Schools’ top exec assessed in NLR

No action taken after private talk

The North Little Rock School Board met in a private session Thursday to evaluate Superintendent Kelly Rodgers’ work, then returned to a public forum only to adjourn without taking any action on Rodgers’ contract.

Rodgers currently has a June 30, 2019, expiration date on his contract, giving him a little more than a year left to work in the 8,000-student system unless the board chooses to later extend his contract by another year or more.

School Board President Sandi Campbell said after Thursday’s board meeting that a vote on Rodgers’ contract will take place at a different time.

Asked if she expected that vote to happen regardless of whether the board’s support for the superintendent is up or down, she said “yes.”

“We’re supposed to have it before the first of the month, the first of March,” Campbell said.

The seven-member board met for an hour in a private session to present its evaluation findings to Rodgers.

The evaluation process takes several weeks in that it calls for each board member to fill out a review of the district’s chief executive officer. The board president then compiles the results of those individual reviews for discussion with the superintendent. Part of the process also calls for the formulation or updating of the superintendent’s professional growth plan.

“This was just an evaluation,” Rodgers said after the executive session. “The contract was not on the board’s agenda tonight. That may happen in the future,” Rodgers said, adding that he and Campbell are to meet to discuss how to proceed.

Rodgers has said in recent weeks that he is not considering retirement and has not indicated to the board that he would prefer a short-term contract.

Campbell declined to characterize the board’s evaluation of Rodgers.

“I really cannot discuss it right now,” she said. “We’re just working hard, trying to make the North Little Rock School District the best that we can.”

Board member Darrell Montgomery said after the meeting that Rodgers “has done well. I think he has continued to do well with us.”

Asked if the board is divided on Rodgers’ long-term employment, Montgomery said he didn’t know that.

The School Board didn’t extend Rodgers’ contract last year, leaving him at that time with two years on what began as a three-year contract. A motion by one board member in January 2017 to extend the contract by a year died for a “lack of a second,” which is a prerequisite for a vote of the full board on a matter.

Arkansas’ public school district superintendents are permitted by law to have

three-year contracts. It is not unusual for school boards to extend a superintendent’s contract after the completion of each work year so the chief executive has the security of an ongoing three-year contract.

Failure by a board to annually extend the contract — absent some extenuating circumstances such as a superintendent’s planned retirement — is typically viewed as a sign of board dissatisfaction with the chief executive officer.

Rodgers, 61, is in his fifth year as superintendent of the district and earns $185,000 annually. He was hired in 2013 to lead the North Little Rock system. A Pulaski County native, Rodgers had been a superintendent for a total of 10 years in two Texas school districts before taking the North Little Rock job.

In his tenure, Rodgers has overseen the completion of what started as a $265.5 million capital improvement program in which the district’s 19 campuses were reduced to 13 — nearly all of which were built anew or extensively

remodeled since May 2013. Only the building plans for North Little Rock Middle School have not been fully realized because of the district’s inability, so far, to acquire state aid for the full project.

At the same time, the district has had to cut its operating costs to help pay for the building program. Complicating that was a January 2014 settlement agreement in a long-running Pulaski County school desegregation lawsuit that will end state desegregation aid to the district after this current 2017-18 school year.

More recently, Rodgers and his staff developed the School of Excellence, a charter school within North Little Rock High School that offers career preparation in a variety of fields through a combination of classroom, digital and hands-on project learning.

In a district that has struggled in recent years to raise relatively low student test scores and to attract new students, Rodgers and his staff have moved the district to a point where all students

will soon have 1-to-1 access to computer devices. District employees — including teachers and support staff employees — have received one-time $2,500 bonuses this year.

The School Board last extended Rodgers’ contract in January 2016, with board member Dorothy Williams voting against it and board member Darrell Montgomery absent. Campbell, Luke King, Tracy Steele, Scott Teague and Ron Treat voted in favor of the one-year extension. Teague has since left the board and Cindy Temple serves in that seat. Treat died later in 2016 and was replaced by Taniesha Richardson-Wiley.

Arkansas Code Annotated 6-13-620 directs that superintendents shall be evaluated annually or no less often than before any extension of of their employment contracts.