Our democratically elected school board met this week in a special session to vote on a number of issues they have been discussing for months. Jermall Wright, LRSD’s new superintendent, was in the room for the meeting as he prepares to lead the district. Board President Greg Adams called this collection of citizens who serve our kids and our city, “passionate” Thursday night. He was right.

They might look like they were frustrated with each other, but their love of our kids and their love of our city drives them to be passionate. Don’t let anyone try to tell you they are dysfunctional. They are not. They want to get this right, and they will go back and forth until they do. This is what we want in a board. 

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Tonight, there were two Central High students who wanted to speak. They spoke on a nonagenda item and the board did not stop them. This violates board policy 1.25 and opens the board to the charge that it is applying the board policy in an arbitrary manner. The students were from the student NAACP chapter at Central High School, and they wanted the district to let them wear non-approved regalia at the Central High’s graduation this year. I am not sure why this is at the board level. It seems to me that the administration should make this happen for these kids. More on this below. 

The board then went into an executive session to discuss personnel issues, then recommended Holly Brown to be principal at Terry Elementary and Cynthia Collins as assistant principal at Wakefield Elementary. The vote was 6-1 with Evelyn Callaway voting no, and Jeff Wood and Sandrekkia Mourning out. 

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The first issue discussed at the special meeting was the standard rate of pay for after-school activities, substitutes and summer work. At last month’s meeting, the board voted 6-2 to split the difference between the two proposals. Under the board’s compromise position, the much larger pay increase would be effective from June 4-Aug. 26. At the last meeting, Kelsey Bailey, the CFO, raised some serious questions about this increase and our long-term budget issues. The board opted to use federal coronavirus relief funds to supplement this summer increase. 

I have serious concerns about the use of this money for summer school programs and have questions about the usefulness and success of summer school programs as we now do them. Do they actually help bridge the gap academically for kids over the summer months? Our board needs to commission a study of our summer school programs. With our computer systems, we should be able to trace all students in the last five years of our summer school programs and find out how they improved in the following years in the normal academic setting. My guess is we are not seeing the type of improvement we would want to see for what we are investing.

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On August 27, the district will implement the first supplemental pay plan. This is still a raise. The district believes that this is a plan we can afford and still have the money to do phase three of the district base pay raise. 

Ali Noland made the motion to approve the plan as described above, and Michael Mason seconded. In the discussion that followed, Adams was appreciative that the board was so passionate about ideas and all want to get things right. He was happy that the board listened to one another and that they were able to work out a plan to help all sides. He also pointed out that this passion can get out of line fast. He asked that board members allow the chair to call on people to speak.

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With a board of nine passionate people, this is a good procedure. He wanted the board to also stay focused on the issues being discussed. In the discussion, board member Vicki Hatter asked what the financial impact of this would be. She was right that the board should always have a financial impact report on any action. Bailey explained this question is complicated because the district was not sure how many supplemental staff it will need in the summer. This will be based on the number of kids it has in summer school and how large the LRSD wants the classes to be. Hatter questioned why we don’t know how many students we have. Supt. Mike Poore said it was very fluid, even at this time of the year. The vote was 7-0 for the motion. 

Next, the board voted to reinstate the coronavirus sick leave for all employees until May 31, 2022. You may see the resolution the board passed on pp. 9-15 on this link: https://littlerock.novusagenda.com/Agendapublic/ under “Special Board Meeting, May 12, 2022.”

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This resolution only extends provisions 1a-d and 2-14. Leigh Ann Wilson made the motion to approve. Norma Johnson seconded the motion. Hatter asked if people will be notified that they have been in contact. Poore said it was difficult because the district no longer has the procedures in place to do that and the Arkansas Department of Health has stopped doing this. The vote was 7-0 for the motion. 

Next, the board voted to accept the bid of Mid-Ark construction to replace the roof on Jefferson Elementary School. Their bid was $1.6 million. This can be done because the voters passed a millage debt extension last year. The state will provide matching funds for this project. It is good to see the older schools around our district finally being helped. The district is working on bids for Baseline’s roof. Mason made the motion to approve the contract and Johnson seconded. The motion passed 7-0

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The next issue before our board was approval for the McKinney-Vento Grant. We have been awarded this grant for the last several funding cycles. The state receives federal funds to provide services to homeless children to make sure they are attending school. This granting cycle would give us $30,000 to use from August 2022-May 2025. The motion to approve was made by Johnson. The second was made by  Hatter. The motion passed 7-0.

The board then adjourned from the special meeting and entered their regular monthly agenda meeting. In this meeting, the board tries to get all its reports from the administration out of the way, so that they can vote in their regular meetings. 

The first report was an update on American Rescue Plan Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund money. These are federal funds that are to be used to help with learning loss because of the coronavirus and to improve safety during the pandemic. But the whole idea of “learning loss” is problematic and many educators are warning that this is a false narrative that accepts a “pass-fail” ideology that is really an assembly line worldview that values identical products being turned out at a predictable rate. Any teacher will tell you this is not how education works, but it is a good model for increasing test scores. We try not to use the phrase, “learning loss” because of all this baggage. We all lost something during this time. We lost the rhythms of our day and the order that allows us to learn together in a schoolroom. That’s what we need to focus on. Teachers can teach when the daily routines are in place. 

