Lessons learned by two staffers in the Little Rock School District.
Part One: How LRSD Spends Its Money
Little Rock School District (LRSD) announced, last March, that it was increasing the salaries of three of its central office secretaries to $64,045 apiece. LRSD’s Human Resources Director, Robert Robinson, also got a raise of $13,830 for next year. All this after LRSD recently spent $680,000 renovating its school board meeting room — even though LRSD hasn’t had an elected school board since state takeover in 2015.
In May 2019, LRSD sent seven of its special education administrators to a conference in Orlando for approximately $2,000 apiece, like they do every year. The conference resort charged $249 per night for their rooms — $127 higher than the government per diem rates. LRSD paid for all of it, without even asking why the employees left that question blank on their expense forms.
“GSA rate” refers to the rates set by the General Services Administration for government employees.
LRSD Director of Special Programs Cassandra Steele brought her family (including her husband, Tracy Steele, a former state representative who should also be familiar with government per diem rates) and spent one of the conference days in Disney World. There was no objection from Deputy Superintendent Marvin Burton, Director of Student Services Freddie Fields, or Chief Financial Officer Kelsey Bailey, who all signed her leave/expense paperwork.
Cassandra Steele’s boss, Freddie Fields, spent $10,248 on party supplies, using LRSD credit cards. He also sent $1,647 to a company that sells fancy bridal tiaras.
Seven different LRSD employees (Principal Mark Roberts and six of his staff that were new arrivals to Hall High School) also went to Orlando on a separate, district-funded trip, last fall. LRSD gets federal money earmarked for professional development, so they picked Orlando for these six newcomers.
This time, the staff filled out their expense reports correctly, indicating that the lodging costs exceeded the GSA. No “coordinator” indicated whether the excess costs were approved, however. Kelsey Bailey and Marvin Burton just paid the bills, no questions asked.
LRSD is a very well-funded school district, compared to the rest of Arkansas. They can pay premium admin salaries, send people to Disney World, and buy fancy flat screen TV’s if they want to — unless, of course, they’re simultaneously telling the public that the district is too poor to meet their regular financial commitments. Then we have a problem.
Regrettably, LRSD is doing exactly that. Superintendent Mike Poore renovates his office, builds a new board room, and sends two exclusive cliques of employees to Florida — but tells the public that LRSD is so broke he has to fire guidance counselors in order to make ends meet. Arkansas Education Secretary Johnny Key, who has been LRSD’s unilateral “school board” since state takeover in 2015, rubber stamps Poore’s poor decisions. At the very least, this represents total incompetence — if not outright negligence.
Key and Poore have even told their own employees (the ones who aren’t in the inner circle) that LRSD doesn’t have the money to honor the LRSD’s Professionally Negotiated Agreement (PNA) which serves as part of each staff member’s employment contract. The Little Rock Education Association (LREA) puts up a token resistance, but doesn’t have the power or the will to put teeth into the PNA on behalf of any individual member.
Part Two: How LRSD refuses to spend its money (and why they’ll probably get sued for it.)
For the past 30-ish years, Joyce Jacobs and Lisa Jones have been working as support staff in LRSD. Their jobs are specialized — handling Medicaid billing, the entire budget for Special Programs, and other serious, independent responsibilities.
Nevertheless, Joyce Jacobs and Lisa Jones get paid less than their equivalents in other school districts, and far less than all the other LRSD central office support staffers (even the young ones, who haven’t “topped out” yet.) This disparity will only get worse next year, after the raises for Joyce Holmes, Marilyn Hopson, and Charlotte Washington go into effect.
These two financially savvy women have believed, for years, that their pay isn’t equitable. They even watched, in 2011, when Robert Robinson hired a temporary staff assistant seven pay grades above Lisa Jones. Jacobs & Jones put their feet down and requested a formal salary review in 2016. When the Salary Review Committee declined to increase their salaries, Lisa Jones and Joyce Jacobs appealed the decision.
Jordan Eason scheduled appeal hearings for Jacobs & Jones in front of Dr. Victor Anderson, who served as Supt. Mike Poore’s official designee for the hearings.
Dr. Anderson took his time. He called witnesses, reviewed details in a lot of paperwork, and ultimately ruled in favor of Jacobs & Jones on April 18, 2017. In his written decision, Dr. Anderson expressed deep distrust of LRSD’s Salary Review Committee and said, “The disparate treatment of this grievant and her co-worker who also grieves the same treatment is so blatant on its face that it is deeply disheartening and saddening to this hearing officer.” Each woman deserved a salary adjustment, plus accumulated back pay (approximately $100,000 each.)
According to the PNA, the process should have stopped there. Dr. Anderson was Supt. Poore’s official designee in a grievance process that states, “The grievant shall be entitled to a hearing before the Superintendent or his or her designee within ten (10) working days of the date the grievant provides a written grievance to the Superintendent.” Victor Anderson stood as the designee of Supt. Poore, examined the evidence, and rendered his decision.
Unfortunately, the story doesn’t end there. (Except for the hearing officer. Victor Anderson hasn’t been seen in LRSD again since he decided in favor of Jacobs & Jones.)
Jones and Jacobs didn’t receive Dr. Anderson’s decision until a month later, on May 15. It arrived with a letter from Mike Poore saying that he was rejecting Dr. Anderson’s decision, due to budget concerns. Jacobs & Jones went to Poore the next day. They asserted this was a violation of their due process, and asked Poore to abide by Dr. Anderson’s findings. Poore told them he would need extra time to look things over if they wanted him to reconsider.
