State Board Meeting - November 14, 2019

001republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you before we start on the agenda we have a change to the agenda we're pulling number six of the ten o'clock action items if you don't want to mark that lee county and i'd like uh to give the commissioner uh secretary key a moment to talk about a literacy grant that arkansas was awarded and it's very exciting for kids in reading yeah uh thank you madam chair so news this week that we released about a 38 million dollar literacy grant from the u.s department of education we will be going into more detail about that tomorrow during the commissioner's report but we usually have a bigger crowd on thursdays than we do on friday so i wanted to make

002sure everyone was aware of that we did release a public notification or press release on that earlier this week so anyone that wants to get more information they can go look at our website but we're really excited about it it a lot of the hard work of stacy smith and her team and really i think it recognizes what we have done since january of 2017 when we launched the rise initiative with respect to the advances we're making and then the last thing i'll say about it ms look is if you look at the nape results that came out recently in mississippi had the greatest growth in reading fourth grade and it's starting to see effects in eighth grade and what we are doing is really six years behind what they uh when they really started

003their initiative so i think we're right on track uh where we need to be and where we're headed so we'll have more detail about that tomorrow it's always encouraging when people are doing something similar to what we're doing and when they're already seeing results so that's very good uh miss dean i saw also saw that it mentioned community partnering so i'm excited about that aspect of it and how um our family and community engagement work will be woven into that um so i'm looking forward to that as well thank you absolutely and uh miss chambers are you on the phone i am madam chair yes okay thank you i just wanted to be sure you were with us uh everyone else is in attendance uh so that takes us through the consent agenda and does

004anybody have anything they want to pull out i'd like to paul item four item four i just have a quick comment on item three and item three i'd like to pull five eights and ten okay anyone else okay let's start in sequence are you all wanting to pull to be considered to put on action agenda next month are you wanting to pull to ask more detailed questions before you decide about pulling for the action agenda next month i'd like number four place on the action agenda okay uh when we get to that i'm gonna start with three and when we get to that then i think that will require a motion is that not correct miss it does not require motion okay then uh we can just do that at the time start with number

005three i meant to call miss jackson just got tired of doing other things but the only comment i have is on the long term sub report this time the format was totally different and it was very very difficult to read so if we can change the format back to what it was before that would be helpful yeah i think uh i noticed that as well so and it could be translating from the speaking of one computer to another i don't know i don't know it just but it hadn't been that way before so if we could get that kind of taken care of it would make it much easier to read and okay well someone mentioned that too okay it'll take care of okay uh number four do you want to discuss or just pull

006it for next month uh i'd like to call for next month i have some pretty serious concerns about the remedy that was the proposed remedy in this case okay you have that mr james and mr lugan and number five yes similar but i want to see if other board members agreed i i did not feel that the sanction on number five was was severe enough to fit and thought that potentially emily wouldn't want to review that next month i do appreciate the fact that you all uh sent us uh information about uh the making it clear about mitigating and aggravating and and how those kind of decisions are made so does anyone else had particular concerns about number five and if so let's share those and if not then we'll see if miss dr moore

007wants to put it on the action agenda i also found number five to be concerning slash confusing and i i think i'd like more clarity into what occurred before okay so pull forward action i would like to ask a question of mr james if that's possible okay mr james will you come to the microphone identify yourself eric james for the department thank you so the sanction here is a one-year probation and i'm still learning all this process but certainly around probation how often is that teacher checked in on do they receive a mentor at the school or what does that process of probation look like our probation sanction has levels of trainings um not necessarily a check-in uh necessarily but all the trainees follow along the fact of whatever she is um recommended to have

008done so the sanction matches that um not really a check-in process i wouldn't i wouldn't say there's a check-in if the school had concerns are do are they aware they're aware that that teacher's on probation would they bring that to you all or the individual that we're speaking of resign from that district so if she seeks employment elsewhere it'll be um recorded in ales um if the sanction gets blessed by you okay so that new district would understand that yes in addition to uh being reported on nasdaq okay when that one-year term is over does that remain on your license or does that leave it it will remain for a period of the probation it'll be on a state board order um on our website and once that's concluded um then it goes off well

009as long as they've met the deadline the all the requirements and i guess this is not a specific to this case concern but the concern being that if someone does a training but doesn't have the ongoing support or check-ins they might slip back to old behavior but i know that's not something if they failed to adhere to any of the trainings though then it would become a licensure action so for example if they had to write a written reflection on a particular item and it was not up to par for the subcommittee then it would be sent back or if they failed to do that it would become a last direction where their license would be suspended okay and i think too on the probation uh part of that is if you if if you

010do the same thing again then that can be brought back because you violate the standards of your probation it's probably not like legal but as long as someone were to file a similar complaint if there was any further action similar to that behavior of course for anything so if it didn't have any relation to the original sanction but they were previously on probation then that would be considered in the next recommendation okay thank you is that sufficient yes okay and number 10. i just i saw that superintendent 4 is in the audience and i wanted i had just had a couple questions on the program at man okay mr poor if you will come to the microphone and identify yourself good morning mike poor little rock superintendent thank you i think the program at maine

011sounds fantastic i haven't been able to visit yet and wanted to give you a few minutes to elaborate on it and then also had a question about how students are entering into it if there's a lot of demand for it and what that looks like it has had a strong demand i'll start with student interest first you know it fits into the magnet approach at man um it's a class as is most of the classes of man that actually are at near the the number that you'd want uh in terms of capacity so it's been very positive um i want to give dr keith mcgee credit who now is a colleague that's now over at north little rock and supervising secondary schools there he's the individual that sought this waiver he did work with the

012teacher association to get kind of an approval even with them to say this is a good idea and a good approach and we've had positive uh results from the from the program high kid interest is this the only school with project lead the way it's not the only school with project lead the way but it's the only school that had the waiver okay how many schools have projects lead the way middle school you may have just exceeded my audacity i'd have to check back with you on that one to uh give you a direct answer yeah i guess my the lead up to that was that if this is going successfully to see that in other schools and i know some might not need the waiver to do it but just to continue what's working

013well i agreed and um i think that um we wouldn't be afraid to come back if it was needed um the only other place just as a reminder for the board that you approved for waivers was for little rock on this type of thing was with our excel program which is career development and uh that allowed us to hire professionals that are in the from the medical industry or from construction or from technology that are maybe not teacher trained but they've had the background in terms of the business environment and they've all been very successful and in that that regard also i'll just mention again that uh the teacher association also approved that waiver and thought that it was a good approach thank you okay the only other question i had i noticed it was

014all really positive and then i got to the point where it said there were four students that refused tier three service how how does that work well really what the dynamic of that is and i think i could say that that's probably a challenge for superintendents or principals throughout the state is that some of our students are so caught up in their elective programs that they don't want to go towards a tier three level of support because they want to stay in band and they want to stay in choir and they and so we we try to honor and make the parent and the student aware of the choices and the options so they're not pulling them out during the related class they're pulling them out during an elective yes ma'am well to get extra

015support but we also allow people to make some decisions so that's that i think speaks directly to those four students yeah i think um as a former administrator i think that if you could have tier three during the time when they're reteaching what they missed out on in a class not out because you know i would play basketball i wouldn't want to be pulled out of that either so i understand where the student is coming from but maybe they could adjust when the tier three service was and and i'll take advantage of that miss silk and just say a good pilot that we have going on right now that was uh brought on really through some support from the some of the dyslexic advocates is the 95 opportunity we're doing that at hall right now

016and um it's allowing kind of exactly what mizzou is sharing is that in a block schedule at a high school that you're using a section of the time of that block to really go back and retrain so to speak or re-educate and we have support from our teachers at hall the 9th and 10th grade level utilizing that approach kind of early don't have results yet but we're about a month in and i'm hearing positive things about it and we may end up expanding that pilot next year depending upon how successful it is i'm glad you mentioned that because what i'm hearing is this uh less behavior problems uh students attendance is better and that a lot of the students are going oh my gosh i thought i'd be embarrassed but i'm not embarrassed i'm so

