Little Rock Education Association and community members filled up the First United Methodist Church on Center Street for a meeting Sunday about Arkansas Education Commissioner Johnny Key’s decision to ask for concessions on teacher employment protections in 22 schools that received D and F ratings.
Such a waiver would make it easier and quicker to fire an employee identified as performing poorly in the affected schools.
The meeting filled the church and people were forced to stand outside because the crowd exceeding the building’s fire code capacity. The media was not allowed to attend or enter the building after the meeting concluded.
Teresa Knapp Gordon, LREA president, contacted an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reporter through the union’s Facebook page and said the group didn’t vote on anything on Sunday because it wasn’t an LREA meeting.
She said a press conference will be held at 7:30 a.m. todayMON at King Elementary School at 905 Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive.
Leron McAdoo told an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reporter that he spoke at the event and even though he was a teacher at the LRSD he mentioned he was speaking as a parent not an educator.
“I spoke to the fact that I believe in education and I believe that educators are the ones who change the world,” McAdoo said. “I learned from this meeting that those that came in as community members were just as disappointed as I was with the decisions made in regards to the Little Rock School District.”
The purpose of the meeting was to “ensure we have the commitment to solidarity from them,” and “to work on a plan of action,” the LREA association previously said in a news release.
Last week, Key rejected a tentative agreement that was reached Oct. 3 by teams representing the school district and the LREA union.
The Little Rock School District has been controlled by the state since 2015 because of low test scores in six schools at that time.
Acting as the school board in the state-controlled school system of 23,368 students and 40 campuses, Key directed LRSD Superintendent Mike Poore to add a provision to any agreement with the union stating support from both parties for a waiver of the Arkansas Teacher Fair Dismissal Act and the Public School Employee Fair Hearing Act in the district’s D- and F-rated schools. Key said he would ask the state Board of Education to approve the waiver next month. He cited insufficient academic progress as the reason.