LHSD president opposed in school board election

The president of the Lake Hamilton School Board will be opposed for the first time in next month’s annual school election, after running unopposed in his first two terms.

Mike Tucker was unopposed when he ran to join the school board in 2007 and when he ran for a second term in 2012. Nicole Freeman also filed for the Position 55 seat in her first bid for a public office.

Early voting in the annual school election will be held Sept. 12-15 and Sept. 18. Election day is Sept. 19. The deadline to register to vote in the election was Aug. 21.

Tucker is originally from Fort Smith, a graduate of Southside High School and an alumnus of the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. His wife is a first-grade teacher at Lake Hamilton Primary School and was already with the district when he initially joined the school board. Their children are graduates of Lake Hamilton High School.

“I wanted to make sure things were going well,” Tucker said. “I

knew we were coming onto the big time at Lake Hamilton, where they are growing so much and would have to do a lot of building and new programs. I wanted to be a part of that and help influence all of it.”

His children now attend the University of Arkansas and pharmacy school in Little Rock. Tucker is a senior agency field specialist for State Farm, where he has worked for more than 20 years.

Freeman is originally from Arkadelphia and a graduate of Arkadelphia High School and Henderson State University. She said she spent a lot of time around Hot Springs growing up and has lived in the area for about five years.

“I am very excited about it,” Freeman said. “We got to pick. We went online to look at schools and I was the one saying, ‘Lake Hamilton is the good school.’ Lake Hamilton has all of the awards.”

Freeman graduated from Henderson in 2005, taught biology labs at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock for four years and spent two years working for Lake Ouachita State Park, where she led educational programs for the public.

“Now that I have a place, I want to put roots down and be active in the community,” Freeman said. “I just didn’t want to do it until I knew I was going to be there for awhile.”

Freeman said she hopes to find other ways to be involved in the community, such as continuing her 16 years with the Girl Scouts. She is currently a cashier for Oaklawn Racing and Gaming and is close to completing her requirements to be eligible to teach in Arkansas.

It is her background in education that led her to pursue a position on the school board instead of another public office. She will be able to earn full certification after she completes requirements in the profession.

“When I was teaching at UALR, I got to see how important it is for students to come in having had a good background, because we did a lot of reteaching,” Freeman said.

“Plus, I love kids,” Freeman added. “I want to do anything I can to make it better for them and make the world a better place for them.”

Tucker is finishing up his second fiveyear term on the board and his second spell as board president. He said he has taken many vacation days from work to complete training programs offered for school board members.

“At this point, I am really invested in it,” Tucker said. “I know so much more than when I first started. I think I can be a big asset.

“Also, with my wife being a teacher, I know a lot of the other teachers and I hear a lot of the teachers’ concerns. I have an insight into the school through all of them.”

Tucker said he hopes to see through projects and programs the district began during his tenure. Voters approved a millage increase less than six months after Tucker began his second term.

The district used a millage increase of 3.9 mills to qualify for $4.4 million from the state’s Academic Facilities Partnership Program to construct a new middle school and a career and technical building at the high school. The millage increase provided for classroom additions to the elementary school and the junior high, as well as the construction of the $16 million Wolf Arena.

The final project stemming from the millage campaign is a new roadway from Adam Brown Road to additional parking for the prekindergarten program in its first year at Lake Hamilton Primary School. Tucker said the millage campaign was important for providing more educational opportunities for students, even in the arena, which houses a dance and cheer studio, a sports training program and training with audio and visual equipment.

“The cool thing about the millage projects was every building on campus had something going on and 99 percent of it was based on academics,” Tucker said. “We could offer pre-K or we could offer more things in the arena.”

Freeman said the amount of schools in the Hot Springs area will be beneficial to her when she begins her K-12 teaching career. She would not be eligible for positions with Lake Hamilton, but she will not be as limited in teaching opportunities as in other areas and hopes to push for a fact-based, challenging curriculum as a member of the board.

“One of the things I think people aren’t really aware of is once you get into graduate school, a lot of students are foreign and came from other countries,” Freeman said. “It was easily 50 percent of every single graduate program I was exposed to at UALR.”

Freeman said studies she has seen indicate American students are less competitive in graduate programs throughout the country than their international counterparts. She said she wants Lake Hamilton to prepare graduates for that competition.

“Even though Lake Hamilton is one of the best schools in the state, it is still not one of the best schools in the country,” Freeman said. “There is always room for improvement and I want to push for that, because I do want them to be the best they can be. I want our kids to have the best we can give them.”

The New Horizons alternative learning environment school is a successful program Tucker said he hopes to see grow. He said the district is now exploring more opportunities through blended learning, in which students can complete some work at home and some on campus.

“In today’s world, kids can learn a lot just from a computer,” Tucker said. “There’s some things I think you need a teacher for, but that is probably the future of schools.”

Tucker said his experience on the board can be beneficial for the district and the community.

“I have been around the community for so long, I know so many people, they know me and I am certainly not a politician,” Tucker said. “I don’t have a pitch to go out and say, ‘Vote for me. I am going to reduce classes.’ All of that is mandated. Or I will get teachers bigger salaries. I want to. It definitely affects all of us, but you have to balance that with the resources you have.”

Freeman said she took a stand against intolerance and racism as a counter-protester last weekend when demonstrators showed support in downtown Hot Springs for preserving monuments to Confederate history. She said she wants to be voice on the board for such issues.

“If nobody stands up and does anything, it will not be fixed,” Freeman said. “It goes back to the science marches. We are fighting people who are in charge that have no idea of how anything works. Even though they have the best interests at heart, they do not know and they do not understand. That goes back to education.

“In the education they got, something must have been missing for them to be so confused about climate change and to think that vaccines do not work and cause autism. There are so many political hot buttons that come back to the fact that something must have been lacking in their education. I feel like targeting education is the best way to fix the problem.”

Freeman said teachers have been proven to be the most influential factor in children’s education.

“I really am for upping the education and giving them the coursework that will make them competitive once they leave high school,” Freeman said. “Strong teachers are the way to do it.”

Tucker said he is proud of minor accomplishments the district achieves behind the scenes. The accomplishments include savings by going paperless for board meetings and refinancing a bond to save $3 million.

“All of that money can go back into the district,” Tucker said. “Those are the kinds of things where I really like to be involved. You may not get a pat on the back at a football game, but, in the big picture, it is really important stuff.”

Tucker pledged to continue to serve the district and represent the community as well as he can if elected to a third term.

“I will definitely do my best,” Tucker said. “I am an advocate for the school, as far as the legislature and everybody I talk to about the school. I will continue to do that, be an advocate for the school and do everything I can to help the school.”