This is a guest post by Dr. Jim Ross, who had been recently elected to the school board of the Little Rock School District when the state of Arkansas seized control on January 28, 2015.
Five years ago tomorrow the state of Arkansas took away local democratic control of the Little Rock School District. This is my first attempt to tell something of my story that started that day. Sorry for the rambling nature of it.
I woke the morning of January 28, 2015 and put on my suit and tie, stared at my breakfast, and forced down a few cups of coffee. I took the kids to school and then wandered down to the Arkansas State Board of Education meeting that would decide the future of the Little Rock School District.
I sat on the front row next to my recent public nemesis from the LRSD board, Leslie Fisken. She and I had a difference of opinion that played out in the local press over the direction of the school district. Later we would find out she was working with the state to overturn the local school board.
I was running a 104-degree fever that morning, which would turn into pneumonia over the next few weeks. I had no energy and was riddled through with anxiety and dread.
As I sat there in a daze, I watched five people vote to end my tenure on the school board. The state board members voted 5 to 4 to takeover the LRSD and remove the democratically elected board.
Some History
I moved back to Little Rock in 2000 and started working at the alternative school in the Little Rock district. Over the next eight years I’d teach students with the most needs at the ACC and the brightest kids who had it all at Parkview (Arts and Science Magnet School.) I fell in love with teaching kids and to this day it’s the only thing that really gives me energy.
As an insider I began to learn what was wrong with the LRSD. I saw who the people were who were perpetuating a system that privileged white middle class kids over all others.
After eight years, I could no longer handle the broken system. No change was going to come from inside, so I left. I soon started doing professional development and curriculum writing for the district and began to see more deeply what the problems were and who was perpetuating them.
Somewhere around 2005 I started going to board meetings. Back in the good old days it was usually just me, Gary Newton, and Kelly Ann Thornton. We got to know each other and although we disagreed on most issues, we all agreed the district was broken.
I started [Our Community, Our Schools] to provide information for a new superintendent search in 2013. I ended up getting played by wealthy whites who wanted to bring in Dexter Suggs to change the district into a job training institution for certain kids while other kids were given classical educations to prepare them for college. We did not see what the business community was doing in 2013. We thought we won, but in the long run Suggs was just a pawn in the larger game the Chamber of Commerce had for Little Rock schools.
After that, we spent a few months trying to save a reading program teachers told us helped kids. The data was great. The evidence was overwhelming, but the Chamber-backed board voted to kill the program.
By 2014, we had learned no one with power would listen and we could not move them on the issues that mattered to us. So in the summer of 2014, I decided to run for a school board seat. We spent months raising money, knocking on doors and talking to folks and then we beat the incumbent. It was kind of cool. We now had power.
Serving on the School Board
In my first speech as a Board member I announced my vision for dramatic changes to the structure of our school system. I called for justice for the African American and Latino kids who had been left out and left behind. We identified three problems.
1. We had a management problem. Too many district managers with no coherent vision to help kids. They seemed to be only out to perpetuate their jobs and little kingdoms. They had been on a perpetual hunt to get white kids to come back to the district and had squandered 1 billion dollars in desegregation money.
2. We had a curriculum problem. Our management team was being wined and dined all over the country and bought whatever curriculum programs would give them the best kickbacks. We changed math and literacy programs all the time. All the while we ignored teachers who knew the answers.
3. We had a financial problem. The accounting measures were not transparent and money was being spent on pet projects — again, with no coherent plan.
We planned to make big structural changes.
But it turns out the election of four African American board members and one white ally who were all focused on large, systemic changes was too much for the business community of Little Rock. They got in bed with Gary Newton and the Walton-backed “school reform” movement, and got the State Board of Education to take over our schools.
On January 28th, 2015, a few local businessmen spoke out against us. We later found out that the Little Rock Realtors Association had their members write in to support the state takeover. We were so dumb: We thought we had a chance in a fair democracy to persuade folks, but the vote was cast and Sam Ledbetter made the tie-breaking vote to take away democracy from Little Rock.
Sam has always intrigued me. I hear now he regrets his vote. I hope he remembers the night of January 26th when 150+ parents, mostly African Americans, told him that voting for the takeover would destroy our schools and city. I reckon it’s hard walking away from your paternalism when that’s all you know. Let Sam be a lesson to us white folks. Sometimes it’s ok if we follow and don’t try to lead.
I walked out of that boardroom so angry and did a few interviews. I explained that the state board had completed the work of Faubus. I knew from experience and history that the powers that be in Little Rock would do nothing to help African American kids.
I went home to change my clothes and stumbled over my dead dog. I remembered cursing at her to get out of the way and when she didn’t move I remember thinking “oh, she’s dead.” I could not focus on the dog so I called my brother-in-law to deal with her and I ran off to do more interviews. I had committed myself to parents and kids. I’d taken their money to run my campaign. I’d promised them we would make their world better. I had to do something.
I never really grieved over Holly and her lonely death. Of all the events in those immediate days after January 28th, she still haunts me from time to time.
