LITTLE ROCK — The Arkansas Board of Education on Monday voted unanimously to dissolve the Twin Rivers School District, divide up its territory and parcel the area out to six neighboring districts.
The decision - strongly opposed by nearly 30 community members who attended the meeting - marks the first time Arkansas has ever shut down a school district for accreditation violations.
The state board took the unprecedented step after Arkansas Department of Education staff members documented serious academic problems at the north Arkansas district of about 330 students.
The violations included failing to offer enough courses at the high school, allowing educators to teach outside their licensed subject areas and not holding class the required number of days.
The state said the violations, spread over the course of more than two years, were so severe that they put the graduation of three Twin Rivers seniors at risk.
State board member Sam Ledbetter of Little Rock said he hadn’t seen “this magnitude of failure” from any school district since he joined the board two years ago.
“I don’t think anybody on this board is trying to hurt these children or trying to target a district because for some reason we are out to get these folks,” Ledbetter said. “What we are trying to do, all of us, I’m absolutely convinced ... is do what is in the best interest of the kids to further their education.”
The decision drew immediate criticism from parents, who drove about 170 miles to attend the hearing in Little Rock from their homes in Sharp and Randolph counties near the Missouri border.
Families picketed with signs outside the hearing. One sign read “Nuclear Option” and showed a picture of an atomic bomb exploding above the words “Twin Rivers.”
The decision forces the closure of the district’s two schools in Williford and Ravenden Springs.
It means students will now have significantly longer bus rides to get to their new schools, parent Tony Lowe. said. With many routes on gravel, mountainous roads, Lowe said, some students would spend between three and four hours on the bus each day.
Lowe said the state vote was a “dissection” of the Twin Rivers School District family.
“It’s like a science project where you take a certain thing and cut it up into a bunch of pieces and put it over here and over there,” Lowe said. “It’s like Frankenstein’s monster.”
Twin Rivers will remain open through the end of the school year. Its closure will go into effect on July 1.
State Education Commissioner Tom Kimbrell said Twin Rivers’ territory and students will be divided among the neighboring Hillcrest, Pocahontas, Maynard, Sloan-Hendrix, Highland and Mammoth Spring school districts.
Teachers have already been notified that they don’t have jobs in Twin Rivers next school year.
Twin Rivers’ liabilities and assets - including any profit from the sale of the two school buildings - will go to the neighboring districts.
The state aid Twin Rivers currently receives will follow the students to their new districts proportionally.
Kimbrell said the state will also increase the student cap at the nearby Imboden Area Charter School to 150 to accommodate more students from Twin Rivers.
A HISTORY OF PROBLEMS
The state board in February authorized the Education Department to take over the Twin Rivers District, relieve the local School Board of its duties and appoint an interim superintendent, Tommy Arant, who reports to Kimbrell.
At that February meeting, former Superintendent David Gilliland resigned, saying he hoped his decision would ultimately save the school district.
Though he took responsibility for the problems, Gilliland said the geographically isolated nature of the district and having schools in two counties contributed to the district troubles.
The district has been on probation since the 2007-08 school year. State law requires school districts to meet all accreditation standards within two years of being placed on probation or face penalties.
A review of the district’s records in December and January showed its problems had continued into the 2009-10 school year.
The high school was not teaching the 38 core courses required annually, teachers were teaching outside their subject areas without the proper licensure, and the district’s school-year calendar did not list 178 school days as required by law - one school calendar showed 174 days and another showed 177 days.
The district also did not have a professional development plan for its employees.
Education Department attorney Jeremy Lasiter said Twin Rivers had years to correct the problems. Instead of getting better, however, the problems got worse, he said.
“Keep in mind why we have the standards of accreditation in the first place,” Lasiter said. “That is so schoolchildren inWilliford can have the same opportunity for an adequate education as students in Fayetteville, Little Rock, Texarkana, Crossett, West Memphis and Jonesboro.
“And in this case, the students were not getting [it].”
Former Twin Rivers School Board President Charles Tyler said after the hearing that he felt guilty for what had happened to his school district.
But he placed most of the blame for Twin Rivers’ problems on former Superintendent Gilliland.
He said the Gilliland hid the district’s problems from the School Board until the last few months.
“If something was mentioned during the board meeting, the next morning I’d go into his office and I would ask him again face to face,” Tyler said. “He would always say, ‘I’ve got it under control. There’s a couple little issues, but it’ll be taken care of.’”
“Here he is the superintendent. He’s supposed to be in a position to do his job.”
Gilliland did not attend Monday’s meeting or return two calls for comment.
While the state has taken over districts because of financial problems, Twin Rivers is the first to be taken over for failure to meet state accreditation standards.
Districts taken over by the state for troubled finances have generally regained local control after the problems were addressed. One exception was the Eudora School District, which was taken over by the state because of money problems and merged into the Lakeside School District.
LEGAL OBJECTIONS
Lawyers representing Twin Rivers parents argued Monday that the state board lacked the authority to dissolve the school district by virtue of its status as a geographically isolated district.
Little Rock attorney Clay Fendley cited Arkansas Annotated Code 6-20-602(b), which says, “Any isolated school ... shall remain open unless the school board of directors of the resulting or receiving district adopts a motion to close the isolated school.”
According to this law, the defunct Twin Rivers School Board is the only entity that can shutter the schools, Fendley argued in documents filed with the state board.
Lasiter said this statute does not prohibit the state board from closing Twin Rivers.
Lasiter said Arkansas Annotated Code 6-15-207 requires the state board to take action against a school district that fails to meet the standards of accreditation.
If the state board’s decision is appealed in the courts, a judge would read the two statutes together, Lasiter said.
“Courts would not apply the law in a way that would defy common sense,” Lasiter said. “If you were to adopt their reasoning and their reading of the law, it would mean that this board could never, under any circumstance, close an isolated school that failed to meet the standards of accreditation, unless you went back and reconstituted the school board and expected them to close it for you.”
Fendley also argued that closing the district violated Twin Rivers students’ right to an adequate education under the Arkansas Constitution because of the “excessive transportation time” to their new school districts that would result.
In documents filed with the state board, Fendley said the state has failed to adequately fund transportation costs for rural schools like Twin Rivers and that that failure limits the number of bus routes and keeps children on buses too long.
The state provides $286 per pupil in transportation funding, while Twin Rivers spends $775.88 per student on transportation.
Fendley cited a study that contends that excessive time on buses results in sleep deprivation, sporadic meal times and little time for homework and extracurricular activities, which in turn decreases student achievement.
Lasiter said the state board should not consider Fendley’s constitutional arguments. It must follow state law, which says school districts with chronic accreditation problems must be closed. Fendley should take his constitutional arguments to the Legislature or the courts, Lasiter said.
He said Fendley’s constitutional objections related to excessive transportation time were similar to ones he made last year on behalf of parents from rural Fourche Valley in the Two Rivers School District in Yell County.
The state board upheld that local school board’s decision to close the Fourche Valley school last year.
The families filed a lawsuit in Pulaski County Circuit Court asking a judge to force Two Rivers to reopen the school.
Judge Collins Kilgore denied the petition in July, and the school closed.
The families appealed the case to the Arkansas Supreme Court.
The court has agreed to hear oral arguments in the case, which are set for May 27.
Twin Rivers parents said after the hearing Monday that they planned to fight the state board’s decision in court as well.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 05/11/2010