philander [Smith College] - and I agreed to do that, and both of us teamtaught those classes. I did do it, and I was compensated for it."
Mitchell said she believed the program was funded by a grant from the Arkansas Department of Education even though she said she also knew that Woods, a longtime school district employee, was "over the grant" and "I believe [Woods] was the one who recommended me."
Topics taught by Mitchell in 2004 included Human Growth Development, Establishing Learning Tools, Assessments/ Appropriate Evaluation Methods, Reading and Writing Across the Curriculum.
In 2005, Mitchell's work was recorded as teacher, instructor and facilitator. The district's documents do not list the topics.
The classes were taught in the Kendall Building on the campus of Philander Smith College.
Ultimately, the state Department of Education and the Little Rock School District agreed in August 2005 that the school district would give up the training of the approximately 90 nontraditional teacher licensure candidates and that the state agency would assume responsibility for continued training of the candidates at another site.
The Aug. 19, 2005, "Letter of Agreement" was signed by Ken James, Arkansas education commissioner, and Roy Brooks, Little Rock district superintendent. The department said it would reimburse the school district for all stipends, fees, materials and other expenses incurred by the district during the July 2005 twoweek training sessions. It gives no specific dollar amount for the 2005 expenses, and it makes no reference at all to the 2004 sessions.
The letter, provided by the Education Department, also makes no reference to Mitchellor her simultaneous roles as a School Board member and instructor in the host district.
Efforts to get an explanation from Education Department and school district officials about the dissolution of the state and district partnership were not successful Thursday.
Brooks would say only that when he arrived in the district in June 2004 to become superintendent, the arrangement involving Mitchell "was already in place," and "it was worked out before my arrival."
Brooks referred additional questions about the district's partnership in the nontraditional licensure program to Beverly Williams, who previously was the district's director of human resources before becoming the Education Department's assistant commissioner for human resources and licensure in mid-2005.
Williams was in meetings Thursday afternoon and could not be reached for comment.
Scott Smith, an attorney for the Arkansas Department of Education, said there is a general prohibition in the law on payments to School Board members by their school districts, but he did note that there are exceptions permitted in the law. In some of those cases, the exceptions must be approved by the Arkansas' education commissioner.
Arkansas statutes 6-24-101 through 6-24-120, many of which were enacted in 2001, deal with ethical guidelines and prohibitions, several of which restrict school board members from using their positions to secure privileges, self-deal or knowingly enter into contracts or havean interest in contracts with the educational entity for which they serve.
The chapter on ethics also includes penalties for board member violations. Those penalties include felony charges and, if found guilty, the person could be ordered to make restitution, be fined up to $10,000, and be forced to give up their board seat.
The Arkansas School Boards Association's School Board Member Code of Ethics states that a school board member should "Refrain from using my board position for personal or partisan gain."
"My immediate reaction to that is I do not think that is probably a good thing to do," Dan Farley, executive director of the Arkansas School Boards Association, said Thursday about a board member working for the school district.
"Without looking at the law, which I don't have here, I would be a little reluctant to say anything definitively. But it seems to me that it would be a conflict of interest," Farley said. "Ethically I just don't think it is the soundest thing to do."
The news of the district payments to Mitchell comes at a time in which Brooks and Mitchell are at absolute loggerheads.
A majority of the School Board, headed by Mitchell, voted 4-3 on May 24 to buy out the remaining two years on Brooks' contract with the district at a price that could exceed $600,000, not counting any legal fees the district may have to pay on Brooks' behalf.
The buyout came instead of a termination hearing that the board majority initially planned to conduct on charges against Brooks that, if proved, could have led to his firing without any further compensation. Brooks is expected to remain on the job until mid-August. A group of citizens has filed suit against the district to stop the buyout, arguing that the payout is an illegal use of taxpayer funds.
Mitchell said Thursday that she was not surprised by the surfacing of the 2004 and 2005 payments.
"I expect anything. I am not surprised at what comes out," she said. "People are searching for stuff, but there is too much real stuff going on. They can search and FOI. That's their right as citizens. They can search. I am not concerned, and I am not ashamed of anything that I've done."
Front Section, Pages 1, 9 on 06/22/2007