017happy that you're working they work with the students 30 minutes of the 90-minute block in english so the teacher is learning the program as well as the 95 contract service and i appreciate dr roberts and uh miss allenbaugh are really two of the key drivers that uh made that a reality for hall but it also is something that we wanted to make sure all the english teachers said we're in and that says something about the teachers too that they said yeah we would like to try this approach and so they've got training and we've got continued support coming into that site with this 95 percent type programmer option right and hall was one of the few of the high schools that had the growth two years in a row so this i think will only

018add to that in the growth and achievement so i'm excited to hear how it goes thank you thank you does anybody else have anything okay thank you thank you okay that was the only ones that were pulled do i have a motion to approve the cons well let's see i had to know this is on something else uh i had a question for mina are they on the phone mina let's see i have a list here are you on the phone are you on mute i can't hear you well uh ted miss mclaughlin what you can say to them i noticed they had group had growth in all of their groups except in their caucasian population so just would like some idea about what why they thought that happened what the data looks like and

019then you can get back to me on that thank you do you hear a motion to approve the consent agenda move by miss dean seconded by dr hill all in favor opposed motion passes okay we'll start with uh mr owen our computer science guru if you will to identify yourself when you get to the microphone anthony owen arkansas department of education state director of computer science thank you chairwoman zuk and ward i have the privilege of coming before you again this year to present and uh for your consideration a resolution for computer science education week uh this year it is december 9th through the 15th we have some great things working some great plans that we're going to bring and announce during that week and i think that we're really going to get some great

020national attention on this and continue to grow our program i know your agenda is packed so at your at your request i am proud to read it or happy to read it or just present it for consideration chairwoman okay would you like to read it please okay i would be happy to whereas the arkansas state board of education believes that every k-12 student in arkansas deserves a premier computer science and computing education that is suitable for his or her needs and can support his or her college and or career aspirations and whereas the arkansas state board of education supports the state in its efforts to remain a national leader in computer technology careers through the implementation of a vertically articulated and comprehensive computer science and computing education initiative designed to support appropriate technological growth in

021all arkansas students and whereas arkansas state board of education believes that arkansas must provide its students with an education that will facilitate the advance of useful technology technological skills and promote their role as digital natives and whereas december 9th through 15 2019 has been declared to be national computer science education week by code.org the computer science for all initiative and other nationally recognized entities now therefore be it resolved that we the members of the arkansas state board of education recognize the week of december 9th through 15 2019 as arkansas computer science education week okay thank you uh is kevin still in the room he was there he is so you got pictures of this and you may want to hold it up with and get anthony in the picture okay um uh chairwoman zuk can

022i just mention two brief things certainly i would like to come back in january and do a full report for the board and update on computer science and all the wonderful things that we are able to do during the week of computer science education week but two quick points i'd just like to mention is the governor did release our enrollment numbers if you have not seen those for this current school year and we did grow to over 9 800 students which is a 22 percent increase over last year and increased from our initial year of around about 1100 students so still continue to see phenomenal growth in the program and then one event that i think that i would like to personally invite you all and anyone watching or in the audience too is on

023decent monday december 9th from 5 to 8 p.m we will be hosting in partnership with ualr a community coding night event at the eit building at the engineering building it is open to the public it's open to families and if you want to learn a little bit more about what we do and have engage in some of the varying computer science tools that we use appropriate for all age levels and expertise we would love to have you all as our guest thank you and if you'll work with miss wendell and and y'all decide whether it would be more appropriate for a thursday item or a friday item for your report yes ma'am thank you thank you okay we have a hearing now mr duggan do you want to come to the microphone and introduce it

024or miss freno thank you lori freno division of elementary and secondary education and this is an appeal of an ethics hearing subcommittee's recommendation that ms haley whidbey's educator license be revoked ms whidbey is here today and she is here with her counsel andrea brock the plsb will be represented by taylor dugan in this in this matter and if i may i'd like to go over the procedures for thanksgiving thank you ms whidbey may make a statement for up to 10 minutes followed by mr dugan making a statement for 10 minutes as well the chair may always grant additional time as she deems appropriate the board members may ask questions during this hearing at any time to either the plsp investigator and either of the attorneys or to the educator herself now this hearing is kind

025of a little different than what you're used to so i want to you know if you have any questions just please let me know ms whitby has made two objections with regard to the decision of the ethics hearing some committees subcommittee the first is that the hearing was not conducted in the time frame set forth in law in the law for handling to for an investigation to go forward and she alleges that for that reason alone because of untimed alleged untimeliness this should not even be heard at all so that is the first item that you should consider and then you know i would suggest that you vote on that first before you move forward now the ethics hearing subcommittee did find that this matter was not barred from going forward by time but that

026is something that you'll need to decide the second objection that ms whitby has normally you all would make findings of fact and conclusions of law and determine what the appropriate sanction is that's what you're used to in this case miss whidbey has stipulated which she has agreed that she did violate standard one by sending inappropriate text messages to a student she does object however to the sanction that was imposed which is revocation so you all would have the obligation to determine whether or not that sanction was appropriate and of course you can either uphold it or you can modify it miss whidbey and miss whidbey's lawyer and mr dugan have agreed that they because there's 10 minutes they're going to they are going to split those so that you all can hear the first objection

027first for five minutes and of course madam chair you always can extend time as needed and based upon the decision in that then the other five minutes would be left for the remainder of the matter okay we'll be speaking to the timeliness initially yes okay timeliness initially okay and if anyone has any questions i'll be happy to answer them otherwise i'll turn the floor over to miss whidbey do any of you have questions of ms farino at this point everybody clear okay okay thank you if you uh might be giving testimony if you will raise your right hand [Music] do you swear affirm that the testimony you're about to give shall be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth thank you good morning my name is andrea brock i'm an attorney from

028forest city and i do represent miss whitby and have since the initial process began i think it might be helpful i believe that you have the transcripts of the transcript and the exhibits attached to that available and on page 216. i didn't bring my glasses i believe that's what it says 216 there is actually a timeline that mr duggan was so wonderful to prepare and that's i think that that is the most helpful thing when considering this argument sure that'd be great thank you as you can see the investigation in this matter was authorized on april 7th 2017. then on july 10th 2000 2017 a reasonable belief of violation determination and recommendation letter was issued whereby the ethics subcommittee recommended permanent revocation of my client's teacher's license on july 17th the letter was actually issued

029to my client notifying her of that recommendation and then on august 16th i objected to that on and rejected that recommendation on behalf of the educator miss haley would be the hearing the evidentiary hearing was not conducted until september 20th 2019. i would point out that the first time that the hearing was scheduled was in i believe november of 2017 when a letter went out and it was actually scheduled to take place in january 18. the only continuance requested by my client because i think that's important for you all to understand was because of inclement weather the week of that january date which i pointed out in the objection that i filed the january date and even the notice of november were far beyond the deadline set forth by the the uh statute the relevant

030statute is arkansas code annotated section 6-17-428 and it provides that the ethics committee shall complete its investigation of an ethics complaint and take action within 180 days of authorizing the investigation of that complaint in the event of hearing is conducted and since a hearing was requested in this matter that is the provision that would apply rather than the 150 days the legislature defines what it means to take action which is or to have acted upon something as meaning that the state board of education has taken an action to address an ethics complaint by revoking suspending or imposing another sanction on that educator's license the reason that i have brought this particular constitutional argument before the board is because in doing research about this particular issue i did note that if i don't raise this on

