Lifting of LRSD’s rules gets state nod
Agency: Lighter oversight earned
The 2019 state restrictions or “guardrails” put on the Little Rock School Board’s authority to operate the district should be lifted, state education leaders recommended to the Arkansas Board of Education this week.
Staffers in the state Division of Elementary and Secondary Education are also calling for the Education Board to find that the 21,000-student Little Rock School District has met the criteria to exit the most severe, level-5/intensive support category of the state accountability system.
The agency is proposing that the district be placed for one year in the accountability system’s level 4/directed support category, which requires in part periodic state monitoring of the district as well as quarterly reporting from the district to the state Education Board.
The state recommendations on the capital city district and its School Board are on the newly released agenda for action by the state Education Board at the board’s July 8 regular monthly business meeting.
The recommendations
and potential for state Education Board approval are the latest developments in a yearslong saga that began with the state takeover of the district and dissolution of the elected School Board in January 2015 because six of then 48 schools were labeled by the state as being in academic distress.
Faced in late 2019 with a deadline to either return the district to full local control, reconstitute the district or disband it, the Education Board voted to return the district to the management of a locally elected board — but put restrictions on that board’s authority until the district exited the level 5 category of the accountability system.
The state-imposed restrictions on the new nine-member School Board — elected in November and December 2020 — prohibit the School Board from:
■ Making any change to the superintendent without the approval of the state Education Board.
■ Changing the selection process for the district’s Personnel Policy Committee or recognizing any employee bargaining agent without the approval of the State Board.
■ Instituting any court cases other than routine contract litigation against vendors or contractors without approval of the state Education Board.
“The Little Rock School District has made satisfactory progress during the 202021 school year to meet exit criteria that was established following reconstitution,” Stacy Smith, a deputy commissioner in the Arkansas Elementary and Secondary Education Division, said in a memorandum this week to the state Education Board.
The exit plan with its five focus areas was established in mid-2020 by the state in consultation with district leaders. It replaced a previous exit plan that in part required certain individual schools within the district to raise their state-issued letter grades.
One of the first actions of the Little Rock School Board after it was elected late last year was to ratify the current exit plan. State officials have used the level 5 exit plan to evaluate district progress at the start of the 2020-21 school year, in midyear and this spring.
The exit plan calls for the district to use the professional learning communities model and Robert Marzono’s High Reliability Schools framework for organizing the work of a school to accomplish greater student achievement.
The exit plan also requires the use of teacher and administrator evaluation systems that help educators improve instruction. The plan further calls for the implementation of the district’s adopted reading curriculum that relies on science of reading research and includes support for students who show characteristics of dyslexia.
The exit plan requires the district to have a state-approved master facilities plan and a three-year budget plan that does not result in district operators dipping into reserve funds to meet routine operating expenses.
“Each month, the LRSD school board and Superintendent Mike Poore have dedicated time to the components surrounding the exit criteria,” Smith wrote to the Education Board. “While the local board may have been in disagreement regarding Level 5 authority of the state, they did, as a board, acknowledge the work the district was doing to be the right work. LRSD board members continue to ask questions and learn about the critical work in these identified areas.”
Smith also observed that the state’s intervention in district operations has lessened: “The amount and intensity of support from [the Division of Elementary and Secondary Education] has consistently decreased over the past year due to LRSD satisfactorily making progress in identified areas,” she said.
She noted that state agency staff interviewed 242 educators and 16 principals as part of the process of evaluating the district compliance with the exit plan.
“These interviews further supported the documentation of work that had been provided throughout the year,” Smith said.
Ali Noland, a member of the School Board, reacted on her social media accounts to the state recommendation.
“This is a testament to the hard work of our amazing teachers, staff and administrators,” Noland said in the post.
The provision of the exit plan calling for budgets that do not require dipping into reserve funds was one of the final challenges for the district, Poore, the superintendent, has said in recent weeks. That’s because of the covid-19 pandemic and a sharp decline in student enrollment, which affects state funding.
The district initially adopted a budget for the 2020-21 fiscal year — that ends today — that projected a deficit of nearly $5.8 million resulting from conservative expectations of local tax revenue and final costs for building the new Southwest High School, according to the documents prepared by the district’s Chief Financial Officer Kelsey Bailey. Bailey’s analysis of the district’s finances accompany Smith’s report to the Education Board.
However, the district is now expected to end the year with $9.8 million more in revenue than originally expected, the report states.
If the state Education Board approves the placement of the Little Rock district in level 4/directed support, the district will be expected to work with the state agency to develop a district support plan by Sept. 1.
The level 4 classification is for school districts in which 50% or more of students score “in need of support” on the state-required reading tests in the prior year. The level 4 classification is also applied for one year to districts that have previously been classified as level 5/ intensive support.
A district’s level 4/directed support plan must contain provisions as required in state rules. Some of those provisions call for specifying the support a district will give to its schools, establishing priorities and goals for outcomes at a school, and detailing the measures for analyzing whether district support was effective in improving school performance.
The state Division of Elementary and Secondary Education must also develop a written plan of support for each district with a Level 4 classification.
“The Little Rock School District has made satisfactory progress during the 2020-21 school year to meet exit criteria that was established following reconstitution.”
— Stacy Smith, a deputy commissioner in the Arkansas Elementary and Secondary Education Division, in a memorandum this week to the state Education Board