Pine Bluff board approves buyout of superintendent’s contract.

District executive will fill in

Pine Bluff School Board members have approved a buyout of Superintendent Clarence “Michael” Robinson Jr.’s contract and named Monica McMurray to be interim superintendent of the 3,648-student district, effective Friday.

School Board President Herman Horace said in a telephone interview Wednesday that Robinson, superintendent of the Pine Bluff district for the past two years, asked to have his contract — which would have expired in June 2019 — bought out.

Horace said the board voted 5-2 for a plan that will provide Robinson with a $50,000 payment plus health and dental insurance benefits until December. The approved payment is less than Robinson’s annual contracted salary, which is $155,000, according to 2017-18 salary records on the district’s website.

“That is what we negotiated with him,” Horace said when asked about the settlement amount.

“Dr. Robinson is well educated, Horace said. “He felt it was time to go. I don’t know if he got burned out or what.”

Horace said he didn’t know if Robinson, 49, had acquired another job. Robinson joined Pine Bluff ’s school system after holding various positions in the Prince George’s County public schools in Maryland. He also worked earlier in the metropolitan Atlanta public schools and in schools in Texas and Louisiana, which is his home state.

Efforts to reach Robinson on Wednesday were unsuccessful. A message sent to his Pine Bluff School District email address was returned and a call to his office phone was unanswered by him or by a voice-mail system.

School Board members voting for the buyout were Horace, Aaron Branscomb, Henry Dabner, Harold Jackson and Andrea Roaf-Little. Those who voted against the agreement were board members Lakishia Hill and Marinda P. Williams, Horace said.

The buyout plan comes at the end of a year in which the Pine Bluff district’s schools, which have lost 678 students since the 2013-14 school year, received three Ds and four Fs as the result of the state’s revised letter grading system for schools that takes into account achievement and academic improvement over time on the annual ACT Aspire exams.

Pine Bluff is not alone in central Arkansas in changing leaders.

Both the Pulaski County Special and North Little Rock school districts will start the year with new executives.

Charles McNulty will be the new superintendent of the Pulaski County Special district, effective Sunday, succeeding Janice Warren, who was the district’s interim leader for the 2017-18 school year.

North Little Rock Superintendent Kelly Rodgers will be replaced with Interim Superintendent Bobby Acklin.

The Pine Bluff School Board voted unanimously to begin a search for a permanent chief executive officer, Horace said, but did not immediately decide whether it would do its own search or seek help from an executive search firm. The board also did not create a timeline or set a deadline for finding that new leader.

As a result, Horace said, McMurray’s appointment as interim superintendent may or may not be for the entire 2018-2019 school year.

McMurray has been the Pine Bluff School District’s executive director of learning services for four years. She previously was a principal at Eliza Miller Junior High and Central High School in the Helena-West Helena School District. She is a former assistant principal at Mills University Studies High in the Pulaski County Special School District.

She started her career as a teacher and coach in the Little Rock School District, followed by work in school administration in Jackson, Tenn.

McMurray said Wednesday that she earned a bachelor’s degree in health education from Philander Smith College, a master’s degree in educational leadership from the University of Central Arkansas and is working toward a doctorate from Walden University, an online institution based in Minneapolis.