Aide out in NLR schools revamp

No place on staff for deputy, interim superintendent says

Bobby Acklin, interim superintendent of the North Little Rock School District, said Thursday that Deputy Superintendent Beth Shumate’s contract expired Saturday and he is not recommending its renewal.

“I’m reorganizing [the district’s administration] and I didn’t have a place for her,” Acklin said Thursday in a telephone interview.

Unlike most state-licensed teachers whose one-year contracts are automatically renewed each May unless they are notified otherwise, that automatic renewal of an annual contract does not apply to assistant superintendents, deputy superintendents and superintendents, Acklin said.

A call to Shumate on her cellphone was not returned Thursday.

Shumate was hired as an assistant superintendent in the district in 2013 and promoted to deputy superintendent in 2014.

Acklin, interim superintendent since Sunday, said he plans to present a reorganized administrative staffing plan at a School Board special meeting next Thursday for the board’s approval.

He declined to say Thursday who he would like to see be deputy superintendent, nor would he give details on

any other staffing changes. He did say that there were no other administrators whose contracts expired in the same way that Shumate’s contract expired, but there could be some responsibility changes for existing staff members.

“I am working from within,” Acklin said. “I’ll put it like that.”

In addition to the vacancy created by the expiration of Shumate’s contract, there is at least one other vacancy in the administration, that of director of elementary education. Rosie Coleman, a longtime district principal and then elementary education director, submitted her retirement notice in June.

The North Little Rock School Board selected Acklin to be the interim leader of the 8,000-student North Little Rock district last month. The School Board has not yet voted on Acklin’s contract.

Acklin was an assistant superintendent in the district for 24 years before leaving the system in 2013 when he was appointed by then-Arkansas Education Commissioner Tom Kimbrell to head the state-controlled Dollarway School District in Jefferson County.

He later served as superintendent of the Warren School District. Most recently he worked as a trainer for the Arkansas Public School Resource Center, assisting novice teachers in central Arkansas charter schools.

Acklin succeeds Superintendent

Kelly Rodgers in the North Little Rock job. Rodgers and School Board members in early June signed a “Separation Agreement” in which the board committed to provide Rodgers with $213,000 in return for his June 30 resignation and his pledge not to sue the district.

Rodgers worked for the district for five years and had one school year left on what started as a three-year contract at the time of the separation agreement.

The $213,000 buyout consisted of Rodgers’ $185,000 annual salary plus $24,500 to his deferred compensation plan and $3,273.60 for 54.56 accrued, unused sick leave days.

The North Little Rock School District headquarters was closed Thursday and will be closed again today.