031behalf of my client at every level then when if we were to have to proceed to a court for an appeal i would have waived that on her behalf and so i don't want in any way to waive any of her rights and i would just like to state for argument purposes and for clarifying what our position is we understand that miss whidbey as an educator has responsibilities and that the board of education is responsible for then seeing those responsibilities are met but she also has rights and this board is created by statute without the statute the board of education doesn't exist therefore the authority and the action that can be taken by the board has to be given by the legislature and the arkansas legislature has clearly set forth the time frame in which

032action can be taken it's my understanding that mr dugan's response based on i'm sure a heavy workload which i don't dispute that they probably that they have um that it seems impossible sometimes for them to meet the statutory requirement of 180 days but the fact is that is what the law requires and it is a shall it is a mandatory requirement as mr dugan pointed out in his response to my objection we are to consider what the legislature states what that statute says in just its plain meaning and i feel confident that everybody on this board understands shall it mean shall it is mandatory the statute wasn't met and it's our position that the board then lacks jurisdiction when the time passes to act further and so we would ask then that this action against

033my client be dismissed okay thank you thank you and i'm assuming the 180 days is calendar days not work days either way it's beyond but they are calendar days and under the rules anything over 14 days it's my understanding from the rules of civil procedure anything over 14 days you count by actual calendar days not business days okay thank you mr duggan that's the question first uh mr peckron council do you have any uh case laws supporting or discussing what happens for a failure to can finish the investigation within that period right there is not anything and i think that mr dugan has pointed that out um unfortunate or maybe fortunately a lot of these things don't end up before the supreme court um the case law just simply deals with the fact that boards

034or agencies are creatures of statute and therefore their authority has to come from the legislature they can't act outside the authority and so that would be my basis for arguing the jurisdictional argument which other cases do address just not in this specific board any other questions mr duggan uh uh good morning taylor dugan attorney for the division of elementary and secondary education and i just spoke with my opposing counsel i did copy that relevant part of the statute 617-428-k and so i would like to pass that out to the board members if i may madam chair so that i think will help guide um what the statute says as far as when you all are looking at this and coming up to a determination on whether or not this case should be dismissed for the

035timeline sure thank you because it is a rather extensive um statute and so that is the relevant section as far as the argument that is today that is being considered as far as whether or not the plsb followed this timeline uh the original exhibit that was just discussed as far as uh the timeline that we had put together to aid the evidentiary hearing panel as far as following it i do agree that this is exactly uh what happened in this case the statute does say shall arkansas code annotated 617-428 does say shout it's the plsp's position that this timeline is directory it's not mandatory um the case that we rely on that we put on in incited to in the brief that the pls be filed is farm service inc uh monson uh v farm

036service inc um and mr peck run i did print off copies of it but i seem to have left in my office but i do have someone the site for it is 359 arc 392. and the reason the plsp relies on this case is because they looked at a statute dealing with um farm supplies pretty much seeds and in that case the person who wanted to take action was supposed to when they when they found out there was issues with these seeds they were supposed to go to arbitration because the statute required it within 10 days of noticing that defect in order for them to file a claim in circuit court and um in that case this gentleman failed to do it and so the court discusses the fact that for the failure to not

037do that first thing you don't get the benefit of having this legal action and so it's plsb's position that the statute doesn't give any consequence yes it says you shall take these actions within a certain time frame but then it doesn't specifically state if that happens then the case has to be dismissed or if that happens the sanction has to be lowered so it's our position that this uh timeline that is in the statute is directory that it's not mandatory but secondly this case itself i think the timeline was followed within reasonable circumstances because when you look at the sheet that we have provided the board here so the authorization was 47 2017. and then the reason belief because this case is so old that this is when they use the term reasonable belief instead

038of initial determination recommendation but the reason belief was found on july 10 2017 the ethics subcommittee had taken action by recommending a revocation of miss whitby's license um on once you receive that notice around mid-july so that taking action there um would have been within about 94 days of the authorization because the authorization was on 7 6 2017 receiving the notice that the ethics subcommittee was wanting to revoke that license um which was going to be within mid july would be well within that time frame and so when you look at the rules for the code of ethics for arkansas educators it defines take action take action means that based on the preponderance of the evidence the ethics subcommittee or ethics hearing subject makes a determination and recommendation based on ethics complaint so i would

039argue that there was take their action was took as far as making the recommendation now the first continuance was requested by the educator and then as you all saw throughout the uh packet that was provided to the panel uh my predecessor had sent a letter to the educator saying hey i've been trying to get in contact with you this letter was sent in july of and so let's try to settle this case so then there was a settlement conference on september 24th of 2018 where the motion was to settle the case for suspension instead of replication and the ethics hearing subcommittee rejected that recommendation and so said it was go for a hearing and so when i inherited these cases within the first week i set this case for a hearing and we had the

040hearing on september 20 2019 there was continuances in this case the ethics subcommittee took action within 94 days of the authorization of the plane so i would say that we are even within that shout of that timeline and sec and as i stated earlier that the psp's position is that this timeline is directory um not mandatory so i would ask this board to take that into consideration um and deny miss uh whidbey's motion to dismiss this case and proceed on to hear whether or not the sanction um is sufficient in this case thank you give us a couple questions sure yes sir mr peck ron mr doohan can you i'm sorry i kind of got lost there at the end can you explain once again how you believe you would be within the statue even

041if it is mandatory so the statute says when you look at 6 1748 the ethics subcommittee shall complete its investigation of an ethics complaint and take action within 150 days of authorizing the investigation of an ethics complaint or if the hearing is conducted within 180 days of authorizing the investigation of the claim so the take action you know in the rules where it states that ethnicity or ethics hearing subcommittee i would even argue that it could be interpreted that the ethics subcommittee the first level because in these cases the educators get a good bit of due process they have the first first committee ethics subcommittee reviews a report they just have that report and then they make a determination from that report then if they reject it they can go to an evidentiary hearing and

042then have witnesses and people can make their case and evidentiary hearing panel can make a determination in this case the ethics subcommittee that first level took action uh recommended a revocation within 94 days of the authorization so i could even look at that as there was action taken um as that could be an interpretation of it so you're you're relying on this july 10 2017 reasonable belief correct around that time frame then i also want to ask about the slicer case i'm just reading it here quickly i'm not sure putting on my judge have for a minute i'm not sure how that helps you here because it seems to me in that case the court says shall mean shall and that's a conditioned precedent to taking any action true and so the thing that really

043in that case that um i would like to point the board to is when they are talking about so they talk about two cases from other jurisdictions illinois and florida but uh when they're talking about the illinois statute this court says but again the illinois statute did not include the mandatory word shout nor did it state the submission of the claim was a prerequisite and so the arkansas statute at issue in the instance case is different it mandates that a compliant a complaint be filed with the plant board within 10 days of discovering the defect and that this is a prerequisite for any legal action thus the consequences for failure to act are spelled out in section 223 of two 102 a so our argument here is that this statute doesn't set out a consequence

044that specific statute in this uh case here did it said you have to do this within 10 days in order to get this remedy and this our statute it just says shout it doesn't say hey um if you don't follow this it's revoked or if you don't follow this then there's a dismissal so our interpretation is that um that yeah since it does not have an actual consequence that shall is more directory than mandatory i think if it just said shall complete its investigation of an ethics complaint colon i'd be more compl more compelled to agree with your argument but since it says and take action it seems to me that that's a time limit on when action can be taken right and so then i would rely then on my second argument that in

045this case there was the ethics subcommittee made the recommendation and also to point back to in this case also in the statute where it says if title limitations imposed under the section may be waived when reasonable under certain circumstances including without limitation inclement weather state or national emergencies or other unforeseeable events by the educator if the time limitation is posed upon the ethics subcommittee or ethics subcommittee if the time limitation is imposed upon the educator so i'd also argue here that in this case specifically um it was reasonable by the time i received the uh request for hearing that that hearing notice that was sent out in november of 2017 set that hearing for january of 2018 it was continued by the educator and then for nine months like i said uh my predecessor is

