Frustration, anger, shouting and chanting started early at Monday's public meeting hosted by the Arkansas Board of Education about the future of the state-controlled Little Rock School District.
More than 200 people -- parents, students, educators, business people, community activists, and past and present elected officials -- attended the session at the Little Rock district's Dr. Don Roberts Elementary School on LaMarche Drive at Cantrell Road.
Accusations of racism and of "taxation without representation," along with shouts of "no confidence" and calls for state Education Board members to resign started shortly after Education Board Chairman Diane Zook of Melbourne and Little Rock took the stage to introduce a meeting format that was changed from that of a general assembly style session last week.
"Let people speak!" and "No justice, no peace," some audience members chanted as they waved signs calling for a unified Little Rock district at different points during the rowdy 1½ hour session -- during which two Little Rock police officers and school district security officers watched from the sidelines.
Monday's event was the second in a series of sessions being held throughout the district by the Arkansas Education Board to solicit ideas from members of the public on the future of the Little Rock School District.
A third forum will be at 6:30 p.m. tonight at Saint Mark Baptist Church, 5722 W. 12th St.
And a fourth public event was announced Monday for 6:30-8 p.m. Thursday at Longley Baptist Church, Family Life Center, 9900 Geyer Springs Road.
The four community meetings will be followed with a fifth public forum at 5:30 p.m. Sept. 3 at the Arkansas Department of Education's auditorium at 4 Capitol Mall.
Additionally, the state board and the state Division of Elementary and Secondary Education have set up an online survey and an email address as a way to collect comments and viewpoints from the public. That survey is at https://bit.ly/2U0xike.
The community meetings and survey come in advance of the January 2020 expiration of the Little Rock district's five-year deadline as a system under state authority to correct its student-achievement deficiencies.
Chronically low test scores at six schools led the state Education Board in early 2015 to assume control of the Little Rock school system by dismissing the locally elected School Board and placing the superintendent under the supervision of the Arkansas education commissioner.
Current state law and rules for carrying out that law call for a district under state control to either meet state-set criteria for regaining a locally elected school board or face "consolidation" or "annexation" to one or more other districts, or be "reconstituted."
Reconstituted is not defined in state law, prompting state Education Board leaders to ask for ideas from the public on how the Capital City system might be addressed in what some say is the likely event the district will not meet all of the exit criteria. That exit criteria rely heavily on the 2019 ACT Aspire test scores in English/language arts and math at the eight schools that received F letter grades last year from the state, as well as on the achievement growth on those tests as compared with the 2018 test results. The district must also demonstrate sound management practices and meet state expectations on instructional programs and strategies.
Zook's plan Monday night was for the audience to break into small groups to generate ideas on how the 23,000-student district might be "reconstituted" if the district does not meet the state-set criteria for regaining local control -- including a locally elected school board -- by the deadline.
"We know you want your local school district back," Zook said, adding that the state board wants all Arkansas school districts to be managed by local boards.
"What we want from you," she told the crowd, "is if that doesn't happen or can't happen, then what would be your suggestions for a reconstituted district?" she said, saying that the state board is looking for contingency plans.
"We want an open discussion," an audience member called out.
"No, we are not going to do that," another said about the small groups.
"No way. We are here to hear you. You tell us," still another told Zook.
Anika Whitfield, a leader of a grassroots organization that has long been outspoken against the January 2015 takeover of the Little Rock district asked for the state's exit criteria for the district to regain a local school board.
"So you're planning to fail," Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen, a member of the audience , called out to Zook. "This school district is under state control and if we don't go back to local control, that means the [state education] board has failed.
"Let's be honest. Five years ago your board took over this school district and your board has been in control of all the things you are talking about," Griffen said about the exit criteria. "If this school district isn't meeting those things, you ought to resign."
Sen. Linda Chesterfield, D-Little Rock, took the microphone at one point to say that legislation that she helped pass called for exit criteria to be set for state controlled systems, but that wasn't done until early this calendar year for the Little Rock district.
The outcries increased as Education Board members Charisse Dean and Fitz Hill, both of Little Rock, took the stage to recap comments made at last week's forum at Arkansas Baptist College and to pose the questions to be addressed in the small groups.
Hill told the audience that he and Dean were selected to lead the sessions on the Little Rock district because of the efforts they have made during their board tenure to build community engagement in public schools.
"What you say to us, we want to take back to the board," Hill said. "We are going to hear you and we are going to take your information back. We want to say to the board, 'This is what we heard from the community.'"
"If you really want your voice to be heard, then you will allow us to proceed with the meeting and the plans," Dean said.
Dean and Whitfield tried to talk over each other.
"You are not the voice of everyone here," Dean told Whitfield and others who were calling out from the audience. "It's not fair of you to hijack this meeting," she said, which prompted more audience anger and a stalemate as some audience members chanted and milled around the Roberts Elementary cafeteria and session organizers weighed how to proceed.
Eventually those willing to participate in the small group discussions did so at tables around the edges of the school cafeteria. Others gathered around the stage to hear speakers who included Sens. Joyce Elliott and Will Bond, both Democrats of Little Rock.
Bond reported that his table discussed the desire for all Little Rock schools in the district to be returned intact to local control with possible redesigns of the school board election zones to create super zones.
Elliott in her comments objected to those who told her that speaking out at the meeting was not the way to succeed in getting the district returned to local control, as if the district would remain under state control as punishment. She said she and others have been speaking nicely to the Education Board for almost five years to no avail.
Rabbi Barry Block told the crowd that the state's actions against the district -- including the formation of charter schools and assigning the decision-making power to the state's education commissioner -- are racist.
A couple of people who participated in the table discussions shared their ideas with the remaining audience at the end of the session. One participant proposed breaking up the large Little Rock district into several small districts, such as the situation in Jonesboro and Craighead County.
Scott Fitzgerald, a parent, urged that the two competing sides seek common ground and use teachers to facilitate that.
Annexation or consolidation of the Little Rock district to other districts are not considered very viable options by state leaders.
That's in part because the neighboring Pulaski County Special School District is under federal court supervision for its desegregation efforts and, as a result, its boundary lines cannot be changed. The only other neighboring districts are the Bryant School District, which shares a small section of boundary line on the Little Rock district's southwest edge, and the North Little Rock district that is across the Arkansas River.
Metro on 08/27/2019