Community supporters and parents of three Little Rock School District campuses pressed Education Commissioner Johnny Key on Thursday about whether he plans to carry out proposed budget reductions.
On the district's closure list for 2017-18 are Franklin Elementary, Woodruff Early Childhood Education Center and W.D. "Bill" Hamilton Learning Academy, according to the recommendations by Little Rock School District Superintendent Mike Poore.
The district has also proposed closing Wilson Elementary School, which serves kindergartners through fifth-graders, and turning it into the Hamilton Learning Academy alternative-education facility for secondary students who have been unsuccessful in their previous schools.
Changes are necessary because the district will no longer receive $37.3 million annually in state desegregation aid after the 2017-18 school year, Poore has said. The district has reduced its budget over the past three years, but it is still looking to trim $11.6 million more in the coming school year.
On Thursday, the parents group met with Key, Arkansas Board of Education chairman Mireya Reith and state Department of Education general counsel. The parents said they wanted to know if Key would hold off on the school closures until a community impact study could be completed. The study would look at the effects of closures on students, parents and employees, and on the schools that will receive more students because of the closures.
The Education Department closed the meeting to the public and did not make Key available to reporters before or after the meeting. Key -- who acts in place of a school board for the district that has been operating under state control since January 2015 -- did not return a message left on his cellphone.
"We specifically asked him questions about supporting the impact study. He said he couldn't make a decision one way or the other," said Anika Whitfield, a podiatrist and leader in the Save Our Schools grass-roots group.
"We asked him for a timeline. He said he didn't have one for us. We asked him if he would make a decision before the [state] board meeting next Thursday. He said he couldn't tell us that one way or the other. At the end of the day, we got no answers from him, and that was very disappointing."
Whitfield has also reached out to Little Rock City Manager Bruce Moore, Mayor Mark Stodola and the city Board of Directors, asking for a resolution in support of the community impact study.
Andrea Hogan-Lewis, a parent who has a child at Woodruff and who attended the meeting, said: "We're at a standstill."
Despite that, she said, she is at peace for having done everything she could do.
The Little Rock district has already finished an open enrollment period for the coming school year, and many parents have reapplied to their same schools, even though the schools may close, Whitfield said.
She added the group has seen evidence that the district is moving ahead with closures.
"They've had people come out to some of the schools and make assessments of the playgrounds, etc.," she said. "And so it looks like they're making plans for closure, but they're just not being very transparent with us."
Reith said she was hesitant to comment on the meeting, as the Education Department wasn't prepared for the media to be notified about it.
The Education Board next Thursday will vote on the removal of the academic distress label from some schools, including two in the Little Rock district. The label is reserved for schools or school districts in which fewer than half of the students score at proficient levels on state exams over a three-year period.
The state took over the Little Rock district in 2015 because six of its 48 schools were academically distressed. Since then, one school has been removed from the list.
Reith said that in the months ahead, the state Education Board will continue discussing the district's academic-distress status and the factors that led the district into academic distress in the first place.
She added that next Friday the Education Board will hear from leaders in the five Little Rock academically distressed schools regarding improvements and plans for each campus.
Metro on 02/03/2017