Leaders of the Little Rock School District and the district's employee union will resume talks at 1 p.m. today on 2018-19 employee contract terms, particularly on proposed concessions of employment protection laws.
Today's afternoon session follows up on negotiations that stretched from 9:30 a.m. to about 3:30 p.m. Wednesday between the district and the Little Rock Education Association.
Before, during and after the talks Wednesday and in previous days, teachers, students, parents and others have been doing informational pickets at multiple schools in opposition to the requested waiver of the state's Teacher Fair Dismissal Act and Employee Fair Hearing Act for workers in particular schools.
About 300 students at Central High, for example, participated in a walkout Wednesday for about 10 minutes, district spokesman Pamela Smith said, adding that the school's principal described the students as "polite and respectful in their presentation."
Additional informational picketing is planned for outside the Governor's Mansion from 3:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. today in support of teachers.
Wednesday was to be the expiration date for the existing 2017-18 contract, or Professional Negotiated Agreement.
However, Superintendent Mike Poore and Teresa Knapp Gordon, president of the association, announced about noon that they had agreed to push the expiration date into the middle of this month.
"LRSD/LREA have agreed to a contract extension of two weeks, moving the expiration date to Nov. 14," Poore and Gordon said. "The teams hope to reach an agreement before the expiration date and we continue our good faith negotiations in the best interest of employees and students."
The negotiations are not open to the public, and leaders of the negotiating teams as a practice do not publicly disclose proposals and counter-proposals made at the bargaining table.
Any tentative agreements reached by the teams would have to be ratified by the membership of the association and by Arkansas Education Commissioner Johnny Key, who acts as the school board for the state-controlled Little Rock district.
The association's team Monday had asked for a longer extension for the existing agreement. Key, in response, authorized an offer of two weeks, which has now been accepted.
The negotiations stem from Key's Oct. 22 rejection of a tentative agreement that was reached by the teams last month and approved by the association members.
Key directed Poore and his team to reopen negotiations to attain association support for a waiver of state employment protection laws in the 22 Little Rock schools that recently received state ratings of D's or F's.
The letter grades are based on results from the 2018 spring ACT Aspire exams, which are given statewide to students in grades three through 10, as well as other factors including gains on the tests since 2017, student attendance, college entrance exam scores, and graduation rates.
Key cited insufficient academic progress at the 22 schools in the 40-school, 23,368-student system as the reason for seeking the concession from the union and for his plan to take the waiver request to the Arkansas Board of Education for final approval.
Such a waiver would make it easier and quicker to fire an employee identified as performing poorly in the 22 affected schools, said Key, who has also said that it can take as long as two years to dismiss an incompetent employee. That's because of requirements in state law for principal observations of teachers to take place, as well as for documentation of teaching deficiencies, and the writing and carrying out of teacher improvement plans.
Under Act 930 of 2017, the state Board of Education has the authority to waive laws regarding teacher dismissal for school systems -- such as the Little Rock district -- that have been placed in the Level 5 - Intensive Support category.
"As a district in that category, LRSD needs this greater flexibility to make staffing changes in struggling schools than what the Professional Negotiated Agreement currently allows," Key has said. He has also said the waiver would be used as a scalpel and not as a chain saw in firing teachers for the 2019-20 school year and beyond.
The current 2017-18 agreement between the Little Rock district and the employee association, as well as the rejected tentative agreement, specifically call for the district to adhere to the state employee protection laws.
Gordon and other teacher leaders have in interviews opposed the waiver of the employment protection laws. A waiver of state law in selected schools will deter teachers from seeking work or remaining at those low-scoring schools that need strong teachers.
Gordon has also said that state waivers typically apply to an entire district rather than just selected schools, prompting her to ask for a full study of the waiver's long-term ramifications.
Metro on 11/01/2018