046no longer here but i did find that letter that said hey we've been trying to get in contact with you let's try to settle this case so then i would assume that there was discussions of settlement because they had a settlement hearing in september of 2018 that um this is not just a case where it just sat there 100 stagnant for two and a half years um obviously you know cases get continued and things of that sort to where uh the unclean hands doctrine like i put in my brief to where you know here we're coming asking for relief uh from this board to dismiss this case however there was a continuance there um there was a settlement uh conference within that time frame to try to get the case settled to where i would

047agree if it was just 100 just sat there stagnant and there was no action going on then yeah that would be unacceptable but in this case i think that it was well within reason and i know this really shouldn't affect how i read this but i'm going to ask it anyway if we were to hold that this 150-day 180 day is mandatory how many other cases are we going to see going forward where the same arguments are being made or do you typically get these resolved within that time period so for a good majority of the cases they go through this process they go through um goes for the subcommittee for an authorization the subcommittee authorizes the complaints the investigators go out and investigate that case and then it goes before that subcommittee and they

048make a recommendation and then it's accepted and so and then it comes for state board it is done however when there is a hearing involved it takes a lot longer uh and the reason why is because you got the way all our panel members they are volunteer we have ms saracen here who's fantastic and thank you for coming and helping us keep up on track getting these cases caught up but um we gotta we gotta get our hearing panel set we gotta get you know our court reporter we gotta get witnesses also available so they testify so sometimes those types of situations just make it difficult to have it within 30 days of um because that statute saying that 108 days but um i couldn't give an exact number but um there were there would

049there would be some but again i would argue again mr pecker on that and same thing with this case is that it's reasonable within those circumstances because again also it could be the other side's attorney that needs um a continuance or something like that and so um but yes there i mean they're they're they're just like you all saw last month we had a case from 2017. i have a question yes ma'am uh was the objection on the timeline brought up during any of this time or is that a recent objection that has come forward no ma'am miss brock did raise that objection and accept him and after that settlement conference of september 2018 and then um i came on board uh late april on these cases and so when uh i saw that um

050scheduled for a hearing and so it was argued before the evidentiary hearing panel and they did deny um that motion and the case did continue to a hearing that's how we're here today um uh and they had voted for a revocation in that both levels does anyone else have a question okay so it's my understanding that we now will vote uh whether or not the hearing would go forward based on uh whether we think xiaomi shall or shell is a suggestion or in in this case whether or not that it should be dismissed because we failed to adhere to that timeline and miss brock did you uh if the if the madam chair allows oh you're wanting to say something yes absolutely miss fredo is there a reason i can't let her speak at this

051point and i will be brave yeah pull that down so i can see you can't hear you okay thanks i have my glasses this time i just wanted to address a couple of things that came up that weren't addressed when i initially spoke to you all mr dugan had asked for the board to consider that action was taken when the reasonable belief letter was sent out however i want to point i think it's very important to look at the statutory language it's it states that the investigation of an ethics complaint and action taken is to be completed within that 180 days in the event a hearing is conducted so it is clear there's a different timeline if a hearing isn't requested and that's 150 days so if the action taken was just the reasonable belief

052letter it wouldn't even provide for time for hearing to be requested so clearly that letter is not what is meant by action taken and in fact rather than a rule that sets forth what it means for action to be taken i have cited this statute in arkansas code section 16 7-17-428 and it specifically defines that term that action taken means that the state board of education has taken an action to address the complaint by revoking suspending or imposing another sanction so that is not the committee that is the board and i just wanted to clarify that okay is your client currently working is she working she is not working working is she currently employed as an educator in arkansas no your honor okay thank you i mean not your i'm used to that it doesn't

053matter honorable that they may have promoted me i mean who knows i'm so used to having to say that when i argue before a judge that's fine i've got many here today that's right so also in connection with the argument that this is directory not mandatory i'm i'm just not sure what directory means but i do know that the law even cited by mr duggan states that we go by when we interpret a statute and that's what i'm asking you all to do today you just go by the clear language and it says shall and that's what i'm asking you to enforce okay thank you thank you also i would point i'm sorry we were asked and it is included in the transcript at page 185 i was asked by the prior counsel to sign

054a waiver of my clients rights to this timeliness into this 180 days and you'll know that it's in there because i refuse to sign it and it is not signed we did not waive that okay do i hear a motion one way or the other regarding the timeliness of the hearing based on the arguments that you've heard i don't like the result you know i know that mr dugan works hard and his staff works hard i don't think this was his fault i think this was someone else's but i think the statute says what it says and the assembly intended to give the teachers a right to expeditious resolution on things like this and i think counsel for ms whitby has it correct and so i would move to dismiss the complaint for lack of

055timeliness okay we have a motion by mr pacron to dismiss the complaint based on the timeliness do i have a second second second by mr williamson i guess we should take a roll call vote may i ask a question you certainly may mr dugan if you'll pull it up straight if if that motion were to go through does that mean what are the results of that uh that this case would be dismissed that there would be um it'd be done on that you know point so and so there would be no information on a teacher license or any of that correct yeah so there's kind of like ms brock said um and i think ms zook asks a good question is has this person been teaching uh until there's an actual state board action on

056someone their license has no action taken against it so um that they're you're correct so they could continue to teach correct yes there would be um yeah no action so yeah okay thank you could could could there be any um trainings agreed to nothing could happen yeah it's dismissed yeah you know i think the concern that the the board always has is as the people that are allowed to be with the children but i also understand that shall at least when it comes to us and statute and law shall mean shall and so uh we'll have a roll call vote now uh secretary mr secretary dr moore mr williamson yes ms mcphetrich yes ms dean miss dean miss chambers dr hill yes ms newton mr petron yes five votes okay uh motion passes i will

057say this one of the things that has been expressed as troubling by this board during the years i've been on it is trying to weigh the timeliness of something getting done as opposed to taking a chance of an educator staying in the classroom when possibly you know that so but i also understand that plsb board is a volunteer board i also understand that they're limited on the number of people that they have that go out and do the investigation so it could be that a conversation with the legislators about these kinds of things show you show best efforts in those regards i don't know if my board agrees with me or not but this has come up quite quite frequently nothing to the extent of the need to revoke a license but and i know

058you know you all are the messengers and we totally understand that but um the case has been presented and the vote has been taken and so if you all want to leave i would just say that since the educator did not disagree with the facts of the violation but they didn't agree with the sanction that was placed that this has been a two-year opportunity to learn a very valuable lesson so if y'all want to leave you may thank you mr duggan mr james okay next we have the mule rider learning educators advanced practicum leap for short and uh joan well you don't look you certainly have changed since the last time i thank you i was very confident uh michael rowan with the division filling in for john luna in august the board approved southern

059arkansas university's leap program uh dr neely dobbins of seu we're presenting a request to expand this program okay do you want all of us to introduce ourselves first i think that uh we've got a whole group that's fine i i don't need to swear anybody in is that correct i'm looking for my lawyer's eye back there you can just not do i need to swear these people in okay thank you all right i'm neely dobbins from southern arkansas university jim tucker superintendent el rada school district good to see you mr tucker good to see you javonna mccall special programs coordinator camden fairview robert edwards superintendent of the fayette county school oops opal anderson federal programs and curriculum a little fayette county wayne fawcett superintendent of paris school district good to see each of you now

060let's hear it from okay so we came to you guys in august and talked about our mule rider elite program and we have piloted it in magnolia school district with two of our student teachers this term and it has gone awesome so that is a big positive uh support is the key that is one thing that we have ensured the districts have been great in support and one of the good things that we have seen is that the teachers that these candidates are working with have rallied around them in those schools and really supported them as well and so it's been very successful both of those candidates have been offered the teaching position to start in january so we're really excited about it with that being said we had a lot of school districts that

