Why does Mike Poore think Randy Rutherford is qualified to become next Executive Director of Secondary Education in Little Rock?
Little Rock School District (LRSD) Superintendent Mike Poore has made another decision consistent with his low scores on his own standardized testing: He’s appointing Randy Rutherford to a newly-created administrative job called “Executive Director of Secondary Education.”
As soon as Education Commissioner Johnny Key approves the appointment, Rutherford will join LRSD central office — where people with high salaries display a pattern of embezzlement, waste, self-dealing, and unjust employment practices toward LRSD teachers.
I expect Randy Rutherford will feel right at home.
Last week, I received two anonymous letters at my home address. They arrived on the same day, with different postmarks. Both envelopes contained printed copies of old news articles, with details highlighted for my attention. Skimming over them piqued my interest. Here is what I learned from my tipster:
- Ever since Rutherford became principal at Parkview Arts and Science Magnet High School, Parkview’s test scores have dropped every year.
As my anonymous tipster asks: How does Rutherford’s failure to lead Parkview effectively qualify him to help lead the entire district? Only if Johnny Key and Mike Poore want the whole district to fail, I guess.
2. When Randy Rutherford was superintendent of Bryant School District, (taking over from Richard Abernathy, who is now Executive Director of the state superintendents’ union) his district failed an audit. Employee records were being falsified to make it look like certain staff members had been working extra years, in order to earn extra money. There was a question of $1.5 million in unauthorized purchases on an unapproved credit card. Also, the Bryant School District (under Rutherford’s leadership) failed to comply with state law requiring a bidding process, architect requirements, and construction requirements for construction projects.
Randy Rutherford probably thought he didn’t need to get bids on his construction projects, since his family owns Clark Contractors, LLC. Once the initial contract was approved, Rutherford signed multiple change orders, throwing more and more taxpayer money toward his family’s company.
Following the Bryant audit failure, Randy Rutherford got suspended (with pay.) The school board recommended him for termination. Then, to avoid termination, Rutherford resigned — with a promise never to apply for a job in Bryant again. No word on whether his family is still doing construction projects with school district money, though.
3. In 2014, Randy Rutherford went to work for North Little Rock School District, where he picked up football coach Brad Bolding.
NLRSD fired Bolding in 2015. Bolding came to LRSD Parkview as head football coach in December, 2016. Randy Rutherford followed closely behind, becoming principal at Parkview in the summer of 2017 (contrary to the date reported in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette last week.) The combined leadership of Bolding and Rutherford has prompted several successful football players to leave Parkview and enroll in competing high school programs.
One such player told me, last night, “Everything went downhill for me after Coach Bolding came.” He believes that, had he continued at Parkview, Bolding would have said such negative things about his playing that no Division One recruiter would have bothered to watch him play.
4. Randy Rutherford displays an apparent racial bias in how he enforces the student dress code. He is the principal whose unequal enforcement of hemline rules in January led to the viral #PassTheSkirt movement among students.
5. Last year, Rutherford abruptly changed Parkview’s “exit policy” to allow him to remove low-achieving students after their first 90 days of failing a magnet-area class. Parents and teachers were confused and upset. Prior to Rutherford’s decision, Parkview students who failed a magnet-area class had been assigned probationary status. Students could stay at Parkview as long as they brought their grades up before the next report card. Instead of being forthright and transparent about the change, Rutherford pretended that this had always been Parkview’s policy.
This year, Parkview parents have to sign an agreement about the new policy. At least everybody knows what the rules are, now that Rutherford is not running the school.
5. Randy Rutherford takes a relentless, totalitarian, threatening approach to “leading” the staff members of his school. He opposes transparency, and promises teachers he will fire anybody who shares information with members of the public.
Remember: LRSD is a public school district. All of its employees’ communications are considered public records. Any person residing in Arkansas can ask to see public records, and they must be released. It is a crime to withhold public records — not a crime to publish them.
Nevertheless, I have now encountered three separate occasions (Randy Rutherford, Rhonda Hall, and Yaa Appiah-McNulty) where LRSD school principals have sought to identify and punish staff members for sharing public documents with members of the public. LRSD’s Safety and Security officers spend valuable time and resources tracking down teachers who risk their jobs to get the truth out — then turn around and ask for guns so they can do their job better.
No, I don’t think we should arm these people. I think we should get them a lot of training and a bunch of summer reading books to build their capacity for human empathy. Ask the teachers: They know what good training and curriculum can do!
Little Rock School District is currently under direct control of Education Commissioner Johnny Key. Johnny Key, Governor Asa Hutchinson, the State Board of Education, and Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott, Jr. are in the midst of deliberations about what will happen to LRSD as it prepares to exit state control.
State Board of Education chairperson Diane Zook is the aunt of Gary Newton, whose lobbying nonprofit Randy Rutherford considers to be the enemy of LRSD. Zook’s husband (Newton’s uncle-in-law) is Randy Zook, president of the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce & board member of KIPP Delta charter schools. Together, these three advocate “school choice,” which threatens to turn Little Rock into another (racially segregated) all-charter school district, like New Orleans.
Because every LRSD employee recognizes the existential threat posed by the charter school movement, they are under great pressure not to expose LRSD to any public criticism. Whenever the charter school lobbyists suspect wrongdoing in LRSD, they “take a poke” at the district, in an effort to destroy the concept of traditional public schools entirely.
As Randy Rutherford so eloquently says, “That’s bullshit.”
Unfortunately, this artificial pressure for teachers to remain silent about truly problematic things (like student placement and exit criteria at Parkview, violence against children at Mabelvale Middle School, and the destruction of student discipline records at Henderson Middle School) gives cover to bad administrators. These principals get away with nefarious behavior because everybody around them is too scared to speak against it.
As Bill Kopsky, Executive Director of the Arkansas Public Policy Panel said earlier this year, the school charterization effort is “frankly a diversion from where the research would lead us.” The battle between different types of schools is not leading to healthy, “free market” competition. It is causing harm to students, teachers, and the public trust — while distracting us from actually implementing meaningful improvements.
It’s not enough to have a “whistleblower protection” law that lets teachers sue the district if they get fired for reporting their bosses’ bad behavior. Very few teachers have enough money saved up to get them through the time, hassle, and legal fees associated with suing a well-funded opponent like LRSD in a “right to work” state.
We need open communication so that Parkview teachers — and others like them — can tell us what they know without fear of retaliation. Every student and teacher deserves to have us support them. Together, we can strengthen and magnify their efforts to make public education serve and educate every child effectively.
Diane Zook
UPDATE 7/19/19: State Board of Education Chairperson Diane Zook contacted me yesterday (7/18) to correct the way I described her support for school segregation as a fact, instead of clearly communicating that it’s my opinion based on the effects of the national “school choice” movement (in which she and her family are politically active) in other racially diverse cities like Little Rock. She writes:
Good morning, Ms. Lyon-Ballay This is Diane Zook: Your blog about Randy Rutherford was sent to me. In it you make a statement about me that is factually untrue. You didn’t qualify it as your opinion but started [sic] it as fact. It is not true/factual. I am not now nor have I ever worked to racially segregate or charterize LRSD or any other district. . . . I am not responding in a defense mode, I am correcting you for stating as fact something that is your opinion.