Later that same afternoon, LRSD’s staff attorney, Eric Walker, went to Lisa Jones’ boss (Cassandra Steele, from the beginning of this post) and asked her why Jones & Jacobs didn’t just quit their jobs if they hated them so much. Steele says she told Walker, “If Ms. Jacobs and Ms. Jones walked out, it would be like having all of the HR support staff getting up and walking out.*”
Lisa Jones followed up with her union representative. She explained, “Just because employees want equity in their jobs certainly doesn’t mean they hate the job itself and should quit!!! That was very unprofessional, coming from the district’s attorney.”
Without conducting a hearing of his own, without (by his own admission) examining the evidence, and without calling witnesses or honoring the PNA, Mike Poore decided to overrule his designated hearing officer. Poore said LRSD didn’t have the money to pay these employees what they were owed. When Jones objected, Poore told her they would have to “agree to disagree” on the matter.
The teachers’ union assured Lisa Jones and Joyce Jacobs that the PNA prohibited a superintendent from overruling his designated hearing officer. Only one other LRSD superintendent — Dexter Suggs — had ever tried to violate the grievance process this way. Suggs’ attempt failed, and the grievance process remained intact for all LRSD employees.
Incoming Arkansas Education Association (AEA) president Cathy Koehler wrote to Lisa Jones, “I believe the two of you should work together on an appeal as Mr. Poore’s refusal to honor the agreement impacts all.”
AEA Manager of Field Operations and Legal Services David Kizzia initially assigned Clayton Blackstock — an AEA lawyer who had helped draft the language in the PNA — to represent Jones & Jacobs as they prepared their appeal.
However, within a few months, Blackstock and the AEA decided not to file a lawsuit on behalf of Jacobs & Jones. Kizzia wrote a lengthy letter justifying the AEA’s decision, explaining what the challenges would likely be.
Lisa Jones thinks Kizzia and Blackstock would have sued LRSD on their behalf if the two women had been long-time union members. The AEA has a policy of not providing legal assistance to non-members, and not allowing people to join in a time of legal crisis just for legal benefits. Lisa Jones had only recently joined the union, and Joyce Jacobs was not a member.
Jones went to the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission and got a letter granting her the right to sue LRSD. Neither Jacobs nor Jones has sued, yet, but their apparent intentions seem to have really riled their bosses.
In October 2018, Lisa Jones took FMLA leave from her LRSD job to care for her dying mother. Jones’ mother died on Wednesday, October 24, 2018. Jones remained absent from work for the rest of the week. Over the weekend, Jordan Eason notified Lisa Jones that her FMLA leave had ended on the day her mother died, and Jones would need a doctor’s note to excuse her absence from work in the two days immediately following her mother’s death.
By contrast, LRSD had approved two months of FMLA leave for Isaac Davis, who had been caught assaulting students and forcing them to assault each other in a special education classroom at Henderson Middle School.
With LRSD’s approval, Isaac Davis used FMLA leave from March to May, 2016 — despite having no medical or family medical needs — to maintain his insurance benefits until the end of the school year, while he was suspended from teaching after committing violence against children. After that “FMLA leave” ended, Davis was allowed to resign without being fired.
Davis’ FMLA arrangement was perfectly acceptable to LRSD. Lisa Jones’ failure to show up for work the day after her mom died, however? Jordan Eason couldn’t let that slip by unpunished.
Honestly, it looks like Jordan Eason is doing her best to bully Jacobs & Jones into quitting their jobs, while Mike Poore spends their back pay on flat screen TV’s and Florida vacations.
Last month, LRSD added insult to injury for Jacobs & Jones when Mike Poore and Johnny Key authorized a small salary increase for all LRSD teachers. Johnny Key stated, “In my approval of this agenda item, I would like to acknowledge with great appreciation the work of the LREA and LRSD negotiating teams on arriving at this agreement.”
Hang on. Did the union negotiate to raise the salary of all the teachers in LRSD, but refuse to defend “due process” and the PNA on behalf of Joyce Jacobs and Lisa Jones? Did the union, perhaps, make a backroom deal that sacrificed a major salary adjustment for these two support staffers, in favor of making a small adjustment for everybody else?
I can see why a union would make a deal like this: It only hurts two workers. That’s only two sets of dues the LREA won’t collect, versus the hundreds of dues-paying member teachers the LREA could potentially attract by negotiating a pay raise in the public eye.
It makes sense that the union isn’t standing up for Jacobs & Jones.
Arkansas lawyers won’t touch these cases either, because it would mean going up against the political machine run by Governor Asa Hutchinson and his Education Secretary Johnny Key, who has been in direct control of LRSD since state takeover in 2015.
Hutchinson and Key — plus Lieutenant Governor Tim Griffin, Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, and State Board of Education Chairperson Diane Dixon Zook — are all firmly in the pocket of the Walton-funded“school choice” movement.
Our resident billionaires (and their grown children) are waiting for the chance to dismember LRSD and sell its pieces to their profiteering friends — below market value — without public oversight or actual accountability.
Every time Superintendent Mike Poore and his hapless staff make bad decisions, the charter school lobbyists gain a little extra ground. They want LRSD to “fail” because it spells future success for their profits in the wasteful, fraudulent charter school industry.
At this point, it’s probably time for Joyce Jacobs and Lisa Jones to find a lawyer who will “do the RICO” in federal court on their behalf. We’ve got some seriously well-organized crime going on over here in Arkansas.
*Indeed, LRSD relies so heavily on Jacobs & Jones that they keep allowing Lisa Jones to return to work, despite her annual tradition of refusing to sign a contract under the terms offered by LRSD.
Lisa Jones will be back in the office next week. Hopefully, LRSD will pay her what she has earned.