061we've shared the information with and they are excited to jump on board we are working with pair pros and our student teaching candidates in this so they're in their last semester just kind of an over reminder it would be their very last culminating field experience that our candidates would be in um for middle school and elementary programs it's a little bit different based on the gpa because of those content courses for for middle school and secondary people but all licensure exams have to be passed to include the plt right now which sau is continuing to use as one of our exits so they would have to have it and all of their content test passed to be in the program to be accepted this spring we have 20 candidates that are currently eligible and 10

062of them have said that if a position becomes available that they would like to do that the other 10 have declined and we are allowing our students that choice because if they don't feel like they're ready we sure don't want them out there doing that and so we are asking for you guys to allow these districts to partner with us and and this same type of experience you have any questions dr moore yes thank you all for being here today um are we timeline talking about students being placed this spring in classes or for next fall yes so for this spring okay i do have some concerns about that and wonder at what grade levels well is it block scheduling who are they replacing and that kind of thing so like in in the schools

063who are they replacing yes and then maybe i'll go ahead and ask all my questions you're good and then whoever feels the best can answer it um i think this is a great program and one we've seen in other places we last month had fort smith here and their model uafs was very intensive in which the the teacher was the teacher of record was that mentor and pushing into that classroom the whole time and i know that you all might not have the capacity to do that but i do want to reiterate what you said in which that mentor is so critical and so that if you all are giving them um the ability to spend more time than just a normal first year teacher i want to hear about that and then i guess

064i do have one last question for paris there's some i have a little bit of concern about the distance from sau and how y'all are going to overcome that okay okay so i can let me give you kind of the big overview and then if anybody wants to jump in you guys are all welcome so one of the things is that we actually have an adjunct that works really closely with us that is the assistant superintendent correct yes okay in paris and so she works with us a lot and deals with any like so anytime we have northern placements in that area she works closely with them so that helps with the paris part uh so some of the things when you're asking about wide transition like what's happening um i know that when we've

065talked with our districts we have some sick so it's some sick situations that are um taking place uh we had a teacher that actually just is leaving so it's some of those kinds of situations and uh to fill these positions we are providing the districts with information on the eligible candidates based on their need and then they're able to interview and those kinds of things to decide if they want our candidates or not obviously our candidates if there is a teacher that is licensed and able to go into the classrooms at that time that would be our expectation we do not want them to choose our candidates over a certified teacher but in the case that there's not someone that can do that that that's when we want to step in and be able to

066help because we feel like our candidates are prepared and ready especially if we have that support piece and and if magnolia was here i think they could speak and provide a little bit more of that but magnolia not only has worked and they have instructional facilitators in those classrooms a lot on our end we as university supervisors are working with those candidates we're in contact at least two to three days a week how was school today do you have any questions what are those kinds of things so our university supervisors have really hands on the ground ensure that they're okay and are checking with colleagues beside them um you know how how are things going there and instructional facilitators so we're trying to get multiple perspectives with these candidates to ensure that that support is

067in place for them okay all right okay so dr moore in regards to your comment about teacher support in el rada school district on our seven campuses we have a math instructional facilitator and a literacy instructional facilitator that provides support and resources to teachers this year we partner with new teacher center out of california we have a very i think impressive new teacher induction program to where every new teacher second year teacher and third year teacher have constant support from a dedicated mentor that has extensive training first-year teachers receive 180 minutes of mentor time per month and that's not counting the instructional facilitators as well so as far as teacher support we're ready yeah that's great i i it is hard to be a first year teacher particularly walking in in the middle of the

068year where you might walk into a classroom with procedures already in place in that do you all feel that you are going to be pre-training them you know before january so that when they're walking in they're able to navigate that we have professional development time before the semester starts second semester that we'll spend with that teacher okay thank you okay in terms of support and we have a mentoring system in place we have a highly successful agri program our second teacher left us unexpectedly and we have a really strong main i guess you would call main agri teacher and she referenced dr carrickson my assistant superintendent who has been and still is i believe on the adjunct faculty for sau so we have the support systems in place yes it's uh putting a college presumed

069to be college graduate in a high school class in a plant science agri program is not ideal but uh we were we're facing a situation not of our choosing with trying to replace this teacher to continue a really strong aggregate program as far as the distance i i it's my understanding and you can correct this i think that there are some people that are interested that maybe have some contacts in russellville or in the area that maybe they can stay with and and make that commute now i may be wrong about that but thank you i would just say at this time we have no positions open but would love the opportunity to be able to partner with should something come open and and we do have guidelines in place to for for the training

070yes i would also like to speak to the support that the teachers will be offered we're presently implementing the professional learning community at word system so we have collaborative teams for our grade level teams as well as content area teams so our teachers would have the support of a team as well as a mentor and they would also be enrolled in the new teacher institute at the co-op and just to add to what mr ellwood said some of the things that we have in place we do have mentoring we have teachers our first year teachers they do go to our local co-op with mentoring we also use some teachers sometimes to help some of our new people we have an instructional facilitators at our elementary campus that could help the elementary staff and i also

071help those that's at the high school thank you anything else i guess one more comment if there is a elementary teacher being placed that they go through the rise training with the district and receive additional reading training yes so not only are our elementary teachers we have been approved obviously by um the department for our we are like our proficiency pathway so our candidates are getting nine hours um that have been approved through through the department for that but then also all of our candidates as they go out are then put in training yeah great thank you offer and so is the reading test that's going to be required as or you're already administering that yes okay okay and uh anybody else have a question before i continue okay uh the thinking in terms of

072not only the mentor but in buildings where the principal is a strong instructional leader and we all know how critical that is and also the emphasize the pd on the classroom management because if they following someone who maybe didn't have this she says procedures down so we don't want to run them off before they get started okay do have a motion moved by miss newton second by mr williamson all in favor congratulations your motion passed thank you we appreciate y'all okay does anybody need a break before we start the charter panel decision reviews okay we will start miss webb oh miss mclaughlin good morning kelly mclaughlin charter school office we have arkansas connections academy they were approved on october 15th 2019. uh representatives from the academy appeared before the charter authorizing panel requesting an amendment

073to their charter by unanimous vote the panel approved the request uh the state board may exercise a right of review and conduct a hearing on the charter authorizing panel's determination at the state board's next meeting so today you are just deciding if you wish to review or not review and we have ms darla gardner the superintendent on the phone for any questions do any of you have any questions of ms gardner do i have a motion move not to review move not to review all in favor oh sorry second got ahead of myself all right uh i have a motion by miss newton second by miss dean uh all in favor aye opposed motion passes congratulations uh miss gardner thank you very much miss chambers if you have questions just jump in uh so sometimes

074out of sight and i fail to ask you so please feel free to jump in if i if you have something and i fail to mention uh the next is lisa academy's request on october 15 2019 representatives of lisa academy appeared before the charter authorizing panel requesting amendments to their charter by unanimous vote the panel approved the request the state board may exercise a right to review and conduct a hearing on the panel's determination we do have dr fatih beaugreg ms barone uh we we have the superintendent from little rock prep uh miss donna broyles and also the little rock prep school board uh president on the line for you if you should have any questions okay this is basically uh lisa doing for little rock prep what they did in springdale when they took

075over um already approved charter so the increase in their cap is is like not an increase in the seats and charter but in fact it's just an increase because of their current camp do you have any uh questions of those on the phone or any comments or questions of miss mclaughlin yes ms sirk ms mcvetridge i have a question question on their counselors to me it wasn't very clear as to how many counselors they have on staff and is there a counselor at each one of their sites i didn't think it was very clear i will let the school personnel answer that question who from lisa would like to answer the question and did you hear the question yes madam chair this is luanne barone assistant superintendent of lease academy and for the counselor question