Five Years of Activism
I spent months explaining to anyone who would listen that the takeover was about three things:
- Bringing charter schools to our city.
- Destroying the teachers’ association.
- Expanding schools into the western part of the city so developers and realtors can make more money.
In the coming years, I filed lawsuits, organized meetings, joined Grassroots Arkansas, and helped defeat a millage increase. I went to lots of meetings, lots of protests….lots and lots of meetings.
By 2018, I was exhausted. I broke down, gained weight, stopped sleeping, and grew angrier. To those I was allies with, it looked like I was quitting. I never did quit, but I do have my doubts about the future.
Here are my worries.
Most white families in our city don’t care. Their kids go to private schools or charter schools. They started leaving in 1960 and have never looked back.
Many middle-class African American and Latino families are choosing charter schools.
We have a large segment of well-meaning whites of Hillcrest and Heights who come loaded with paternalism. As a recent example, a number of folks from these areas showed up when it looked like their kids might have to go to Hall. Once they got their way they went away.
The majority of our students come from financially vulnerable homes where parents are just trying to get by. They are not usually articulate nor do they understand the intricacies of the labyrinth system of LRSD.
Finally, we have a growing crowd of West Little Rock whites who are in it for themselves and don’t give a care about anyone else’s kids.
On top of that, societal institutions that are meant to be caregivers of society are either not engaged in our schools or are working with the state to hurt our city. I can’t tell you how many times we have gone to white and black churches for help, only to be ignored and turned away. The business community is disengaged or working against us. And city government wants to do its own thing in its own way and impose reforms on us. All in all, democracy is broken in this city.
Facing the Future
In November, we are going to have local elections for a school board that will still be under state control. We will not have full local control.
My vision was never that we would simply have local control. Local control is a political slogan; it is not an answer for what is wrong with the LRSD. We had local control for over a century before the takeover and poor kids were left out and forsaken.
The real question is what kind of local control we will have. The State Board of Education took over the district because we changed the type of local control that they liked. The businessmen, the Chamber of Commerce, the good people of the Heights could no longer control the LRSD, which had been their money cow for decades; so they entered into a deal with the devil and joined the Walton-backed State Board to take over our city.
For me, it was always about empowering working-class parents of color who would work with a few white allies and teachers to make real change and to focus our attention on the most vulnerable kids.
No longer will the mantra of local control be enough. We must ask — What kind of local control? Who are you talking about?
In 2020, many of you will give in and work with the city and state. You will walk away from democracy as we envision it — A democracy of and for the vulnerable.
Many of you will start working with the new board this time next year even though it’s not really independent from state control.
Some of you will rejoice at the Jay Barth community school model dictated to us by secret committees from the top down.
Most of you will only be involved when the big stuff happens.
I’m going to keep dreaming of a world that empowers poor people. I’m going to keep teaching folks about these topics. I’m going to keep shining light into darkness.
I will participate less in strategies that don’t work but make us feel better. I will be less patient with politicians who show up to lament, wring their hands, make speeches, and then go on as if their work is done.
In the past five years I have learned we are not moving the seats of power to make change by the methods we have used.
So, five years later I have despair that we will ever help the vulnerable kids who are simply photo opportunities for politicians and bullet points on the PowerPoints of earnest advocates.
Albert Einstein once said “The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”
In Little Rock, we created an educational system that subjugated vulnerable kids to bad education that would prepare them for low wage jobs. Johnny Key and Asa Hutchinson perpetuated what we created.
If we are to make change we must turn from this broken system that looks normal to us. We must change our way of thinking and that comes by understanding what is really at stake. For generations we have treated the majority of kids in our schools as meal tickets for a bloated bureaucracy.
We must try to see that the world we live in is broken and by defending it, we are adding to the pain and darkness of the world. To be explicit: The Little Rock School district as we know it must die and be reborn in such a way that it focuses on the vulnerable in our city. To do less is to perpetuate that system that is destroying kids.
The world can be set right if we are will to make sacrifices and suffer by giving up or extending our privileges to all.
“If you love deeply, you’re going to get hurt badly. But it’s still worth it.”
C.S. Lewis
I have loved this city deeply my whole life. I have loved this state deeply my whole life. I fell in love so deeply with the potential of the Little Rock school district. A day does not go by that I do not feel the pain of all the kids we were not able to help and of all the teachers who hoped we could do good together. At the end of these 5 years I’m a different person.
Johnny Key, Asa Hutchinson, Diane Zook, Gary Newton, Sarah Moore and so many others have chosen to be darkness in our world. They have perpetuated the system that singles out child of color and denies them education. They would tell you they don’t, and I believe they think they are doing good, but like Sam Ledbetter they are perpetuating death and destruction. One day they will have to explain that. In the meantime, we are called to be light in darkness. Our work is never finished.
Have a good day.
Thank you for your words, Jim Ross. #oneLRSD
Oh my goodness. Thank you so much for this. You are articulate so well what is going on in our entire state. You echo the frustrations of our latinx and black community here in NWA. We must find a way to give the voice and respect to our vulnerable but highly capable families and children.