Little Rock Central High Principal Nancy Rousseau received a surprise visit Tuesday from Superintendent Mike Poore and a district "Caught Doing Good Award" for her "most amazing" email to her staff last week.
The email was sent in the aftermath of a fight on the Central campus among a small group of students from different campuses and involving an adult with a gun. News and video of the early morning brawl were widely distributed.
Poore began last school year to personally deliver congratulations on a weekly basis to district employees found to be doing something extraordinary. Rousseau, starting her 20th year as principal at Central, is the first principal to be given the award, the presentation of which is broadcast on the district's Facebook Live social media account.
Rousseau had sent an email to "Colleagues" in which she said that it was hard to get up the day after the fight but "we all have to face the fact that so many of our kids are in pain."
Students have been without structure, food, emotional support and academic growth as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, Rousseau wrote.
"They have had too much social media and not enough positive social interaction. They do not know how to deal with conflict."
She urged staff members to refer students they identify as needing social and emotional support to school counselors and administrators for help in bringing normalcy to their lives.
Poore told Rousseau that the email, which has been circulating on social media in recent days, had touched him as being a message applicable to Central but also one that is needed across the state and nation.
"You were sharing with your community how much kids need us right now," Poore said.
Rousseau told Poore that she is seeing children at Central making choices different than in the past and that it is obvious to her that it is all connected to what students have been through the past 1½ years of the pandemic that kept many students away from school and away from one another.
She said kids are scared, angry and in pain.
"We need to do more to try to reach out," she said. "We need intervention to help them turnaround."
In the same vein, over the past weekend, Poore told School Board members that the district has been challenged this new school year by student behavior.
"We have had fights in a fashion we have not previously seen," he told the board, adding that the fights and disruptions seem to be triggered from community issues that then spill into the campuses.
"I will also share that another challenge is when parents come to pick up their student who was involved in a situation, they often create another issue on campus," Poore wrote to the board.