076we ask for only a waiver to sub-sections for the um for the certification and for which uh plan we're going to use we do have counselors in all schools we actually have more than the required number of counselors in our schools so we are providing the services okay thank you that answers my question okay anything else do you have a motion motion not to review mr mr mac uh pekron uh moved uh to not review seconded by mr williamson all in favor opposed motion carries congratulations thank you very much next is river valley virtual academy on october 15 2019 representatives of the river valley virtual academy appeared before the charter authorizing panel requesting an amendment to their charter by unanimous vote the panel approved the request and you the state board may exercise their right

077to review and conduct a hearing on the panel's determination we do have jennifer feeney the director of the academy on the line for any questions do you have any questions of miss feeney do you have a motion move to not review moved uh by mr williamson second by miss newton all in favor aye i was opposed motion passes congratulations miss feeney thank you next is the excel center on october 15 2019 representatives of the excel center appeared before the charter authorizing panel requesting an amendment to their charter by unanimous vote the panel approved the request and the board has the right to review the panel's decision at their next meeting we do have ms tamika davis the principal present in the meeting today if you should have any questions okay [Music] any questions by a

078member of the board i think i'd like you to explain better to me about the and mis hyatt the request they have regarding counseling and i think to reiterate we have paid particular attention to this since the legislature moved that any waiver that a charter gets whether you have a student in that charter from your district or not that you also can request the waiver so would you help me understand what this waiver entails in the counseling area sure mary claire hyatt division of elementary and secondary education um it's going to come naturally one day i promise um so i think there was some confusion because in their original amendment request they had a more broad request for the counseling waiver frequently what happens during the charter authorizing panel meeting is that if i have

079legal concerns that a waiver is too broad or too narrow or the rationale doesn't meet the request i'll bring those up and a lot of times the amendment request will be amended at uh at the charter authorizing panel so that's kind of what happened here today we narrowed the waiver because they had asked for some of the sections of the counseling law that they didn't actually need in order to achieve whatever their intended goals are and i'll ask them i need to just peek at which section they ended up keeping really quickly if you wouldn't mind sure thank you kelly so the only section of the counseling legislation that they have asked for now in their amendment request is just the one section about licensure they held a guidance counselor licensure waiver in the previous

080legislation they still have a waiver under the standards so this is really just a um shoring it up with the with the new with the change in legislation from act 190 of 2019. so you're saying they may be a licensed counselor social worker or whatever but they may not be in a guidance counselor as we think of in the education field and i miss davis might want to provide a little bit more information on exactly how they're meeting the needs of their students i knew i'd get you up here miss davis if you'll identify yourself sure good morning tamiko davis school director for the excel center so um yeah so they're not what you guys would consider a licensed guidance counselor but all of our students do have a life coach who serve and does

081those activities related to what a traditional guidance counselor would do okay do we have anybody with questions or concerns about that doctor just to clarify all of your students are 18 or older is that kind of about 19 above okay and y'all are the only are y'all the only facility that does this in the state yes okay it's exciting to hear some of the things y'all are doing and hope that that can grow around the state as we do this so thank you for coming today any other questions comments dr well i've promoted you now to doctor i guess you do have a juris doctor so you can call me doctor anytime do i have a motion move miss dean to not review second second second by dr moore all in favor aye opposed okay

082you have your waiver if you'd like to go back to school that'd be great with us next we have consideration of charter authorizing panel decision on district conversion public charter school application for adventure online miss webb on october 15 2019 representatives from the adventure online academy appeared before the charter authorizing panel requesting a charter in the waldron school district by unanimous vote the panel approved the request the state board may exercise a write a review and conduct a hearing on the charter authorizing panel's determination of the state at the state board's next meeting and mr fielding who is the superintendent is on the line okay uh anyone on this side have questions dr muller i do for tracy or miss webb if you don't mind so this is a online high school that will be

083run by a local school district correct how many of those do we have in the state now we have three no i'd have to check on that and get back with you okay we have three open enrollment that are virtual only but i have to check on the district conversions okay i would like at some point and maybe this is a friday thing but to get a report of all those and what that looks like because to me it's very unique i saw that they're using the edge annuity program but i would i would like us to have a deeper dive because it sounds like that's a growing thing and something more districts are considering for various reasons and want to learn from them and also have them learn from each other absolutely and i

084think we have a we have three models we're doing the online right now so we have the open enrollments arkansas virtual arkansas connections we have the district conversions which this this would be a district conversion and then we do have some traditional public schools doing online programs without a conversion status so so there are all different kinds and i think we'd be happy to to provide something to you thank you okay i think miss fielding or mr fielding sorry are you still on the line mr fielding gone away i guess i think my question was um i was in a joint ed committee and and one of the things that rears its head in certain parts of the state is the lack of connectivity so uh are we if a student wanted to be in

085this program is there a place all right thank you i was wondering about students in your district who might want to participate but they may not have the wi-fi connectivity at their home is there some place they can go either to have that access or to download the lessons so they can work offline at their home uh yes ma'am we uh in our county we are a countywide school i don't know if you're familiar with this small city in this county but we are currently uh working with our arkansas valley electric cooperative they're actually working on running a lot of uh new fiber optic cables which is going to help but one of the things that we were also going to offer was if a family could not did not have access to internet we

086were going to provide them with what's called a hot spot connector which which can give them access we were also going to offer them we have a central office but if a student needed to come up here to get wireless access then they could do that also okay and i noticed you did not request any waivers regarding the counseling but i was wondering will this put your counselors over the limit uh no ma'am it does not but we actually uh like one of the other schools that was talking just a little bit ago we actually have more counselors than we actually need for the number of students that we have and in addition to that one of the personnel that's going to be a part of this program is actually a certified counselor so it

087was something that we took into consideration when we um when we started this program we thought it would be just a good thing to have a counselor a certified counselor working with us just in case any of these students might need that along the way and i do commend you for uh the offer to provide transportation for students as well thank you we're going to handle that on a need but need by need basis right i appreciate that uh do you have a motion motion not to review uh mr pecker on move to not review second second by dr hill all in favor aye congratulations next we have what you can see here oh at center point academy on october 15 2019 representatives from center point academy of agriculture and skilled trade appeared before the

088charter authorizing panel requesting a district conversion charter in the center point school district by unanimous vote the panel approved the request the state board may exercise a right of review and conduct a hearing on the charter authorizing panel's determination at the state board's next meeting and the principal dr nick mounts is on the phone dr mounts are you with us okay we'll see if there's any questions or comments miss newton uh just comments uh i was very excited when i saw this coming coming forward and the model that that is going to benefit students in in this area of the state and similar to what i'd asked about last month when we were talking about the the model for uh teachers uh interns going in to a classroom being able to to get the different

089models together and sharing uh information um this is fantastic and i would love to see this expanded to different areas of the state that that have have a need if somehow or another we could learn from this model and maybe uh get some people together in a room and start talking to other districts because i i think this is something that is greatly needed in our state and and could be duplicated if we had the right people kind of helping helping us along so i don't know commissioner if that's something that we could look at doing or how we could get that started and make make it people aware sometimes just a lack of awareness right dr mounts are you on the phone yet okay i had a couple of questions and so uh i

090wondered if it uh would they be uh helping the students have a transportation and access to a counselor and would that put the counselor over the number of that they can have by statute so if you can find those things out and just shoot us an email about it or whatever here comes miss hyatt mary claire hyatt um so i'm not exactly sure about the transportation but i can tell you that in the legal section they didn't request any waivers of the guidance counselor and i believe they're going to be providing providing it as the as the law requires um so there's no requested waivers under the district conversion for any of the new legislation or any standard related to guidance council okay thank you for that do you have a motion ms newton move

