The Arkansas Board of Education has voted to require the Little Rock School District personnel policy committee to be made up of one teacher per building.
The 5-4 vote on Friday morning either extends or undoes the election of an eight-member committee that is currently underway.
Friday marked the second day in a row that the board has met. Thursday's meeting started at 10 a.m. and ended shortly after 5 p.m. on a day in which teachers and support staff members of the Little Rock Education Association conducted a one-day strike as a way of demanding that the 23,000-student system be fully released from state management.
Nearly 30 students, parents, teachers and lawmakers took about 3 minutes each at Thursday's meeting to demand that the Education Board return local governance to the district and/or reinstate collective bargaining rights to the district's employees union.
The Education Board in October ended those collective bargaining rights in favor of establishing personnel policy committees to advise the district on compensation and other employee-related matters.
Education Board member Kathy McFetridge of Springdale asked on Thursday that the personnel policy committee that is being formed in the district — at the direction last month of the state Education Board — be made up of one teacher representative from each of the more than 40 campuses. That proposal was then approved in the vote on Friday.
District teachers are midway through electing eight teacher members to that new advisory committee that is required by law for every district in the state. The Little Rock district didn't have personnel policy committees for its teachers and support staff until the Education Board directed last month that they be established. That's because the district recognized the Little Rock Education Association union as the exclusive contract bargaining agent for its employees.
Education Board Chairman Diane Zook of Little Rock and Melbourne agreed that expanded policy committee membership would be important to have at a time when the newly formed committee would be setting up bylaws.
Arkansas Teacher of the Year and ex-officio board member Stacey McAdoo of Little Rock questioned the effectiveness of such a large committee and offered assurances to the board that the Little Rock Education Association, which is working to have its members elected to the policy committees, represents all employees -- not just its members.
Zook and McFetridge said the large personnel policy committees in other districts, such as Springdale, work very well.