Re- form school board, LR resolution to urge

Mayor proposes call to state board

Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola is asking the city’s Board of Directors to adopt a resolution tonight calling for the election of a new Little Rock School Board.

“The Mayor and members of the Board of Directors request that the Arkansas Board of Education, at its earliest possible occasion, direct that an election be held for a new Little Rock School District board in accordance with, and upon the effective date of Act 930 of 2017,” the proposed resolution states.

The Little Rock School District has been operating under state control without a locally elected school board since Jan. 28, 2015, because six of the district’s 48 schools were labeled as academically distressed for chronically low student achievement on state math and literacy exams. That number of labeled schools has since been reduced to three.

Stodola’s proposed resolution notes the efforts made by district leaders to enhance academic achievement. The resolution also says that current state law and Act 930 of 2017 — which will become effective later this summer — give the state Board of Education the authority to call for the election of a new school board.

“[ T] he Little Rock School District continues to progress

and overcome the academic problems which led to the initial action of the Arkansas Board of Education,” and it is in the “best interest of the City of Little Rock and its citizens for the Board of Education to return … the Little Rock schools to the control of a locally elected

school board,” the proposal says.

The draft resolution comes in the wake of the school district’s May 9 election, in which a proposal to extend the levy of 12.4 debt service mills by 14 years to 2047 as a way to finance bond issues for school construction and campus updates was soundly defeated.

The tax plan was defeated in 59 of 68 precincts in the city

in a campaign in which there was both organized support and opposition. Opponents to the tax plan cited the district’s lack of a locally elected school board that could be held accountable for how bond money — resulting from the extended tax levy — would be spent.

Stodola and most members of the Little Rock Board of Directors supported the proposed tax extension.