Arkansas Education Secretary Johnny Key, who acts in lieu of an elected school board in the state-controlled Little Rock School District, said his staff has kept him -- in his absence -- informed about recent forums on the future of the district.
The public forums have been hosted by Arkansas Board of Education members in locations across the district. Each of the evening sessions has attracted an audience of about 200 people, several of whom have attended more than one night.
A fifth, hourlong public forum to be followed by a state Board of Education work session on the Little Rock issue is set for 5:30 p.m. today at the Arch Ford Education Building, 4 Capitol Mall. The work session and forum are open to the public and will be streamed live from the Division of Elementary and Secondary Education's website.
The website is: http://bit.ly/Watch_Meeting.
The tone at the earlier public forums has ranged from spirited to contentious and confrontational as the majority of speakers have called for a return of the Little Rock district to the management of a locally elected school board.
Some of the speakers questioned why Key, who is the ultimate decision-maker for the school district in policy, employee-hiring and budgeting, was not on hand.
"The State Board's focus of these meetings has been to receive input regarding the future of LRSD," Key said at week's end in response to emailed questions about his whereabouts.
"While tackling the new responsibilities of the office of secretary, I asked division leadership to keep me informed regarding the feedback from the meetings." The sessions have "been reflective of the viewpoints expressed throughout the period of state intervention" in the district, he said.
He added: "I look forward to the feedback process continuing on Tuesday [today], and to assisting the State Board as it determines the next steps for the district."
In addition to parents, teachers, elected officials, former board members and community activists, the audiences included top-level staff members from the state's Division of Elementary and Secondary Education. Deputy Commissioner Ivy Pfeffer, Superintendent of Coordinated Support Services Mike Hernandez, and Chief of Staff Gina Windle attended one or more sessions, as did Assistant Commissioners Greg Rogers and Stacy Smith, Legal Counsel Lori Freno, and Communications Director Kimberly Mundell.
As part of Gov. Asa Hutchinson's reorganization of state government agencies earlier this year, Key -- who has been the state's education commissioner and head of the Department of Education for kindergarten-through-12th-grade public instruction since 2015 -- has become the state's education secretary. He leads not only the newly named Elementary and Secondary Education Division but also the Division of Higher Education, Division of Career and Technical Education, the Arkansas State Library and the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commission.
Mundell, spokesman for the Elementary and Secondary Education Division, had said earlier Friday that Key "has been focusing on the additional duties of Cabinet secretary, including visiting higher-education institutions around the state."
Education Board Chairman Diane Zook of Melbourne and Little Rock said she knew for a fact that Key and Hutchinson were at an economic development event at the time of one of the sessions this past week.
"We did not ask him not to come," Zook said in response to questions about Key's absences. "We were told that he would not be coming," she said.
Today's session will be divided into two parts. There will be an hourlong public forum starting at 5:30 p.m.
The Education Board will then take a break and go into a work session to discuss the issue among themselves, Zook said. Both parts of the session will be open to the public.
"There will not be any votes taken and there won't be any recommendations made," Zook said about today's meeting. "It will be simply listening to a compilation of the things that have been put forth and [ Elementary and Secondary Education Division] legal [staff] talking to us about what we can or cannot do legally."
The forums and the board workshop all come in advance of the January expiration of the Little Rock district's five-year deadline to correct its student-achievement deficiencies.
Chronically low test scores at six of 48 schools in early 2015 led the state board to vote to assume control of the Little Rock school system by dismissing the locally elected seven-member School Board and placing the superintendent under the supervision of the Arkansas education commissioner.
Current state law and rules call for a district under state control to either meet state-set exit 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 the event the district does not meet all of the exit criteria.
The 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.
Preliminary results of the 2019 ACT Aspire exams were released earlier this summer. But it will be as late as Oct. 15 before the calculations on year-to-year achievement growth and the application of A to F letter grades to schools are completed and a determination about meeting the exit criteria is done.
"We won't be making any decisions or taking any votes prior to that," Zook said about the October release of information.
The 2019 ACT Aspire results for the Little Rock School District showed that just about one out of three students scored at the desired "ready" or better levels.
In the Little Rock district, 34.19% test-takers scored at the "ready" or better levels on the English/language arts sections of the test -- which includes reading and writing. That compares with 32.62 percent who achieved at ready or better levels in 2018.
In math, 35.78% of Little Rock test-takers in grades three through 10 scored at ready or better this past spring, up slightly from 35.71% in 2018.
In addition to the public forums, which have been video-recorded, the Education Board has set up an email address and surveys as other means of gathering ideas and gauging public opinion.
The link to the Education Board's online survey is:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/BDH7MX9
The email address is:
ade.lrsdfeedback@arkansas.gov
"We are pleased that people who didn't get a chance or didn't feel comfortable speaking at the community forums are calling or stopping us and giving us notes," Zook said. "So we are getting what we had hoped to get which are suggestions in case we don't go back immediately to a locally elected board."
A Section on 09/03/2019