Better Academic Achievement + Lower Costs at Central Office + High Demand = No Excuse for “Reconstitution”
The Arkansas Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) has hosted four public meetings on “Reconstituting” the Little Rock School District (LRSD) as the state prepares to relinquish direct control at the end of its five-year maximum. The final meeting is scheduled for September 3, 2019 at 5:30, at the Arkansas Department of Education (ADE.)
We all need to hit the Capitol Mall on Tuesday. Here’s why:
The State Board of Education (SBoE) established their “exit criteria” for LRSD in February, 2019 — after four and a half years of state control without setting specific goals for the district.
Education Commissioner Johnny Key has been the all-powerful, one-man school board for LRSD for five years. Since neither Key nor the SBoE told administrators or stakeholders what the exit criteria would be when they seized control, LRSD stakeholders were left to guess what they were supposed to do. Most people reasonably assumed Key would want to see an improvement in student test scores and enrollment, ideally while cutting some of the district’s expenditures down to a more sustainable size.
Good news: LRSD students are earning better test scores! Also, LRSD central office (which has often been accused of administrative bloat) is spending less money on administrator salaries, leaving more money trickling down to teachers and students.
Additionally, LRSD schools are so successful and popular that many have waiting lists: Not just its “magnet” programs like Dunbar or Mann, but also Pulaski Heights Middle School. Maybe LRSD should re-open some of the schools it has closed, in order to meet this increasing student demand?*
Anyway, it’s good news all around. Why, then, is Johnny Key insisting that LRSD doesn’t meet the “exit criteria” for an immediate return to local control?
These successes have been hard-won, especially since Johnny Key has refused to investigate or replace bad-acting district administrators. In December, 2018, the SBoE waived the Teacher Fair Dismissal Act (TFDA) for the entire district — specifically saying they wanted Johnny Key and Superintendent Mike Poore to use the waiver to replace the district-level administrators — but almost all the district admins kept their jobs, nevertheless.
Civil rights attorney Amelia LaFont published an academic paper about the school-to-prison pipeline in Little Rock last year, detailing the culpability of these LRSD administrators. In her introduction, LaFont writes, “The status quo perpetuates youth failure while it rewards adult failure, and it entrenches identifiable adults at the expense of the same youth and families they are employed to serve.” Then, she goes on to list these entrenched adults by name, title, and salary.
LaFont’s salary charts only go through the 2017-18 school year. I’ve added 2018-19 numbers so we can trace the trajectory of LRSD’s spending on administrative salaries since state takeover in 2015.
Based on these numbers, it looks like former superintendents Dexter Suggs and Baker Kurrus increased district administrator salaries. Then, when Poore took over, he began cutting administrator salaries (except his own,) and cutting/consolidating administrative positions. By reducing administrative salaries and cutting central office positions, Poore has begun curtailing the “rewards” available to LRSD adults.
The only noticeable exceptions to Poore’s apparent streamlining efforts are his creation of a Staff Attorney position during his first year, and his creation of a (relatively low-paying) Dyslexia Specialist position at the beginning of the 2018-19 school year.
Eric Walker, Poore’s appointee to the new “Staff Attorney” position, directs Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) training and compliance in LRSD. Ultimately, he’s the reason I’m suing LRSD to enforce FOIA — and why it looks like LRSD is about to get sued, again, by another blogger. LRSD deserves a better attorney than Eric Walker.
Chandle Carpenter, however, is doing a wonderful job as the new LRSD Dyslexia Specialist!
Until this past school year, LRSD’s student literacy rates were chronically low, and declining steadily. Amelia LaFont traced literacy scores on the ACT-Aspire (ninth graders) to show the average percentage of students meeting/exceeding “readiness” standards dropping by 9% from 2015-2018.
Finally, during the summer of 2018, parent advocates made themselves heard. The Arkansas Dyslexia Support Group persuaded LRSD to hire a Dyslexia Specialist, and to implement a new, science-based curriculum in order to comply with RISE. Although Veronica Perkins and Sadie Mitchell waited until the very last minute to begin training teachers (and LRSD refused to pay teachers for coming in during the 2019 summer break for the rest of their required training,) LRSD ninth-grade “readiness” percentages saw not just a return to pre-takeover levels, but an overall growth of 4% since 2015.
It all makes you wonder: How can Johnny Key claim that LRSD is failing when LRSD schools are in high demand, salary expenditures (always the most expensive part of a school district’s budget) are getting smaller, and student test scores are going up?
It’s a mathematical sleight of hand.
LRSD currently meets all of the “Qualitative Criteria” to exit state control. However, the “Quantitative Criteria” are impossible to achieve.
Instead of including quantitative metrics like these in their exit strategy for LRSD, the Arkansas State Board of Education waited until the last minute, and picked standards (like individual “growth” scores on the ACT-Aspire — an area where LRSD students already closely align with national averages) that no one could reasonably expect LRSD would be able to improve in such a short amount of time.
Frankly, I believe Governor Asa Hutchinson has appointed Johnny Key and the entire State Board of Education expressly to act in bad faith regarding the Little Rock School District.
All good things in LRSD have happened in spite of Johnny Key. And all bad things serve Hutchinson’s agenda of dismembering and privatizing the district, in a return to racial segregation and profiteering off the backs of children.
*Yes, I know LRSD has lost a lot of students to charter schools. However, the numbers you see on official reports (Average Daily Enrollment) are grossly inflated. Charter schools are notorious for enrolling a bunch of students they don’t intend to keep, collecting all the state foundation money for them, and then booting them off the roster after October 1. At that point, these expelled “charter school” students enroll in LRSD, which is required to accommodate them despite receiving no state money to pay for their education.
Don’t believe everything you read. Look more closely. You can FOIA the waiting lists. Gary Newton did.
You are correct in saying that LRSD is NOT failing. You are also correct in how they set impossible standards and also change the goal post for the express purpose of making it impossible to “achieve”. This kind of nonsense needs to stop. Thank you for your writing.