Little Rock School District teacher strike not expected

First day without union pact shaping up like rest, it says

FILE — Little Rock School District headquarters are shown in this 2019 file photo.
FILE — Little Rock School District headquarters are shown in this 2019 file photo.

Little Rock school officials said Sunday they don't have any reason not to expect teachers to be on the job this morning when classes convene for the first time since the Little Rock Education Association's contract with the district expired and recognition of the union as the collective bargaining agent for teachers ended.

Pamela Smith, spokeswoman for the Little Rock School District, said Sunday afternoon that district officials have received no official word that any type of job action is planned.

"We've not heard anything that would lead us to believe they will not be in the classroom [Monday]," Smith said. "We have a plan in place that we've been working on that calls for, obviously, the use of substitute teachers as well as Central Office staff, and then some staff from [Arkansas Department of Education] should that become necessary. But to this point we've not been informed that we would have to implement the plan."

Teresa Knapp Gordon, president of the teachers' union, did not reply to a text message asking if teachers planned to strike today, having said earlier that she would not be granting any interviews.

There has been uncertainty for weeks over whether or not district teachers will take to the picket line after the state Board of Education voted to end recognition of the union at its Oct. 10 meeting, and replace it with a Personnel Policy Committee.

The board also drew fire over approval of a framework to move the district from state control to a locally elected school board that would have "limited authority as defined by the state board" in November 2020.

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A draft memorandum of understanding released Tuesday by Education Secretary Johnny Key laid out a framework for the creation of community schools and outlined the conditions under which the district will be returned to local control, with the conditions outlined seeming to leave the district under at least partial state control into 2021.

Gordon said on Thursday that she believes the state's plan to return the district to local control is flawed for more reasons that just rescinding recognition of the union to negotiate contracts. She said the community school framework released by Key strongly resembles the charter school model, which she and others oppose.

"The community school model that exists is not anything like what was in that [memorandum of understanding]," Gordon said Thursday. "I would hate to see Arkansas try to do something that is so great for kids, like a community school, and corrupt the model by making something it's not supposed to be."

In response to Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott Jr.'s assertion last week that he would ask the state to put a moratorium on charter schools in Little Rock, Gordon said she believes Scott is also receiving pressure over the memo released by Key.

"I don't think it was what anybody intended," she said. "I think Mayor Scott, too, realizes that charter schools are not helping the district. When we were first taken over, the state board approved every charter school that put in an application, it seemed like."

She said the saga of Covenant Keepers, a former charter school in Little Rock that struggled academically and was finally closed after the school's longtime superintendent was accused of making unauthorized withdrawals from the school's account, is an example of the state's lax oversight of charter schools.

"Covenant Keepers had an F grade from the time they opened until the time they closed," Gordon said. "Then they ended up with all that money missing and had to prosecute the person who was over Covenant Keepers. We said over and over they are not a quality school, that we're getting kids from over there who have not learned anything, but they refused to shut them down until they had no choice."

Diane Zook of Melbourne and Little Rock, chairwoman of the state Board of Education, acknowledged that Covenant Keepers was a problematic case, and said it was allowed to operate longer than it should have.

"We likely should have cut the cord sooner than we did but the parents of the children going to school there would plead with us to leave the school open," Zook said. "They were serving a niche part of the Hispanic community in particular so I think our compassion made us delay probably six months or a year hoping they would get their act together but they did not."

In defending the union Little Rock Education Association, Gordon said many people take for granted the work the union did to secure rights and privileges that educators have in the state. She pointed out that many of those things are waived by the state board for charter schools.

"Library media specialists, nurses, counselors, class sizes, all of those things are things that are in Arkansas state law that are being waived by the charter schools...," she said.

Gordon said the bar for many of the laws that now exist in Arkansas were set by the union and the Arkansas Education Association and the two groups' activities on behalf of educators and students.

Zook said there are a large number of possible waivers that charter schools can ask for, but she said a recent change in state law also allows traditional public schools to request such waivers as well.

"This is where it gets difficult to be on the state board because we don't make the laws," she said. "But if a district decides it wants to do something with the state law that the Legislature passed, it's very tricky for us to say we don't really think that's a good idea. But when [the law] says 'shall' instead of 'may' we don't have lots of choice at times."

Zook said when the Little Rock School District will be returned to full local control is largely up to the district, and depends on the progress it makes once a school board is elected in 2020.

"When they will have 100 percent local control is dependent upon the schools meeting the needs of the students and exiting what's called Level Five -- Intensive Support," Zook said.

State Desk on 11/04/2019

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