North Little Rock School Board's seat up for grabs

2 hopefuls vying for Zone 4

FILE — Kids are shown sitting against the glass in the cafeteria between classes at North Little Rock High School in this 2020 file photo. (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/Stephen Swofford)
FILE — Kids are shown sitting against the glass in the cafeteria between classes at North Little Rock High School in this 2020 file photo. (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/Stephen Swofford)

Two candidates are running for the Zone 4 seat on North Little Rock's School Board, and both know what they want to bring to the school district.

Angela Person West, 45, and Lizbeth Huggins, 51, are campaigning for the seat that became open after Taniesha Richardson-Wiley resigned from the board last year.

Huggins, a tutor for students with dyslexia, filled the open position in December after she was the only candidate to apply for the seat. She said she has been an education advocate for students with dyslexia for many years.

"I got involved with advocacy several years ago, and it started with my own child," said Huggins, whose two sons attended magnet school in Little Rock. "I would talk for teachers and students at public, private and charter schools. When the seat came open [on the North Little Rock board], I thought to myself maybe this is how I can make change."

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Huggins said her previous involvement in education separates her from West.

"I have advocated for educators and students for years, and that sometimes made me the adversary of the school district," she said. "I have reached the legislative level before, advocating for teachers and students."

Huggins said her goal is to see dramatic change in reading scores districtwide.

"I think the new literacy program is the start in the right direction," she said. "We need to start getting more kids identified with the characteristics of dyslexia. It's not acceptable to have 30% of kids graduating from high school not knowing how to read."

West, a freelance marketing representative, said she was inspired to run for the Zone 4 seat after seeing how things played out this past year with the board's firing of Superintendent Bobby Acklin and the hiring of his successor, Gregory Pilewski.

"The tackiness of how things happened in the North Little Rock School District this year was too much," West said.

The board voted April 23 to immediately terminate the contract of Acklin, who had served as interim superintendent before becoming the district's full-time leader in July 2018. Comments made by Acklin in an audio file sent to board members by the high school principal were among the issues that led to Acklin's termination, officials said.

School Board member Natalie Wankum filed a harassment report that same month against Tracy Steele, the former School Board president, accusing the mayoral candidate of making threatening remarks after the board meeting, according to a police report.

"I would love for the board to come together under a common goal," West said. "Everything was so negative this past year that everybody in the state could just sit back and watch the soap opera play out. A few bad apples on the district School Board right now have given the district a bad name."

West is a 1993 graduate of Joe T. Robinson High School in the Pulaski County Special School District and later graduated from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, where she earned a degree in interdisciplinary studies.

She said that if elected, she would like to see the implementation of more neighborhood outreach programs within the district.

West said the School Board position is personal for her because her children were products of the school district.

"I want to try to bring back civility and understanding and compassion to the School Board," West said. "Common decency seemed like it was real hard to come by this particular year."

The only other open seat on the School Board is in Zone 6, where Jon "J.T." Zakrzewski is running unopposed.

Zakrzewski, a systems applications and design engineer, is married and a father of two. He will fill the seat vacated by Sandra Campbell, who won the seat from Zakrzewski in 2014.

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