George "Eric" Thomas, one of two finalists to be superintendent of the Little Rock School District, said Wednesday that his role as a leader is to bring people together to achieve the mission of saving students' lives.
"I think we are in the lifesaving business," Thomas said at a public forum during which he talked about the importance of 'collective impact,' strategic planning, use of data and talent development to accomplish the work of the 21,000-student school system.
"I've spent a lot of time in church, I'm the son of a minister. This is missionary work," he told an audience of about 40 late in the afternoon. He also called teaching "the hardest job on the planet."
Thomas, 53, a native of Savannah who now lives in Atlanta, is an education leadership consultant affiliated with the University of Virginia. He is a former deputy superintendent/chief school turnaround officer for the Georgia Board of Education and, as such, provided guidance to eight school districts in efforts to improve some of that state's lowest achieving schools. He is a former high school social studies teacher, principal and chief innovation officer in the 35,000-student Cincinnati public schools.
Thomas and Jermall Wright, superintendent of the Mississippi Achievement School District that is a combination of the Yazoo City and Humphreys County school systems, are the finalists for the Little Rock job now held by Mike Poore, who will retire at the end of this school year.
Thomas toured district schools, met with parents, students, and business and community leaders, including Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott Jr., before a dinner and interview with School Board members Wednesday night.
Wright had followed a similar schedule earlier this week.
The Little Rock School Board is not expected to meet to discuss the next steps in the search process until early next week.
Organized in his presentation and animated as he strode across the front of the room, Thomas used a short slide presentation and a clip from the Liam Neeson movie "Taken" to highlight his work history and his commitment to drawing on all possible resources to achieve goals.
He passed out business-like cards bearing a QR code that takes a viewer to a 20-page package of information, including a letter to Little Rock district stakeholders and graphs showing downward trends on test score averages and student enrollment in the Little Rock district.
The package also includes Thomas' three-phase entry plan that would start in May and includes meeting with community leaders, reviewing documents, visiting schools, working with staff and ultimately preparing for the opening of school in August.
"Using my history teacher lens ... I believe my background (i.e. history, data) confirms why I am the right choice: I am prepared to lead the district's transformation; I understand the political engagement and the Board leadership needed; and I am committed to ensuring this 5-10 year transformation becomes a model for urban education," he wrote in conclusion to the package.
Thomas told the forum that he doesn't walk around with 20 solutions in his pocket -- although he said he has "a pretty good toolbox" of ideas to benefit the district -- in part as the result of his work as innovation chief in Ohio at a time when there was the infusion of federal Race to the Top money to transform school districts.
Those innovations in Cincinnati included the establishment of a digital academy, a couple of gifted and talented education academies, and adoption of the national New Tech High School model program, he said.
The district revamped its teacher evaluation system to make it more supportive. It also provided space in schools for community partners to provide health care and other wraparound services for students and their families.
The Ohio district was able to increase its enrollment by about 5,000 students in eight years' time, he said, adding later that a school district should do just about anything else besides closing a school. Shutting down a campus carries the potential of driving families to competing schools such as charter schools, he said, causing district enrollment to fall further.
In 2012, Thomas left Cincinnati to be chief support officer for the University of Virginia's Partnership for Leaders in Education program in which he guided superintendents in different parts of the country on ways to make sustainable improvements in their operations.
"In 2017 ... the Rand Corporation identified our approach as the most effective school improvement strategy in the country," Thomas said.
Asked Wednesday how he would address the Little Rock district's test scores, which are below state averages, Thomas said most districts try to budget for and carry out too many initiatives -- oftentimes for no other reason than that is what they have always done. A strategic plan in which stakeholders agree on three or four top objectives avoids shooting in the dark, he said.
He said later that his research for his PhD centered on characteristics of superintendents successful in transforming districts. Those leaders prioritized engagement with their school boards and their community and they spent more time on teacher and principal retention than those in districts that did not change.
Thomas said that pre-school programs are fundamental to student success in kindergarten and first grade, and questioned whether federal covid-19 relief money could be leveraged to jump start expansion of the district's pre-kindergarten initiative.
In response to a question about his view of career and technical education, Thomas said it is important that students complete fifth and sixth grades with the ability to do grade-level work so they can transition into career and college preparation programs in middle and high schools.
In regard to whether campus fights should warrant legal charges, such as assault, Thomas said the bigger conversation must focus on why the fights occur and the measures to take to prevent fights.
"We need strategies to build relationships," he said about students with each other and with adults. He said "restorative practices," an alternative to more traditional student suspensions or other disciplines, "is not a bad concept." But, he said, if it is not implemented correctly -- by involving all the affected teachers, students and administrators, it can create the impression "that anything goes" in a school.
CORRECTION: Liam Neeson starred in the film “Taken.” Neeson’s last name was misspelled in a previous version of this story.