Leaders in the state-controlled Little Rock School District presented student achievement data, touched on plans for cutting staff costs and set an August date for announcing 2017-18 school closings and consolidations during a two-hour session Thursday with the Arkansas Board of Education.
Specifically, the district in the coming weeks and months plans to:
• Offer to buy back employee sick days at $50 a day for up to 100 days from those employees who notify the district by March 1 of their plans to retire at the end of this school year. That will save the district the cost of substitute teachers and allow earlier hiring of replacement staff.
• Reduce the teacher work year by two days in 2016-17, from 192 days to 190 days, at a savings to the district of $1.09 million, and reduce the work year of the district's 12-month employees by five days to save $478,204.
• Announce by Aug. 15, plans for closing smaller and outdated schools, and better fill schools such as Stephens, King and Washington elementaries that are relatively newer and have available space.
Throughout Thursday's session, the proposed expansion of independently operated, public charter schools and the possible effect on the Little Rock district were repeatedly raised.
Three charter school systems operating in Little Rock are asking the state to amend their charters to allow for the opening of five new campuses within the Little Rock School District boundaries -- an increase of nearly 3,000 charter school seats over three years.
Leaders of the charter school systems -- including eSTEM Public Charter Schools, LISA Academy -- said in their applications that the expansions are necessary to relieve waiting lists of thousands of students seeking enrollment in their schools.
Little Rock district leaders -- including state-appointed Little Rock Superintendent Baker Kurrus -- said Thursday that approval of the expanded charter systems will undermine efforts to improve the Little Rock district, in part by attracting high-performing students and leaving a concentration of high-need students in the traditional district with fewer resources to help them.
"My frustration and what keeps me up at night is that I am shooting at a moving target," Kurrus told the Education Board that took control of the Little Rock district in January 2015 because six of 48 schools are classified by the state as academically distressed for chronically low test scores.
The state Education Board has the authority to approve or reject the charter school expansion plans, which will first be reviewed by the state Charter Authorizing Panel at a three-day meeting starting Wednesday.
"If you tell me you are going to have the same set of kids from the same demographic and that won't change, we'll fix that," Kurrus said about the Little Rock district's enrollment, which includes high-poverty, special-education and non-English-speaking students.
"I just have that much confidence in our team. If you tell me that over time that the demographic is going to continue to erode ... we'll do the best we can. We are going to pick it up and run with it. But if our demographic continues to get tougher, we are going to continue to be challenged.
"That's the reality of it," he said and pointed to a 12-year history of charter schools in the district.
Earlier in the meeting, Dionne Jackson and Greg Adams, co-chairmen of the state Education Board-created Citizens Advisory Committee in the Little Rock district, also appealed to the Education Board to not allow the charter schools to expand.
Jackson said the committee's role is to aid in making community-based decisions to move the school district forward. To that end, committee members felt compelled to share thoughts on charter schools and the earlier announced plans to hire Teach For America members to work in Little Rock.
Seven committee members objected to the charter schools because of their financial impact on the district that receives state aid for each student, and because charter schools aren't living up to the original intent to provide innovation to boost achievement among lower-achieving students. Also raised were concerns about segregating student populations.
One committee member didn't object to charter schools, Jackson noted, because of the need for education options in the state-controlled district and the uncertain future of the district.
Adams was president of the Little Rock School Board when it was dismissed as part of the state takeover. He told the board Thursday that he had pleaded for more time for the School Board but that the Education Board decided that the needs of the academically distressed schools and students were too important, and that those needs were a higher priority than local governance.
"I ask you again to keep the priority needs of the academically distressed students in the Little Rock district as the top priority and not compromise that value," Adams said. "Please keep your implicit promise and commitment that you made last year to protect the needs of academically distressed kids because you are the only place they can go. We have no local control and no local governance. If you forsake them, where else can they go."
Cathy Koehler, president of the Little Rock Education Association union for employees, also addressed the Education Board, saying employees in the district are willing to share in the sacrifices necessary to grow the school district and the city.
She pointed out that the teachers' contract went from 94 pages to 10 pages, and the employees are paying more for health insurance because of the need to do what is best for students and the need to cut costs to offset the district's coming loss of $37 million in state desegregation aid, while opening first-class new schools in southwest and west Little Rock.
In response to questions from the board, Koehler said the Education Board accepted "a moral imperative" to make the state-controlled Little Rock district successful and that expansion of the charter schools will undermine that.
"We are on the right path, and we deserve the time to get it done," she said.
Dennis Glasgow, the district's associate superintendent for accountability, described for the Education Board the district's system of creating three-week units of study with pre- and post-tests to determine each student's progress and whether the teachers need to reteach some material.
The common units of study and the tests are developed by the teachers at particular grades or in particular subjects. Glasgow said the system is more universally used in the district this year than in the past and has generated "rich," immediate discussions among teachers about how to address the needs of their students.
Kurrus listed several of the recent tasks and achievements in the district, including the distribution of laptop computers to every fourth- and fifth-grader in the district; the selection of architects for a southwest Little Rock high school and a west Little Rock middle school; and the restructuring of Geyer Springs, Watson and Chicot elementary schools for next school year.
Education Board members did not generally respond to the charter school matter, but Education Board member Vicki Saviers of Little Rock thanked Kurrus, saying she wished she could "hug his neck" for his efforts in the district.
Board member Jay Barth, also of Little Rock, said the information and data presented gave him more confidence about the district. He also said the district's efforts to improve on all fronts, including involvement from the community -- rather than just target the six academically distressed schools -- will produce a more vibrant school system.
Education Board member Susan Chambers of Bella Vista asked Kurrus for a description of what success in the district will look like.
Kurrus said the district will be competitive in attracting students and that the percentages of high-needs students will decrease. The district's current percentage of students who qualify for subsidized school meals exceeds 70 percent where it was about 55 percent in 2004, he said.
High percentages of poor, special-education and limited-English speakers in the school district are an indication of a community that is segregated by race, ability and income, he said.
Kurrus said the district's expansion of pre-kindergarten centers, and other academic and financial efforts -- along with the support he is getting from the state Education Department and is working to get from the city of Little Rock -- will lead to greater success.
"I just think the policy decisions that occur within the confines of the district will have as much to do with where we end up and when we get anywhere as much as anything else," he said about the proposed charter school expansions.
"I'm just telling you, think about what you do as a policy matter," he said. "We only operate tactically. We take whoever shows up and love on them as best we can. You have to decide on the system as a whole and decide how the system is going to work."
Education Commissioner Johnny Key, who announced that Baseline Elementary is likely to be removed from the list of academically distressed schools in the district this spring, listed for the Education Board the legal requirements for returning a district to the governance of a locally elected school board. The Education Department must certify in writing that the school district has corrected all issues that caused the initial classification of academic distress and that no school within the district is classified as academically distressed.
Metro on 02/12/2016