The North Little Rock School District invited the Seventh Street Elementary School community to an open interview for two candidates for the school's principal last week.
Deputy Superintendent Torrye Hooper said this was the first time the district has ever hosted an open forum for a principal nominee.
Jessica Rayner of the Dermott School District and Jana Irvin of the Conway School District were given time to recount their experience in education and their vision for Seventh Street, a school that the North Little Rock School District is overhauling because of low test scores. The school will have new leadership, staff and an academic theme starting in the 2023-24 school year.
Rayner previously taught math at Robert F. Morehead Middle School and thesis education at Dermott High School. She has been a licensed building administrator since 2020.
Irvin previously taught seventh grade math in Conway at Courtway Middle School for 12 years prior to becoming a math facilitator. In 2019, she became assistant principal at Ruth Doyle Middle School.
Questions from district leaders included how the reconfiguration of the school to include grades six through eight by 2027 will work, how project-based learning will be integrated into the curriculum and how the principals would support struggling teachers.
Rayner said she would encourage teachers to "be creative" in their lesson plans. One of the potential themes for project-based learning is ASTEAMED, or Animal Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Math, Environmental Science and Design Thinking.
Rayner suggested having a therapy dog on campus, connecting with the Little Rock Zoo and the Memphis Zoo, collaborating with Shorter College, forming a robotics club, having students paint a mural, and putting on a dance recital.
Irvin said the goal is to prepare students for high school and beyond graduation. She noted that the E4 model -- Engage, Experience, Educate and Empower -- will expose information to students so they can "expand their thinking."
The ASTEAMED model, she said, would encompass everything in a big picture. She reminded the community that the school would be the first in the state with a focus on animal and veterinary science if this academic theme is chosen.
The community advisory board has already met once, Irvin said, to discuss meeting with different business partners to bring in services to students.
In regard to supporting teachers, Rayner said she would establish expectations with teachers both ways, host coaching sessions and build on productive relationships.
"That means that you're leading with empathy, compassion, and respect before anything else, and then we'll have the accountability conversations ahead of the game," she said. "Listening to them, some teachers know more than we do -- so actually utilizing their knowledge in the best way and doing what's best for kids, no matter what."
Irvin said school culture plays a key role in the success of a campus and to accomplish that, teachers must back a principal's vision, but principals must support them as well.
Every month, Irvin said she tries to do something special for teachers so they know how much they're appreciated. She hosts monthly Professional Learning Community sessions, builds relationships and models the behavior she wants for her teachers.
Rayner said her approach to student discipline is to build relationships with students, meet their needs, put intervention systems in place, involve parents and keep students out of in-school and out-of-school suspension.
Irvin said her approach to student discipline is to make connections, set school-wide expectations and provide incentives to students for good behavior.
"I want the community, teachers to know that my heart is in the right place for students, that looking at the data and what this campus has been through I want to make a change," she said. "To do that, we need to unite together, be a team, communicate, but building relationships with the students, the staff in the community is going to be key in making that happen and being successful for students.
"So, my heart is there, I want to break the path that we've been on at Seventh Street and make a change and make a difference for the students and their families."
Rayner said she wants to provide a "transformational education" for students at Seventh Street.
"I want their education at high levels to be non-negotiable, and that's going to be my number one goal about the students and making sure that they receive equity in their education."
John McClellan, a member of the E4 community advisory board for the school, said "people have no idea" what goes on with students on a daily basis.
"There's kids that you have to hold their hand the whole time they're around, they're nonverbal. There's all these physical challenges that come in and then all the discipline," he said. "There's a lot of challenges. Our teachers are really presented a lot of challenges. You got to walk the walk."
One of the problems at the school that McClellan noted is a "tremendous" staff shortage. He said students started the year with only seven out of 16 teacher positions.
One of the second grade classes lost their teacher on the second day of the school year and has operated through a substitute, he added.
McClellan's daughter is in fourth grade at Seventh Street and her teacher has missed about 12 weeks of school, he said.
Unfortunately, the superintendent and his board are not aware of the discipline problems teachers deal with every day, he said.
Richard Tatum, a member of the PTA for the school, said he thought Irvin was the favored candidate of the night.
Dorothy Williams, the school board president, stood up after the candidates had left and said she appreciated that Irvin "did all her homework" and knew the history of the area.
"She stood up and she basically endorsed Irvin," Tatum said. "History lessons ain't goin' to do nothing for these kids who've got mental health issues."
Tatum said he is in favor of Rayner because she mentioned mental health in her answers and that's "the trigger" for everything going on at the school.
"She also talked about listening to the parents and meeting the parents' needs, that's your trinity right there," he said. "If you take care of that stuff, all these problems start disappearing. But Jessica, she just sounds so polished and all the data and it sounded like literally she was reading from a script."
Tatum said data means nothing when you walk through the door at Seventh Street.
"I do not feel comfortable with the way this was set up," he added. "I'm kind of iffy on both of them because if you look at their history as administrators, they've only been administrators for a short period of time."
"You've got to replace over half of your staff, pretty much 75% of your staff you got to replace, you got to build rapport with the new people you come in with. You gotta build rapport with parents who are disgruntled after years and years of fighting, and you got to deal with discipline problems every day. How are you going to fix all that?"
These are the questions that should have been asked during the forum, Tatum said, but the small number of community members who showed up were given notecards to write questions on instead of an open mic. Tatum believes the board members "carefully selected" which questions they were going to read.