An Arkansas Board of Education member whose term is expiring has urged his colleagues to prepare for deciding the fate of the state-controlled Little Rock School District, rather than waiting to react to a Department of Education plan.
Jay Barth of Little Rock, the Education Board’s chairman for the past two years but whose seven-year term ends this month, noted last week that the Little Rock district will hit the five-year anniversary of its state takeover in January. That 2015 takeover occurred because six of the district’s schools were classified at the time as being in “academic distress” for chronically low student test scores.
State law has been revised in recent years. But the law still calls for the state to return a state-controlled district to the direction of a locally elected school board within five years of a takeover, or take other action — such as consolidation, annexation or otherwise reconstituting the district — if a district has not met criteria to exit state control.
“My plea would be to the board — we are now seven months away from the five-year mark — I would really ask the board to prepare a thoughtful contingency plan so at the end of the day the board doesn’t simply react to something that is brought to them by the department, but takes real ownership of this decision, about how we move forward in a way that is best for the community, best for the district, best for the kids,” Barth said.
“We know there are real constraints on what actions can be taken because of a variety of reasons,” he told his fellow board members. “But I really do think it would make good sense for this body to create a small task force to … come up with a plan that makes good sense and does get community buy-in — so that the board is not having to scramble to try to figure out what to do that will do the least amount of damage.”
Diane Zook, an Education Board member from Melbourne, will become chairman of the nine-member board in July.
Zook said she has already approached state department staff members about holding a full-board work session on Act 930 — the state’s current school and district accountability law — in the coming months, probably in September. That would be after Barth’s as yet unnamed replacement has some time to become familiar with the issues.
Barth and Zook made the comments on Friday at the conclusion of a two-day Education Board meeting in which the board received quarterly progress reports from Education Department staff on all five districts now operating under state control.
Besides Little Rock, those under state control are the Dollarway, Earle, Lee County and Pine Bluff school districts. The Little Rock district — one of the largest school systems in the state with 22,000 students — has been under state direction the longest of the five.
The quarterly report — part of which was written and part of it given verbally by Education Department staff members and Little Rock Superintendent Mike Poore — touched on student absences, special education services to students, changes in kindergarten-through-12th-grade literacy instruction, and finances.
In February, Education Department staff announced qualitative and quantitative criteria for the Little Rock district to meet to be eligible to exit what is now called “Level 5-intensive support” in the state’s school and district accountability system.
The exit criteria focus on Bale, Romine, Stephens and Washington elementaries; Cloverdale Middle; and Hall, J.A. Fair and McClellan high schools.
Each holds an F grade based on a combination of 2018 ACT Aspire test results, the lack of improvement in 2018 compared with past years, and school quality/student success factors, such as student attendance, participation in Advanced Placement courses, and graduation.
The qualitative measures call for the eight F-graded schools to show evidence of collaboration among educators, consistent use of specific instructional practices and employee evaluation systems, and adherence to state education standards and management of resources to support teachers and increase student achievement.
The quantitative measures call for each of the eight F-graded schools to have achieved in this just-ended 2018-19 school year an 80 or better in the measure of the academic growth over past years.
An 80 signifies that students at a school on average made as much academic growth in the current school year as they did in the preceding years, be it a full year’s growth or something less than that. That is based largely on results from the ACT Aspire exams that were given in grades three through 10 in April. Results from the test have not yet been released.
The quantitative measures for exiting state control also call for the total number of students achieving at “close,” “ready” and “exceeds” levels on the Aspire exams at each of the eight schools to surpass the number of students who score at the lowest “in need of improvement” level on the exams.
Barth said Thursday that he believes there is “clear evidence” of effort and progress by the capital city school district “but also some areas where things are not exactly where they need to be.”
He noted that the exit criteria for the district’s release came late in the takeover period for a variety of reasons.
“I have some confidence on the qualitative front that there is good progress and things can be met in the coming months,” Barth said about the district’s prospects for a return to a locally elected school board. ” I think we have to be realistic about the quantitative — especially in regard to high schools because of how behind things are,” he said.
Mike Hernandez, superintendent in the state office for intensive support, and the state-appointed superintendents in the five districts described for the Education Board efforts in the districts to establish professional learning communities of teachers as a way to improve instruction.
They also described efforts to prepare school improvement plans that must be posted on school websites this summer and to incorporate into high school master schedules time for literacy remediation.
Plans for screening students for characteristics of dyslexia, plans for training teachers in new literacy programs and plans for right-sizing staff and the number of schools to student enrollment were also presented.
Pine Bluff, for example, has closed Chaney Elementary and created attendance zones for its three remaining elementaries. Lee County has moved its elementary grades into the Anna Strong campus that previously housed district administrators. The Earle School District is working to complete construction of a new elementary school.
In regard to Little Rock, Hernandez said he anticipates that the district will not have to dip into its reserve funds to meet expenditures in the coming school year.
Matt Sewell, the state’s special education division manager, reported that it had reviewed special education information for 181 students in the Little Rock district and found six that were out of compliance, which he said was a typical proportion in such a review.
Education Department staff did report that a special education consultant and a behavior specialist will be employed in the office of intensive support to aid the Little Rock and other Level 5 school districts.
Poore, the Little Rock superintendent, praised the state agency’s support to and collaboration with the district, which he said is contrary to the public view of the state’s role in the Little Rock district.
In response to questions from state Education Board members about the commitment of teachers and principals to the phonics-based literacy program, Poore listed the extensive credentials of Sherry Chambers, the district’s new literacy director.
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