091did not review second second second by mr peck run all in favor hi congratulations dr mounts and now we have uh south side and i believe i saw south side in the audience on october 15 2019 representatives of the south side junior high school appeared before the charter authorizing panel requesting a charter a district conversion charter in the south side school district by unanimous vote the panel approved the request the state board may exercise the right of review and conduct a hearing on the charter authorizing panels determination at the next state board meeting we have two of the people in the audience mr rich and miss humphries do any of you have questions of them if y'all will come because i want to discuss another little thing with you before we vote roger rich superintendent

092south side school district novella humphrey director of curriculum and federal programs at the south side school district okay uh we hear a lot of talk now about wraparound and whole child and community school and based on what i know of what's going on in independence county thanks to uh two of you as the leaders of that do you consider what you have more of a community school more of a wrap around more of a whole child or all three i considered all three we're looking to take care of any need that any child might have but those wrap around services that we're looking at as far as a mental health piece with kids is looking to be proactive instead of reactive as we have been in the past so got lots of great partners who

093are going to really help us in that area and the and the out growth of that came from who all of the partners that that came up with that idea in addition to your leadership we our leadership team we sit down with white river health systems and with our care with the families in who we partner with right now as well as our chamber and all all folks at the table and anything goes as far as trying to help a kid not only in our school district but throughout independence county as well and i think one of the things that particularly impresses me is not only do we have you all from uaccb a public university but we also have lion which is a private so i i can't think of anybody other than the

094ice cream man that's not been involved in this community effort so uh i do want to commend you and and appreciate all you're doing for those students in that area and you also do students down to two years old am i right we have them down to 18 months oh 18 months you've backed up another six months okay uh do i have a motion i i just want to say i appreciate that you are focusing on the junior high level um because a lot of times right now especially in this space we're just looking at high school and so backing up before that is really exciting and we'll want to have y'all come post this to learn what you're learning and see the results that you're seeing from it thank you and i think that

095will be helpful too with that starting in eighth grade with the s of your future plan which you all have been doing you know my future story for a while you have a motion most interpreted moved by dr moore second by uh miss dean all in favor and the opposed motion passes thank you be safe driving home okay next we have my friends from north little rock north little rock school district is here to ask for an act 1240 waivers as a reminder the school district will have 20 minutes to make their presentation if there is any opposition they will also have 20 minutes and then the district will have five minutes to respond before the q a begins uh as you know act 12 40 of 2015 allows the school district to petition the

096state board of education for all or some of the waivers granted to open enrollment public charter schools we have representatives from north little rock school district here seeking waivers for teacher licensure flexible schedule and class size and teaching load for their program that they are moving out to all the schools in their district or most of them their 90 days actually expires today and they have requested for five years which would end on october 14 2024 so we have you will want to swear in cheryl reinhardt human resource director carly cercini assistant superintendent mr bobby acklin superintendent we have mr michael clark principal mrs tina bryant he is one of their lead teachers and mrs gwen leaker a counselor if those of you who she just named will stand and raise your right hand do

097you swear affirm that the testimony you're about to give shall be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth thank you and whoever wants to start the presentation well uh go ahead and identify yourself uh and secretary and to all the board i'm bobby eckland superintendent of north little rock school district uh i just came to make the president to make an introduction of myself because i certainly didn't come to do the presentation but i do have uh with me a team of experts from north little rock that is going to show you a presentation that we've gone over and we also want to say to you we appreciate the opportunity to come before you today and we also appreciate uh the uh camaraderie that we have with the state board and with

098our uh secretary uh very user-friendly and we appreciate that and we consider you to be our partner so we're going to start our presentation we're going to ask ms saraceni to come and start that good morning i'm carly cericini the assistant superintendent the infamous carly saraceni doing all things rise and all things dyslexia and i appreciate you so much for that well thank you we're working awful hard and we have a great staff that's and the video is terrific they are terrific and uh we're so proud of our teachers and students for this big change but today i'm here to talk about why we are asking for these waivers about three years ago we were in front of you and we were asking waivers for our middle school because we took on initiative to implement

099opportunity culture and i know some of you may know what opportunity culture is and what it is and may not know what it is and so we've got some slides on it but opportunity culture is really a two prong it makes it to where we have small learning communities within a large community especially we started in our middle school because that was our school in need and on down you'll see that we've gone from a d to a c and i'm very excited and especially with 761 students that's hard to do but opportunity culture really puts that small community but at the same time it's a pathway for our teachers and when i say pathway we have one here today that started as a para and now she's a teacher this is her second year

100and so the waivers helped us get her to become a teacher and so it's just really exciting that it's not only helping our kids in that smaller community and and giving that opportunity for our excellent teachers to have more reach because we're in a team and each team has a lead teacher and that's your excellent teachers and we just so happened to have one of our lead teachers was a milken award winner two years ago and so we're really taking it on our school district has embraced this and now we're expanding to six of our nine elementaries and we're expanding it up to our high school and then our conversion charter coe and with that we do a lot of things and so um these waivers are important to to uh reach our goal with

101opportunity culture because it is a lot of flexing uh flex scheduling uh we kind of wrap it around what's needed to be whatever we need for our students whether it's testing or that transitioning to the high school and we last year we took our 8th graders over to the high school for a day it was great but we had to really be careful with our time because we wanted to let our high school students not attend that afternoon while we brought the eighth grade over so they could meet all our staff at the high school it was a great transition very very wonderful experience so these waivers are very important to us but i do want to also tell you that i know you're all familiar with the three tiers for the essa and opportunity

102opportunity culture is a tier two for essa it's been approved there's all kinds of research on it and it's in this powerpoint where air has done if you just back up you can kind of see they also did a really good article in the new york times and so this is a proven program it's research-based it's not something that we haven't piloted and we know it works because we have seen growth with that um our i guess our middle school and i would have to ask mr clark for sure but i think we were we've been improvement for about seven or eight years so for us to get up to sea you can really tell it is working and i don't know what better to say than you can see what this has done for

103us because we want teachers of diversity and that's so hard to do because there's not that many going into the programs and so this gives us that pathway for those diverse populations we are looking for not only teachers of color but for the hispanic population that we serve so getting them in there and providing them with opportunity to be a para but in a path and we have several partnerships with different universities and we have worked with the department of education so that we have mousse that you know those are the ones that can't stop working to go back and do the student teaching so we've done a lot of mousse with if you work for us for three years in direct community direct contact with students then that's in lieu of your student teaching

104but we then give you uh experiences outside of that area and so this is really working for us i think on one slide that we have and also we pay them because other other job careers have uh career ladders and we have a career ladder for teachers and also for our paris that we call reach associates because they take on a different role than just your regular para they're actually in there teaching with the teacher and when we ask for class size load you know you might have that very best math teacher and it's so hard to get a math teacher or a really good science teacher so this is allows with that rich associate in there with that teacher it allows them to have 35 students and still 30 students but it's never we

105never go over the limits without having a second adult in the classroom with that teacher and so it's it's it's a win-win for us it's working and it's giving pathways within our district and if i think it's the next and here are some partners that we partner with um public impact is opportunity culture comes out of north carolina it was started in charlotte north carolina at charlotte mackerelsburg school district and it's expanding across the united states we also want to build that leadership capacity with our teacher leaders and so we rely heavily on the arkansas leadership academy we have eight teams right now going through team institute and uh we so we really feel we're building our capacity but as we expand this out uh we need these waivers for those other buildings okay miss

106newton has a question yeah i want to back up to something you said that that comments you said that that you had a uh understanding that if a a para had worked for three years that that would take the place of their student teaching are you working in conjunction with a university how are you doing that yes we have mlus with the university and we're working very closely with them which universities are getting that we have a mou with harding currently that we're doing that with and this is for your degree completers uh you may not have um you may have 60 hours or you may have 90 hours but you do not have a a complete degree so we are working with them so on that so that's the only university that you're working

