The Little Rock School Board on Wednesday selected four applicants to interview for the position of superintendent out of a slate of five recommended by consultants.
The three men and one woman -- based in Kansas City, Mo.; Chicago; Charlottesville, Va.; and Yazoo City, Miss.-- will be invited to meet with the board in late March after next week's spring break vacation.
The School Board is seeking a replacement for Little Rock Superintendent Mike Poore, 60, who announced in December that he will retire from his $270,000-a-year job at the end of June.
He has been the district's chief executive for nearly six years.
The applicants selected for interviews are:
• Lloyd D. Jackson, who 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, who 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 Ph.D. from Capella University.
• George "Eric" Thomas, who was most recently deputy superintendent and 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, who since May 2019 has been the superintendent of the Mississippi Achievement District, which is a function of the Mississippi Department of Education and for which he oversees improvement strategies in the 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 he 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.
Earlier Wednesday evening, representatives of BWP & Associates of Libertyville, Ill. -- the search firm hired to facilitate the selection process -- recommended a slate of five educators for interviews.
Those five recommended candidates were the four selected by the School Board plus David Dude, pronounced "duty."
Dude most recently was superintendent of the 6,000-student Decatur City, Ga., school district in Decatur, Ga., where he worked from November 2015 until June when he and the district mutually agreed to his leaving the district, "allowing him to address some immediate family business," according to consultant Percy Mack.
After receiving the recommendations, School Board members went into a closed, executive session for about 1 1/2 hours to discuss the recommendations and identify who they would interview.
The four selected for the interviews come out of the pool of 12 people who submitted complete applications to BWP & Associates. An additional four people started the process of becoming candidates, but two of those did not complete the applications and two others withdrew.
The consulting team -- lead by Debra Hill -- said in the public meeting that each of the four male applicants they recommended for consideration had an "issue" in their employment history but the issues had been investigated and successfully resolved. The female candidate , Jones, had received criticism in local news reports but an investigation concluded that the matter was "unfounded," Hill said.
All of the four applicants have doctorate degrees.
In presenting the slate of recommended candidates, Hill said each candidate brings something to the table to benefit the district.
She asked board members to be open-minded in their consideration of the candidates and advised them against relying solely on paper documents. She said the consultants not only reviewed documents about the applicants, but also talked with them and talked with others about them, including their references but also people who knew them other than their references.
"There is something to be said for dialogue," Hill said about the steps to be taken.
Hill said the consultants recommended candidates who best matched -- by at least 80% -- the qualifications and characteristics that Little Rock board members, district employees and community members said they wanted in the district's chief executive.
The consulting firm offers a guarantee to help a district in a new search if a recommended candidate is hired and does not work out for a school system.
Board President Greg Adams started the special meeting Wednesday -- the board's first meeting open to in-person attendance by the public in two years -- by calling it a time of excitement. He also said it was a time of anxiety because a lot is riding on the the selection of a chief executive in a district that has a history of frequent turnover of leaders.
"We want to get it right," Adams said, adding there are risks to the process such as settling for a candidate who isn't satisfactory or overlooking a candidate who would be good for the Little Rock district because of a misplaced first impression.
"The biggest risk I think as we go through this is that we won't pull together in the same direction, whatever the direction happens to be," Adams said in a call for an ultimate 9-0 vote of the board for a new leader.
The Little Rock School District released the superintendent applications Monday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request last week from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
March 5 was the deadline for candidates to apply to the search firm.
Poore was superintendent of the Bentonville School District in 2016 when he was appointed by Arkansas Education Secretary Johnny Key to the superintendent's job in what was at the time the state-controlled district.
The district was returned to the operation of a locally elected School Board in late 2020.
In November, Poore's contract was amended by the School Board to give him a $36,000 raise to an annual salary of $270,000.
That contract expires June 30.