Deal hit on school exec’s exit

NLR’s Rodgers to get $213,000 to resign, vow not to sue

A separation agreement that will provide North Little Rock Superintendent of Schools Kelly Rodgers with almost $213,000 in return for his June 30 resignation and his promise to never sue the district has been finalized by Rodgers and School Board leaders.

Rodgers and School Board President Sandra Campbell said Tuesday in a telephone interview that they and others have signed the 10-page “Separation Agreement, Covenant Not To Sue, and Release.” The others are School Board member Dorothy Williams, who is the board’s secretary, and Randy Coleman, who is Rodgers’ attorney.

The separation agreement, which is twice as long as Rodgers’ original 2013 contract to lead the 8,500-student district, provides Rodgers with the $185,000 salary that he would have been paid in the 2018-19 final year of his contract, plus $24,500 to Rodgers’ deferred compensation plan and $3,273.60, or $60 a day, for 54.56 accrued, unused sick leave days.

Campbell referred questions about the specific provisions of the agreement to Rodgers.

“I’d rather you talk to Kelly about it. I really don’t want to say anything about it,” Campbell said in confirming the deal. “It’s Kelly’s prerogative to talk about it,” she said.

“I had planned on retiring anyway,” Rodgers said Tuesday. “The board and I have been very professional about moving forward and allowing them to search for a new superintendent. I just think it is a win-win for both — both the district and for me.”

The signed agreement is the latest development in what has been a monthslong series of events in the School Board’s efforts to change the district’s leadership.

Rodgers, 61, had announced in March that he would retire at the end of the current school year, effective June 30, leaving with one year left on his three-year contract with the district. He made that announcement at a School Board meeting after the School Board did not extend his contract after his job evaluation this year, nor after his January 2017 evaluation.

State law allows a threeyear contract for a superintendent, and school boards routinely add a year to a leader’s contract for each year that is expended. A board’s failure to extend a contract to the maximum years allowed can be a sign of a school board’s dissatisfaction with a superintendent.

Campbell said in the mid-

dle of last month that the board intended to “buy out” the final year of Rodgers’ contract, directing the district’s attorney Jay Bequette and Coleman to finalize the details.

The newly signed agreement calls for Rodgers — who never put his retirement announcement into writing — to immediately submit his resignation to be effective June 30.

Rodgers, who was out of town Tuesday, said in a phone interview that he had recently submitted a short resignation letter, although efforts to obtain that letter and the signed detachment agreement Tuesday from the district and/or from Bequette were not immediately successful.

Contrary to the language used by Campbell last month, the agreement states that the agreement and its contract payouts “are solely consideration for services actually rendered by Employee to District and shall not be any consideration for a contract buyout by District.”

Much of the agreement deals with the district’s protections from any legal claims that Rodgers might otherwise raise.

“In consideration of the covenant not to sue and other consideration recited … , Employee does hereby and for his successors and assigns, release, acquit and forever discharge the district and its agents, employees, officer, directors, insurers, attorneys, successors, servants, heirs, executors, administrators, parents, subsidiaries and affiliates,” starts a sentence in the agreement that goes on for 131 more words.

Rodgers in the agreement agrees to never apply for a position with the “Released Parties” or engage in any contract or temporary work with them.

The agreement also calls on Rodgers, the district and the School Board to refrain from disparaging statements, written or oral, about the other party to the agreement.

The agreement is described as a “full settlement of disputed issues.”

“The parties acknowledge that this document may be covered by the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act,” it says. “However, the parties agree to keep confidential this Agreement, and the specific terms of it, to the extent allowed by law,” it said.

That state law does not allow the agreement to be withheld from public review.

Rodgers’ employment contract that dates back to 2013 does not include any terms about leaving the job before the expiration of the contract. There is no buyout clause in that first agreement. The contract says only that “the board may terminate the contract at any time for cause.”

Earlier this year, the School Board interviewed six people for the superintendent’s position but decided May 7 that it would select an interim superintendent for the coming school year. The board has a special meeting scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Thursday. Selection of an interim superintendent is on the agenda.

Asked about the possible selection of an interim administrator at Thursday’s special meeting, Campbell said Tuesday that “we’ll talk about it, but what we come up with, I don’t know.”

She did say she believes the district will have an interim superintendent by the end of June, which is when Rodgers’ tenure in the district ends.