Let's note and give thanks: The state's second-, fourth- and fifth-largest school districts are nowhere close to needing a state takeover.
The Arkansas Board of Education took over the state's biggest district, Little Rock, on Wednesday. This happened because of dismal results in six of that district's 48 schools. The second-largest school district in the state is Springdale. You can't even see the hint of any need for a state takeover in that district.
The state board took over Arkansas' third-largest district in 2011. The Pulaski County Special School District was in financial meltdown. It's still under state control.
The fourth-largest district in the state is Bentonville, which barely edged out Rogers in the state's enrollment figures this year. Fayetteville is not that far behind, either. All of those are about as far from a state takeover as you can get. So are smaller districts around here.
I'm not saying things are perfect here or even good for every student in Northwest Arkansas. I'm certainly not saying things couldn't be better. My point is we don't take a good public school system for granted up here and it shows. Very few people decide against moving to Northwest Arkansas because of the school situation.
I can't help but think the major reason for this difference between central Arkansas and the northwest has to do with the lasting, evil effects of segregation. Little Rock is surrounded by "white flight" districts.
In theory, Pulaski County's schools were integrated before I was born. Then on Wednesday, a Little Rock School Board member said: "This was a great victory for Orval Faubus," the governor who fought integration in 1957.
I don't know why there's not the same level of tension between communities up here. Many of our students don't even speak the same language. All I know is the Latino and Marshallese populations went up. Some of our schools became majority-minority. Yet there was little or no "white flight." People kept moving here and few moved out.
So let's give credit first where it's due the most -- to our public. That includes the students, the people who do the actual integrating. Having Plato for a superintendent and Socrates as president over a school board of philosophers won't save you if half your community leaves or won't support you. Our schools don't fail because our public supports them.
The people who work in our schools deserve the next biggest share of credit. They know their jobs. I had a long interview with Jim Rollins, superintendent in Springdale, quite a while ago. No story came of it but he told me something I've never forgotten. He said there's no big secret to teaching minority kids. It's just like teaching poor kids, for the challenges minorities face are the challenges of the poor.
That's when I remembered this part of the state was the poorest part not so very long ago. Our being well-off is still a new thing. So we have a culture of accepting and teaching the poor with a school system that's not all that rich itself. That culture has survived our recent good fortune. I hope we never lose it.
A big part of that culture consists of knowing how to stretch a dollar. Our public supports education, but doesn't spoil it. Note how easy it is to lose a millage election around here. That's a good thing.
Another factor might be what I'll call the "string of pearls" nature of Northwest Arkansas. We don't have one clearly dominant city. All the big towns' school districts are on roughly equal footing. That's because they all had to keep up with the Joneses, so to speak. Otherwise, one town would get a serious advantage over the others. I'm going to take a little hometown pride here and say that, over our history, having the university helped Fayetteville set a pretty good pace for education up here.
The most important thing to happen in Wednesday's state board meeting wasn't the takeover. That was expected. The most important thing was a committee of the board will study where school district boundaries in all of Pulaski County should be. I don't know if the damage done by the drawing of racial lines can be undone. I strongly suspect, though, that the problems of schools in Pulaski County cannot be solved until the public there has schools they can support like we support ours. Who is in charge matters far less.
Doug Thompson is a political reporter and columnist for the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected].
Commentary on 01/31/2015