School incumbent: Want to finish job

Adams unopposed for LR’S Zone 4

Greg Adams wants to finish in a second term the work the Little Rock School Board has started in planning for updated facilities, exploring resolutions for the 30-year-old school-desegregation lawsuit and collaborating with a new superintendent.

Adams is seeking re-election to a three-year unpaid term on the Little Rock School Board from Zone 4, which encompasses northwest Little Rock.

In a zone where residents have been critical of the board for being slow to act — particularly in building schools — Adams is running unopposed.

The election is Sept. 17, but because the Zone 4 School Board seat is uncontested, all voting for the Zone 4 officeholder has to be done during early voting. That voting period begins Tuesday and goes through Friday and reopens Sept. 16 at the Pulaski County Regional Building, 501 W. Markham St.

No polling places will be open in the zone on election day.

“We have no shortage of huge issues,” Adams said last week. But he said he has seen progress in the past three years, and he wants to help that to continue. He said he has the background now to do that.

“The first three years were very instructive, and I feel like I can be a more effective, knowledgeable board member,” he said. “The learning curve is pretty high because education is complicated and a large district is complicated.”

During his first term, Adams and his board colleagues selected Dexter Suggs as the district’s new superintendent. Suggs, who came to Little Rock from Indianapolis, officially started work July 1.

Adams said he is excited about the leadership, energy and initiative Suggs is bringing to the state’s largest district. Part of Adams’ efforts in a new term will be to support Suggs and to continue what Adams sees as a growing spirit of collaboration among the board members and the superintendent.

“We are in a much different place than we were three years ago,” Adams said about the level of cooperation.

The Little Rock board is just getting started with efforts to conduct a districtstudy of all district school buildings with an eye toward constructing new schools, including a middle school in Zone 4.

“That’s really important for our district — to go through with the study and decide how we are going to go forward and provide the kind of facilities the students need in the near and distant future, and how we need to organize our district to make that happen,” he said. “I want to be part of seeing that through.”