The Arkansas Board of Education on Monday voted to assume control of the Marianna-based Lee County School District, immediately removing Superintendent Elizabeth Johnson and the district's School Board.
The 8-0 vote followed the Education Board's initial decision Monday to place the Lee County district and Lee County High School on probation for violating state accreditation standards that require maintenance of accurate student records for graduation.
The board overruled the appeal by Johnson and her staff that the 718-student district not be placed on probation.
Deborah Coffman, the state Department of Education assistant commissioner for public school accountability, told the Education Board at the special meeting that the Lee County district violated state standards by failing to maintain accurate, up-to-date transcripts for its students, and that parents and students were not given timely notice of issues affecting students' eligibility for graduation.
As for the high school, Coffman said, students expecting to graduate did not have appropriate guidance to schedule the minimum 22 course credits that are necessary to graduate.
"This is egregious and needs to be resolved immediately," Coffman said about the student transcripts and the need of students in the high school grades -- including seniors -- to make up course work to be on track for graduation.
The last day of school for seniors in the district is May 10, about 45 days away.
"Without immediate intervention, 35 of the 56 seniors will not graduate on time or will graduate with an incomplete or incorrect transcript," Coffman said.
She described the need to correct student records and ensure that affected students are enrolled in online credit recovery courses, concurrent college credit courses, and summer school courses. That's all on top of the classes students are currently taking at school.
Until Monday, the Lee County School District was not on probation for violating state standards for operating a school or district.
But in 2014, the district was taken over by the state for academic, financial and ultimately accreditation issues, including problems with course coding and class scheduling that hindered students' ability to graduate. It was later returned to local control, but in April 2017, the district was cited for failing to meet the state-required students-to -counselor ratio and for failing to offer and teach the minimum 38 courses required for a high school.
"The Lee County School district over the last five years has had a lot of history with the Education Department and the board," Arkansas Education Commissioner Johnny Key told the Education Board.
"In light of that history and the severity of these violations ... the department recommends reconstitution of the leadership of the school district ... by removing permanently the superintendent and the [School Board]," Key said.
He further recommended that the board delegate the authority to him to appoint a person to be the school district administrator under his supervision. Key said he anticipated making that appointment by early next week.
The district's two campuses have state-issued F letter grades.
In the interim, Mike Hernandez, state superintendent for the office for coordinated support and service, and his team will oversee the district.
Hernandez's job is to assist the state's most academically and financially challenged school systems.
There are now five districts operating under state control. In addition to Lee County, the Little Rock, Dollarway, Earle and Pine Bluff school districts are operating under state-appointed superintendents.
Education Board member Diane Zook of Melbourne made the motion to accept Key's recommendation with the modification that Lee County High School Principal Ernest Simpson Jr. be removed along with the superintendent and School Board. But that motion was withdrawn and board member Ouida Newton's motion to accept Key's recommendation was adopted.
Johnson, the superintendent of the district since March 2018, said after the votes to deny the appeal and to assume control of the district that she and her staff had anticipated the outcome but were disappointed by it.
She called the decision "a total injustice" to an experienced administrative team that came on board last year to help the district and that the current administrators were being penalized for the work of past administrators, including former Superintendent Willie Murdock, the wife of Rep. Reginald Murdock, D-Marianna, and former high school counselor Todd Taylor.
"We came back to help," Johnson said of her employment in the district last year, "and we would never ever violate any standards, knowingly."
"The urgency may be something less than probation," she told the board, adding that the staff members know the students and their parents and are able to provide the students with necessary summer and online courses that can be completed quickly -- without having to meet a minimum number of hours of instruction.
Coffman told the board that district staff members were not entirely forthcoming in the department's meetings with the school system. The Education Department staff, for example, learned a day after meeting with the high school counselor that the counselor had been placed on suspension. Additionally, Coffman said her staff met with district staff members three times, each time to go through the same student transcripts. That showed a lack of progress, she said.
Johnson told the Education Board that she believed that the Education Department staff would be of help to the district when they first arrived Feb. 5 to do an on-site review of the district's compliance with accreditation standards.
She said that in her past administrative positions, the Education Department gave schools or districts sufficient time to correct violations of state standards. She said she was unaware of some of the Education Department's findings about student preparation for graduation until Monday's presentation.
Johnson also noted recent revisions to the state's accreditation standards and that the timeline for reporting on compliance was shortened this school year. Additionally, one or more Lee County district staff members had to learn to use the state-required student record-keeping systems, including the "e-school" system.
In addition to calling on department staff, Hernandez and the Great Rivers Education Cooperative to assist with the Lee County district, Key told the Education Board that the Forward Arkansas nonprofit education support organization has established relationships in Lee County and he will ask it to ramp up those connections to build support in the community to benefit the school system.
"It is not our intention whatsoever to see a situation where Lee County School District, the Lee County Trojans, the essence of Marianna, to go away," Key said. "We've learned a lot in the last few years ... about how to help districts get better. The old methodology did not work well to prepare a long-term foundation for success."
Metro on 03/26/2019