The Arkansas Board of Education on Thursday approved the terms for reconstituting the state-controlled Little Rock School District upon the November 2020 election of a local school board.
The reconstitution plan, proposed by Education Board member Chad Pekron of Bryant and approved 8-0, states that as long as the district is classified as a Level 5 district in need of intensive support, the elected school board will be prohibited from doing the following without state board approval:
- Changing the superintendent
- Recognizing any employee bargaining agent or altering the selection of the district's personnel policy committee
- Instigating litigation other than routine contract litigation against vendors and contractors.
At the same eight hour meeting, the Education Board also voted to require the reconstitution of the Hall High School staff and the renaming Pinnacle View High School of Innovation — which now consists of a ninth grade with 65 students — to West High School of Innovation with its own principal.
Before the votes setting the terms for reconstituting the the 23,000 student capital city system, Arkansas Education Secretary Johnny Key announced his approval of several changes in school programs and attendance zone boundary lines to go into effect for the upcoming 2020-21 school year.
Those include establishing Hall High as a districtwide magnet school without an attendance zone but with a focus on science, technology, engineering, art and math or STEAM subjects — including medical professions and computer science. He also announced approval for establishing a magnet program within the new Southwest High and limiting the development of the Pinnacle View High School of Innovation to one grade per year until it is a ninth-through-12th grade school for 400 students.
Key, who acts in place of the school board in the state-controlled system and has the authority to make decisions on district personnel, policies and finances, also approved a district plan to converst Rockefeller Elementary into a pre-school center and assign Rockefeller's kindergarten through fifth graders to Washington Elementary.
Key said he is putting a pause or a delay for one year a proposal made by Little Rock Superintendent Mike Poore to convert what is now J.A. Fair High School into a kindergarten-through-eighth grade school. That plan envisions the closing of Henderson Middle, and Romine and David O. Dodd elementaries.
Read Friday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for the full story.