UAPB grad will join LR School Board

A graduate of the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff will be joining a reestablished Little Rock School Board after the Nov. 3 election.

Michael Mason, 62, a state-appointed member of the Little Rock School District’s Community Advisory Board and the city-appointed member of the board of directors for the Rock Region Metropolitan Transit Authority, filed as a candidate for Zone 1, which includes downtown and east Little Rock.

No one else filed for Zone 1, so he will take office in November.

Mason is a graduate of Little Rock Central. But he went to college in Pine Bluff. He has a bachelor’s degree in political science from UAPB.

He continued his education at Webster University, where he received a master’s degree in management and public administration.

Mason is married and the father of four adult children, all of whom graduated from Little Rock School District schools.

Mason is an equal-opportunity specialist for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Fair Housing.

The Little Rock district, the second-largest system in the state, has been operating without an elected board since January 2015, when the state Board of Education took control of the district because six of the district’s then 48 schools were classified as academically distressed for chronically low student test scores.

The state board late last year voted to return the district — with limitations — to the governance of a nine-member elected board.