ROGERS — Curtis Clements, a Rogers High School graduate and the father of two Rogers students, was selected Thursday as the newest member of the Rogers School Board.
Clements said he’ll spend the first several months to a year familiarizing himself with the district’s finances and inner workings.
But he said he also hopes the district can decrease dropout rates and make sure all students are challenged in class every year.
Jennifer Haskins resigned from the Zone 2 position at the end of 2010. The zone includes some of downtown Rogers and surrounding areas.
The position will be up for grabs in the September school board election.
Clements said he plans to run for the position.
Even if he only serves until the September election, he could still play a part in some important decisions.
The district is in the early stages of designing and building an elementary school to be built near Lowell. It is working with an outside company to offer buyouts to teachers and other employees. And it is striving to meet the annual student performance requirement of No Child Left Behind while implementing new standards, called Common Core State Standards.
Clements is a lawyer with Hood & Stacy, P.A. His work includes representing children in the juvenile justice system, which he said gives him a unique perspective on at-risk children.
He said he’d like the district to get more students involved in extracurricular activities, which makes them more likely to stay in school.
The district took in applications earlier this month, then interviewed the four applicants individually.
Before they interviewed with the board, all the applicants said they wanted to get involved with the schools and community.
“We’ve got four excellent candidates,” Joye Kelley, president of the school board, said Thursday afternoon. “Any one of them would be an excellent school board member.”
All four applicants went to Rogers schools, had children in Rogers schools, worked for Rogers schools or some combination.
Kelley said she was glad all the candidates had some kind of connection to the district.
“I think it would be very difficult and a long learning curve if they didn’t have some knowledge of the functioning of our school district,” she said.
Clements was the only applicant who attended Thursday’s meeting.
Kim Mason, another applicant for position, was a physical education teacher for the district for 28 years. She said last week that, if selected, she would try to provide the perspective of teachers to the board.
The other applicants, Jesse Hart and Sherry Smith, said last week that they had not studied the district enough to say what they would want to change or improve.
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Profile
Curtis D. Clements
Age: 42
Residence: Rogers, since age 2
Employment: Lawyer, Hood & Stacy P.A.
Education: Juris doctorate, University of Arkansas; bachelor’s in business, political science, and psychology, Southern Nazarene University
Family: Wife, Sharon; two children
Military experience: None
Political or civic experience: Local nonprofit boards; pro bono cases; board member, Rogers First Church of the Nazarene; chairman, capital campaign for new church
Source: Staff Report