Everything that has happened in the Little Rock School District, its school board and its employee union in the last few years is complicated. Here is our guide to what’s happened so far.
What is the Little Rock School District?
The Little Rock School District serves about 21,000 students in pre-kindergarten through 12th grades in the state's capital city. The district, which is one of four traditional public school systems in Pulaski County, has four conventional high schools and a high school of innovation, eight middle schools, 27 elementaries, four early childhood education centers and other specialty campuses for alternative, vocational-technical and adult education.
What is the school board and what does it do?
The nine members of the Little Rock School Board – each one elected by voters in the school board election zone in which the board member lives – oversee policies, finances and personnel employment for the district. Typically the board hires the district's superintendent. The current superintendent is Michael Poore.
What happened to the school district and its board in 2015?
In January 2015, the Arkansas Board of Education voted 5-4 to take control of the Little Rock School District because six of the 48 schools open at the time were classified as academically distressed as the result of chronically low student achievement on state-required tests.
The locally elected school board was dissolved, and the superintendent was placed under the direction of the state secretary of education. In the subsequent years, Secretary Johnny Key served in place of a school board and as the district decision-maker.
A state-appointed Community Advisory Board served as a liaison between the district and the state. The advisory board held public meetings similar to school board meetings and submitted recommendations on district operations to Key.
What happened to the school district and its board in 2019?
In a series of meetings in October through December 2019, the state Board of Education voted to return the district to the control of a locally elected school board — with limitations. As long as the district is classified as needing Level 5/intensive support in the state's school accountability system, the elected school board in Little Rock will be prohibited from:
•Changing the superintendent.
•Recognizing any employee bargaining agent or altering the selection of the district's personnel policy committee (more on all this below)
•Filing litigation other than “routine contract litigation” against vendors and contractors
What is the Little Rock Education Association and what does it do?
The Little Rock Education Association is a union that for decades represented district teachers — and eventually support staff including bus drivers and school secretaries — in the collective bargaining of employment contracts and working conditions with district administrators. While the district was under state control Key had the final say for the district's negotiating team.
What happened with LREA in 2019?
In October 2019 the state Board of Education directed Key and Little Rock district administrators to no longer recognize the LREA as the bargaining agent for the district’s teachers and staff. Instead, employees were directed to create two personnel policy committees, one for teachers and one for staff.
Personnel policy committees, which were used in all other districts in the state but Little Rock, are made up of employees and administrators — with the majority being employees — who make and respond to proposals regarding employee benefits and working conditions.
School boards are compelled by law to consider committee positions, but school boards are not required to accept proposals or negotiate a resolution to differences, as would happen in collective bargaining.
Why did teachers strike in November 2019?
The contract between LREA and the state board ended Oct. 31, 2019. That contract’s terms prohibited work actions including strikes. When it ended, some teachers went on strike to call for total local control of the district and to protest the end of LREA’s recognition.
On the day of the strike, the district reported that 491 teachers called in sick and another 116 were no shows — a total of 607, or about one-third of the teaching staff.
What’s next for the district?
An election for a nine-member School Board was held in November. Following run-off elections for two of the nine seats on Dec. 1, the board assumed control of the district with the limitations laid out above.
The school board works with the state Board of Education and the community to try to improve educational outcomes at the underperforming schools.
If/when the district is no longer classified as needing Level 5/intensive support in the state's school accountability system, the state board will remove the limitations on the school board’s control.