District refuses to release pre-K report

The North Little Rock School District paid $22,626 for a six-month investigation into the district’s prekindergarten program but won’t release the law firm’s resulting report, calling it a personnel record legally protected from public disclosure.

The district hired the Munson, Rowlett, Moore & Boone law firm of Little Rock to look into the program serving about 600 children, mostly 4-year olds but also some infants and toddlers.

Mary Carol Young, an attorney with the firm, sent an itemized bill Aug. 8 for work on the matter that started in early February. That was for 109.5 hours of work at $195 an hour. There were also charges for expenses and three hours of work by another lawyer.

The investigation centered at least in part on whether district staff members were appropriately allowed to enroll their children at no cost in the pre-kindergarten program for which the state has set family income and other eligibility requirements.

Questions about the enrollment practices in the program have been posed by district leaders in recent months to not only the Munson law firm but also to the North Little Rock Police Department and to the Arkansas Department of Human Services’ Division of Child Care and Early Childhood Education, a review of records from the agencies show.

The Division of Child Care and Early Childhood Education, along with the Arkansas Board of Education, set policies and authorize state money for the Arkansas Better Chance pre-kindergarten programs operated by school districts and other organizations across the state.

The state on June 6 sent a letter to Jody Veit Edrington, district administrator over the prekindergarten program, a response to her earlier request for an agency “review of a Pre-k matter regarding student enrollment.”

“As per the review, the [division] has determined that you nor the North Little Rock School District has violated any ABC Rules or Regulations. We encourage ABC Programs to serve all children,” Mary K. McKinney, then manager of the state’s ABC program, wrote.

The ABC program is free to children who come from low-income families or who meet other criteria such as being a low-birth weight baby, or having a parent younger than 18 at the time of the child’s birth or is without a high school diploma or equivalency certificate.

Families of children who don’t meet the criteria can be charged tuition on a sliding scale depending on the family size and income. Full tuition is $486 a month for the program, according to the state.

Bobby Acklin, who became the North Little Rock district’s interim superintendent in July following the School Board’s buy-out of former Superintendent Kelly Rodgers, has repeatedly declined to release the report on the program, citing legal advice by the district’s attorney, Jay Bequette of the Bequette and Billingsley firm in Little Rock.

Acklin said he regretted not being able to release the Munson report, which he indicated was an inch or more thick.

“It is clearly a personnel record,” Bequette, an attorney for the district, said in a interview during which he cited the 23(c)(1) section of the state’s Freedom of Information Act.

That provision exempts from public inspection “all employee evaluation or job performance records, including preliminary notes and other materials,” until such time as there is a “final administrative resolution of any suspension or termination proceedings at which the records form a basis for the decision to suspend or terminate the employee.”

But the state law also says no request to inspect copies of public records shall be denied based on the grounds exempt material is co-mingled with non-exempt information.

“Any reasonably segregable portion of a record shall be provided after deletion of the exempt information,” the law says.

Bequette said redacting portions of the Munson report, which he said includes references to specific students as well as to personnel job performance, wasn’t practical.

“It would be almost completely redacted,” he said “The entire report is about the performance of personnel. You would have to redact the entire report.”

Bequette’s law firm has also been paid for work in regard to the district’s ABC prekindergarten. A bill from his firm to the district includes references to ABC but names in the bill have been redacted.

Acklin said he stopped the district’s practice of allowing employees to enroll their children at no cost — even if there are seats available for them.

He said there have been as many as 10 seats per year available in recent years.

“If there wasn’t anybody on the waiting list, then it was okay. It wasn’t breaking a rule to do that, and she’s done it,” Acklin said, referring to the district’s long-time pre-school coordinator.

“The main reason I stopped that this year,” Acklin said, “was because we haven’t given her any policies or guidelines to work with on that. She was kind of out there on her own, doing it. I didn’t want her out there by herself like that. She needs some rules and some guidelines to go by. We’re working on them now.”

“As per the review, the [division] has determined that you nor the North Little Rock School District has violated any ABC Rules or Regulations. We encourage ABC Programs to serve all children.” —Mary K. McKinney, then manager of the state’s ABC program.