​​​​​Callaway, Hatter win runoffs for Little Rock School Board

FILE — Little Rock School District headquarters are shown in this 2019 file photo.
FILE — Little Rock School District headquarters are shown in this 2019 file photo.

Evelyn Hemphill Callaway and Vicki Hatter won election in Tuesday’s runoff elections for seats on a newly established Little Rock School Board.

With all precincts reporting, unofficial results were:

Zone 3

Evelyn Hemphill Callaway 395

Tommy Branch Jr. 196

Zone 6

Vicki Hatter 267

FranSha’ Anderson 187

Candidates in the runoff elections were the top two vote-getters in four-person races in the Nov. 3 election. However, no candidate in either race received more than 50% of the votes cast, which was necessary to avoid a runoff.

Tuesday’s winners — Callaway and Hatter — will join Michael Mason, Sandrekkia Morning, Leigh Ann Wilson, Ali Noland, Norma Johnson, Greg Adams and Jeff Wood — all elected at the Nov. 3 general election — on the school district’s first elected board in nearly six years.

School district leaders plan for the nine new board members to participate in training sessions Friday afternoon and Saturday morning, and hold a first organizational meeting Dec. 17.

The 21,000-student capital city school district has been without an elected board since January 2015 when the state Board of Education voted 5-4 to take control of the district because of academic distress. The takeover included dissolving the then-seven-member elected board and placing the superintendent under state direction.

The state Education Board voted in late 2019 to return the district to local governance after the election of a new board, but there are some restrictions on the board until the district can exit from the Level 5-Intensive Support category of the state’s school district accountability system.

Those restrictions, for example, prohibit the board from recognizing the Little Rock Education Association as a sole contract bargaining agent for the employees or altering the recently established Personnel Policy Committees that serve as advisory organizations on employee-related issues.

The Little Rock Education Association and Arkansas Learns, which describes itself as “the voice of business for excellent education options,” played key, competing roles in the school board campaigns, including the making of financial contributions in the races for Zones 3 and 6.

Arkansas Learns supported Branch and Anderson.

The Little Rock Education Association backed Callaway and Hatter.

Callaway, 69, is a retired, longtime family consumer science teacher in the district, and Hatter, 42, is a business office employee at a fleet management company and a longtime activist for restoring local governance to the district.

Branch, 47, is assistant director of day programs at Friendship Community Care and served for a short time on the School Board in 2012-13. Anderson, 54, is chief executive officer of the Arkansas State Independent Living Council and immediate past president of the Little Rock Parent Teacher Association Council of school PTA presidents.

Upcoming Events