Consultants to the Little Rock School Board early Wednesday evening recommended a slate of five educators to be considered by the board to replace Superintendent Mike Poore, who is retiring later this year.
After receiving the recommendations, School Board members went into a closed executive session to discuss the recommendations and possibly identify who they will interview.
The five recommended candidates are:
• David Dude (pronounced “duty") who most recently was superintendent of the 6,000-student school district in Decatur, Ga., where he worked from November 2015 until June. He was chief operating officer in Iowa’s Iowa City Schools from 2011-2015, and started his career as a math teacher in 1996. His PhD in educational policy and leadership studies is from the University of Iowa.
• Lloyd D. Jackson has been an assistant superintendent of school leadership in the Kansas City, Mo., School District since 2019. He formerly was an educator in the Hot Springs School District from 2005 to 2019, including serving as deputy superintendent from 2017-19 and principal of Hot Springs World Class High School from 2013-17. He started his career in 2003 as a math teacher in the Arkadelphia School District. Jackson has a doctorate in educational leadership from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
• Stephanie N. Jones has worked in the Chicago school district as the chief officer for the Office of Diverse Learner Supports and Services since 2019. She is an Illinois special education educator, having also worked in the South Holland School District, Carver Military Academy High in Chicago and the Air Force Academy Public High School that is part of the Chicago system. Jones has a PhD from Capella University.
• George “Eric” Thomas who was most recently deputy superintendent/chief turnaround officer for the Georgia Department of Education, where he worked from August 2017 to July 2020 when the program ended. From 2012 to 2017, he was chief support officer at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville’s Partnership for Leaders in Education, and before that, worked primarily in the Cincinnati school system, starting in 1994 in different roles that included chief innovation officer from 2010 to 2012. Thomas has a PhD in leadership from the University of Chicago in Concordia, Ill.
• Jermall D. Wright has been since May 2019 the superintendent the Mississippi Achievement District, which is a function of the Mississippi Department of Education and for which he oversees improvement strategies in Yazoo City and Humphreys County school systems. He was previously chief academic and accountability officer in the 23,000-student Birmingham, Ala., school system from 2017-19, and held administrative roles in Philadelphia and Denver. He was a principal in Washington, D.C., and Jacksonville, Fla. Wright has a doctorate in leadership for educational equity from University of Colorado at Denver.
A total of 12 people — 10 men and two women applied for the position of superintendent of the 21,000-student capital city district. Two applicants have ties to Arkansas but are working elsewhere: Jackson, the former deputy superintendent in the Hot Springs School District, and C . Michael Robinson, who was superintendent in Pine Bluff in 2016-18.
Consultants from the BWP & Associates executive search firm presented the board with a slate of applicants they consider to be the most qualified and the best match for the 21,000-student district.
The School Board is expected to interview all or some of the recommended candidates online and in person after next week’s spring break vacation
The role of BWP & Associates of Libertyville, Ill., has been to facilitate the search by posting advertisements and encouraging persons to apply by a March 5 deadline. The consultants were then in charge of vetting the applicants in preparation for making a recommendation to the Little Rock board.