The Little Rock School District received $64 million in federal COVID funds. There are three categories for which the district can spend money. The district earmarked $5.6 million for the first category, “Creating Safe and Healthy Learning Environments.” The district has spent $2 million on air purification units and HEPA filters. I would have asked how we will pay for replacement filters. I would also want to know if we have inventoried all these units and can account for them. The district also used $2.4 million to replace nine air units for some of our older buildings that desperately needed them. The district also redistributed $165,000 to Walmart for the gift cards students earned for getting their vaccines. Buying these cards from Walmart is a real affront to those of us who have been boycotting Walmart since the district takeover. The Walton Family have been actively working to destroy or control traditional public schools with their prepackaged corporate-based education scams. The action by the district admin was tone-deaf to many of us who have struggled for local control for all these years. The remaining balance in this section is $997,166.40.

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The next section of our federal funds dealt with “Addressing Lost Instructional Time or Loss of Learning.” A total of $28 million was earmarked for this. The district used this money to buy the new math books, which cost $3 million. It also spent $44,000 on the “One District, One Book” initiative. One of the rules for these federal funds is the money must be spent on “evidence-based interventions.” I would be interested to know what kind of data we are collecting on the One Book reading initiative and how it is helping kids. The district also spent $11 million on interactive whiteboards for 1,565 classrooms. Finally, for this category, it spent $14 million on the homework hotline and after-school tutoring programs. There is $14 million remaining in this category. The summer program funding will come out of this fund.

The final category is “Supporting Educator & Staff Stability and Well-Being” and zero funds have been spent from the $5 million that was allocated to this category. 

The district made the following recommendations for the rest of the money:

*water filling stations:  $300,000 

*Leader in Me Program (eight to 10 elementary schools) 

*pilot reading program (four elementary schools) 

*ongoing professional development – PLC (all schools) 

*instructional technologists (one per school): $1.5 million

*Life Skills for Youth Program: $292,000

*Just Communities of Arkansas 

*Big Brothers and Big Sisters Mentor Program 

*wraparound services to include: support alternative learning environment, restorative justice, teen court, social workers/case managers, and outsource therapists.

*Brandon House: $508,948.70 

*enrichment programs (Spark, Camp Can-Do, Bridge Programs, etc.) – $150,000 

*Boys and Girls Club: $413,398 

*education technology (iPads, chromebooks and laptops) 

*Arkansas Community Dispute Resolution Centers, Inc. 

*multi-tier systems of support

*social-emotional learning 

Deputy Supt. Keith McGhee reported that those items with a financial report next to them were the ones the district believes would help kids. I am always concerned about how we sustain these programs when these special funds are gone? Are we committing ourselves to things we cannot sustain? We have until 2024 to spend this money. Hatter suggested that we need a program assessment team to study the effectiveness of these programs. This is a good idea. We need to find a way to make sure we are not wasting money on ineffective programs. For too many years this district has thrown money at programs with no attention to their effectiveness.

There was a lot of concern that the district had not spent any of the money on the emotional needs of employees. The district says a report on a plan will be coming soon.

Callaway made a motion to suspend the rules to allow another student from Central to speak. Adams was trying to figure out how to do this since Board Policy 1.25 does not allow for comments at the agenda meeting. Poore suggested moving up the graduation discussion and inviting the student up to speak. Callaway rejected this. 

They next discussed the upcoming graduation. Callaway then called up the student to speak. This violated Board Policy 1.25. For the second time tonight, the board is arbitrarily applying its rules. Rules exist to bring order and equity. My complaint has nothing to do with what the kids wanted; this is about the way the board is applying the policies that govern our district. 

The issue is again that the NAACP student chapter at Central High School wants to wear a special cord for their graduation. The student handbook is not clear here. These students are not trying to change policy but this is simply a procedural issue of whether these students meet the current policy. Wilson wanted to know what this would harm if we let the kids wear their cords. Poore explained that the cords are based on evidence of academic or service achievement. Again, I think the larger issue is not being addressed. I would say let the kids wear their cord, but be aware there is no longer room for a “no.” It does sound like we need to examine the policy of clubs and of graduation regalia. 

The next report was on an administration proposal to spend $164,000 for a three-year commitment to bring AR Kids Read into more of our schools. This is an organization that arose from a religious group called The Nehemiah Network, which is a group of pastors and Christian business leaders. They find and train volunteers to go into our schools and read with kids who have been identified as behind in reading. This is a supplemental service that provides consistent reading time for students on a one-to-one and small group basis. They meet with kids weekly and they receive 30 minutes to one hour of individual instruction each week. Each student receives a total of two free books per semester that they can take home. 

I have some questions about this program:

1. Does this weekly tutoring pull students out of regular instruction time, or is it done at other times? The presenter said that this is decided on a school-by-school basis. We need to make sure all kids are not missing core teaching time. 

2. They are already in a few of our schools. How successful have they been? Do we have pre-, mid-, and post-program data to show growth among students in the program? The only data presented was data collected by the organization. We need data from the district. 

Maybe this program is good, but I would like to see some data on what they have accomplished up to now. I would also like to be guaranteed that they will not pull kids out of regular classroom instruction time to do this supplemental work. 

This will be an action item next meeting. 

The final report was on the Ford Next Generation Learning program.

This is a Little Rock Chamber of Commerce backed program to use our schools to produce a workforce. The money will run out; we will move on to some other program. We’ve been here and done this for too many years to be impressed or to put much energy into this. Why not focus on a creative, imaginative and rational curriculum that emphasizes critical thinking? That’s what our kids need, not to be directed to a job. They will figure that out as they learn more about the world and their passions. 

The board finished their meeting by going over and approving their agenda for the regular board meeting on May 26, 2022.

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