School District leaders in Pine Bluff praised

LITTLE ROCK — Arkansas education leaders on Thursday voiced support for Pine Bluff School District Superintendent Barbara Warren and the work Warren, her staff and state partners are doing in the state-controlled Pine Bluff system.

“We have confidence in Ms. Warren,” Stacy Smith, deputy commissioner of the Arkansas Division of Elementary and Secondary Education, told the Arkansas Board of Education in a lengthy presentation about the status of the district.

Arkansas Education Secretary Johnny Key reiterated the sentiment later in the meeting during which the possibility was raised of appointing a limited-authority school board for the district by the end of this summer.

As a state controlled district, there is no elected board in the district. A limited-authority board could be a transition between state and local control.

Smith described for the Education Board the initiatives put in place in several different areas of district operations in the almost two years Warren has been the superintendent.

That time period includes Warren’s first year — the covid pandemic 2020-21 year — that Smith called the most difficult year ever in public education. In that year, Warren was simultaneously working as the state-appointed superintendent of both the Pine Bluff and Dollarway school districts. The state Education Board merged the Dollarway system into the Pine Bluff system beginning with this current school year.

Smith praised most teachers and principals in the Pine Bluff system, saying they are struggling but hard-working and willing to come to work every day.

“It’s not all working smoothly,” Smith conceded about district operations, “but we are working on it” and the state wouldn’t be involved with the school system if everything were operating perfectly, she said.

The state Education Board took over the Pine Bluff district in November 2018 for academic and fiscal distress.

Smith said district leaders and state education partners are “trying to work through the messes. We’re doing it elbow to elbow with really good people.”

The presentation of the latest quarterly report on Pine Bluff and two other districts operating under state control comes at a time in which there has been truancy, gang fighting and gun-related violence in the district and city.

The turmoil includes a Pine Bluff High School student walk-out over safety concerns and open letters from the Go Forward Pine Bluff community development group and the Pine Bluff parent-teacher organization. Those letters have been critical of the district.

Smith said Thursday there has been a lack of support for the school system from some adults in the community, including those who walk on to the Pine Bluff High School campus without authorization. Additionally, she said, there were adults who knew in advance to be on hand to video with their phones the high school student walk-out.

“That’s not putting kids first,” Smith said, adding there is misinformation spread about the district including reports of inadequate teaching materials, unsubstantiated information on personnel and assertions that the district’s historic schools are under attack.

Smith said the “wheels fell off the wagon” earlier this year when Warren said at a forum that an alternative option to building a new Pine Bluff High at the current site could be building the new school at another location.

That was an option and no decisions have been made about the location and design of a new school to replace the district’s 10-building Pine Bluff High, Smith emphasized.

She said decisions about construction should be made by local residents, adding that those kinds of decisions could be part of the work of a limited-authority school board for the district.

Limited-authority board members — who would be answerable to the state on some matters — could be appointed once school board election zones are approved based on the 2020 U.S. Census numbers.

There are currently four proposed school board election zone plans available for public review and comment, she said. Members of the limited authority board would be from the new election zones.

In the meantime, before a new high school is built, safety considerations for the upcoming 2022-23 school year include the possibility of moving high school students to another campus — which has drawn opposition — or reducing the student count at Pine Bluff High by assigning ninth-graders to Jack Robey Junior High School and leaving sixth-graders at their elementary campuses rather than assigning them to the middle school.

Also under consideration is fencing the high school to limit entry ways to one or two, said Smith.

Already in place are four security officers and at least two law enforcement officers at the school, along with classroom and outside security cameras and the use of handheld radios.

Smith asked for community assistance with the district. That could include volunteering to substitute teach, volunteering to supervise students on campus or while they are walking home after school, and setting up extracurricular activities for after-school and weekends.