Pay, vote on panel to-do list
LRSD’s meeting will be in person
The Little Rock School Board will set long-term goals for employee pay and weigh the merits of a special tax election in September at a 5:30 p.m. session Thursday — the board’s first regular business meeting to be held in person.
However, out of an abundance of caution during the coronavirus pandemic, members of the public who want to address the board can do so using an online platform and not in-person, Pamela Smith, a spokeswoman for the 21,000-student district, said.
Additionally, Smith said, the district is modifying the different ways it broadcasts the School Board meetings to the public, moving from Facebook Live to YouTube.
At the meeting, the board will consider a resolution that commits the district to a $48,000 starting salary for teachers and raises for all other employees by July 1, 2024 — conditioned on available funding. The resolution also envisions a $2,000 payment to all employees for this school year, again if funding is available.
“The Little Rock School District Board of Education values all … employees as professionals and believes they are deserving of competitive compensation,” the proposed resolution begins.
It also notes that it has been “more than 10 years since non-teaching employees received a pay increase, and two years since all teachers received a pay increase of approximately 3% or not less than $1,135 for each teacher.
“The Board intends for this resolution to lead to the creation of new policies and/or procedures/ regulations, staff contracts,
compensation and salary schedules that will define the annual practice of adopting said contracts and schedules,” the draft resolution says.
The draft also says: “[F]unds are not presently available for this resolution. The superintendent’s obligation under this resolution is contingent upon the availability of appropriated funds.”
ELECTION
Thursday’s board agenda includes a proposal from district administrators for a Sept. 14 special election on extending the levy of 12.4 debt service mills by 18 years to 2051. The debt service tax mills are part of the district’s overall 46.4-mill tax rate.
By extending the already existing levy of debt service mills, the district can refinance its existing debt at a lower interest rate and finance new bonds to pay for renovations and repairs of district buildings.
District leaders are asking the board to vote on the proposed election plan in May.
The district previously asked voters to approve the extended tax levy in 2017 and again last November, but the proposals were defeated both times. Opponents to the extension said the district was operating under state control and did not have a locally elected board to decide how new bond money would be spent.
OTHER ITEMS
Also on the lengthy agenda for Thursday’s meeting:
■ A report on summer school to be held at 18 elementary schools and all middle and high schools in June and early July. The programs — to be funded by federal covid-19 relief money — are intended to help offset low achievement this school year caused by the covid-19 pandemic. The district is proposing that summer school teachers be paid $45 an hour, up from the standard average $25 an hour to entice teachers to do the work rather than take time off.
■ A response from Superintendent Mike Poore to requests that the School Board reverse the three- or five-day suspensions levied last fall against some 70 teachers who worked with students online only on Sept. 28, refusing to provide face-to-face classroom instruction in fear of the spread of the virus Poore said in a memo to the board that it would be bad precedent to reverse decisions made by him and Arkansas Education Secretary Johnny Key, who acted in place of a school board at the time. Several teachers had appealed the suspensions to the district’s now-defunct Community Advisory Board, which upheld the suspension recommendations.
■ A recommendation from Poore on filling the deputy superintendent position being vacated in June by Jeremy Owoh, who is to become superintendent in the Jacksonville/North Pulaski School District. Other positions to be filled at the Thursday meeting include the principal’s job at Parkview Magnet High School.
Listed among the personnel changes in the agenda is the upcoming resignation of Hope Worsham, the district’s executive director of curriculum and instruction, and the retirement of Brenda Allen, coordinator at Metropolitan Vocational-Technical Skills Center.
The Little Rock district’s nine-member board was elected this past November and December — after nearly six years of state control of the district in which there was not a locally elected board. Until this month, the new board has used an online meeting platform to oversee school district business.
HOW TO CONNECT
In addition to broadcasting the in-person meeting on YouTube, the district will continue to stream meetings on LRSDTV. org, and broadcast on Comcast Channel 4 and U-verse Channel 99.
Streaming on YouTube gives those who are hearing impaired the ability to use the closed caption feature, Smith of the district said.
Viewers can be directly connected to the District’s YouTube page via: lrsdlive.com
To offer comment on district operations, members of the public can give the district notice of that interest by completing this online form: https://bit.ly/3gs8jU0 The deadline for online submissions is at 1 p.m. the day of the meeting.
The public can mail in public comments to: Little Rock School District, Attention: Public Comment for Board Meeting, 810 W. Markham St., Little Rock, Ark. 72201.