107with we have some others that we're working with but usually it's mat but they're the only one that we're working with a degree completer and if you work with us for three years we also changed our policy or we made a policy that if you're a classified employee and you're enrolled in a teaching program that's approved by the department uh we reimburse you six hours a year but then you owe us a year of teaching because we're looking at not only attracting but retaining those teachers anything else okay go ahead no you go right ahead oh miss mcadoo sorry well i was just going to make a comment but i can't wait until no no go ahead i was just going to say that i had the opportunity a couple of months ago to hear

108from your teacher leaders and learn a little bit about everything that you're doing i was very impressed and excited i just wanted to say that um the district is very cheryl reinhardt north of iraq school district i apologize uh the district is very committed to this process and we have moved into it gradually starting with sixth grade then we went to seventh and eighth grade and now we're expanding it because we've seen success but we're very committed on many levels as you can see with our partnerships and with our salary schedules and these waivers that we have used have have been a large factor in making all of this possible so we are asking for teacher licensure flexible scheduling and class sizing teaching load we may go a little bit fast because we know you

109have a important agenda today so if i go too fast just let me know but our teacher licensure waivers give us opportunities for reach associates to become teachers we've had four of those paris to paris or other classified employees to become teachers we have opportunities for content experts and we probably won't talk a lot about this today but especially if we get into ford ngl and do the academies that we're looking into then some of those content experts will be uh related to those academies and that would be a very beneficial waiver for that that's on the horizon we're still working on that we do put into place a plan for licensure for all of our teachers we uh they they have waivers but we give them i try to give them less than three

110years but we give them three years i make them sign something that they are telling me what they're when they're going to take the practice what they're going to do next what program they're enrolled in so that they have an expectation of becoming licensed so the teacher licensure waiver is an opening and an opportunity but it is not our end game we want our teachers licensed we've already talked a little bit about some of our supports that we have put into place and partnerships with universities we use praxis supports at the universities to help teachers new people become teachers we've worked closely with division of elementary and secondary for licensure and we've worked closely with summit learning and public impact to provide the essential professional development that not only existing teachers but new teachers who

111come into the field are not yet licensed they need that support as well and that that comes during the school year and in the summer uh we're focused on teacher retention uh sixth graders had a great success story that we're proud to show you we had a turnover of 11 teachers in sixth grade in the 2016-17 school year by 2018-2019 only three and we really only consider that two because one of those teachers was outstanding and she went to work for summit learning so so we're actually very proud of her but we have the leadership training opportunities and so we want our teachers to grow into teacher leadership we want them to be in our principles as well they learn a lot about working as a team and of course we always provide the mentoring

112that's needed for new teachers we provide that as well you skipped over the tuition reimbursement policy could you talk with me about that please ms saraceni also addressed that a little bit but if they are the tuition reimbursement policy comes in if they've been employed for three years uh then we will reimburse their tuition for six hours six credit hours per year with a grade of v i believe i think that a c is not acceptable so um so that tuition reimbursement policy is really important to the reach associates and the paris because they don't um always have the means to just put that money up front and pay for tuition um and so they at least do get reimbursed for that and it and it's it's been very successful so flexible scheduling has provided

113our students a benefit with student focused learning and blended learning we're using the summit learning platform and it has has helped us be able to work a little more easily with students on that i don't think i have it on this slide but another one we have also uh mentoring one-to-one mentoring for their for these students who uh use the summit learning platform and um we might what do we want winter yes talk on this how the you wanna i'm gonna step in on this okay you have you have six minutes oh okay i am six minutes okay i uh really fast i'm glenn lejay i'm the high school counselor north rock high school counselor we have a really big problem because we're such a large school when you want us to stop and test

114it is a nightmare so flexible scheduling would allow us to let grades leave so that we can have an appropriate environment for testing and not have all the bells ringing and kids moving and transitioning and that's really that's my biggest push and my biggest concern at the high school level also we continually are asked to participate in citywide community service projects and we would love to be able to do that to pull grades and allow them to have that experience so i've already talked about the leadership academy if you would like to hear i would love for ms bryant to come and maybe just give two minutes quickly i would love to hear from miss ryan yes hi my name is jatina bryant and i am a sixth grade social studies teacher at norfolk rock

115middle school um the i started out as a reach associate i will be honest um until i became a reach associate it was never my goal to be in the classroom once i was in there with the lead teacher the one that just recently left us to work for summit the opportunity was eye-opening um and it was a great experience and it's something now that i refuse to let go i am going to teach until i retire um but um i i started out i wanted to counsel in the schools i have my bachelor's in communication but my master's in psychology and so when miss carly saraceni came to me with the opportunity i told her that i'd give it a try and it turned out to be the best thing that i've done in

116my life um teaching being in being in the reach associate position i was able to see what teaching was i got to see it from the perspective of being a teacher and not the perspective of standing outside of the classroom i've been in the district for 12 years and so i've had the opportunity of being with children and i thought i could help more in a counseling role but i feel like being in the classroom is literally better for me sorry mr jay so it has been an eye-opening experience for me and that it has really led me to some really great things teaching social studies the content and all of that i've learned a lot and i appreciate the opportunity we appreciate your attitude and the principles [Laughter] he's been standing there patiently waiting

117uh michael clarks principal of north rock middle school sixth grade campus uh this has been a wonderful program that we have had the opportunity to be a part of now for the third year our teacher retention as you can see the numbers that were presented just a while ago have gone from having to replace 11 teachers three years ago to this year it is technically three but the one teacher did go to summit learning so it is made my job easier and not having to go out and find teachers and recruit them to come in because i have had the opportunity to hire four reach associates like miss bryant to take these other positions when people leave so that is on-the-job training that you could not get in a classroom like a college level classroom

118i mean these teach these reach associates that we have hired actually teach they help children in some cases the children don't even know who the actual teacher is and so that is a testament to how our staff is molded this model made it fit for us thank you just to piggyback off of what mr clark said it is very true that the kids most of the time do not know the difference between the teachers i as a reach associate i was teaching at least two to three times a week if not and it was under the supervision of miss dallas and then not only there would be days that she would have to step out and allow me to have the classroom and we would video and we would be able to look at how

119we did things whether it was you know a positive route or a negative route or how we should change things so i taught a lot as a reach associate which made me more confident to teach alone yeah good okay so we're going to speed through if you have questions stop me but we just wanted to say you know when that we now have multi-classroom leaders working in 10 buildings in our school district and they operate plcs they disaggregate data they do wonderful things for our students and we have one more elementary school coming up next year to join in on this as well i mean we feel like we had some really good we went from d to a c at north little rock middle school and also at the center of excellence and these

120waivers don't impact the center of excellence but they use the same waivers and they're having the same success so and they are also using opportunity culture this year um i think that's about all that we have we hope that you will ran our request for district waivers knowing that we are committed to education committed to teacher licensure we are committed to teachers and students in our district ms chambers did you have any questions or comments i do not thank you anyone on either side i just have a quick comment for miss bryant i hope all teachers are excited like you are and your students are very blessed to have you your excitement is contagious miss mcadoo did you talk about your teacher leaders and how you are funding them and how they apply for that

121i don't think i heard you talk about that for as a teacher though okay very important uh teacher leaders have to apply every two years and we are working with evos and we actually have they are they take our data from act aspire and we actually come up with a value added or they come up with that formula i'm not a statistician but they come up with that formula so every two years they have to reapply and show growth to lead that team and so it's it's that kind of accountability also we really reallocate money when they get these stipends it's reallocated from title one a little bit of esa but most of it is all title one funds and so that building principle they have to make that decision this is how we want

122to spend our money but these are in place of a lot of your instructional your coaches we reallocated at the middle school when we started this three years ago we took the salaries that we were the funds that we were using for a science coach a math coach and a literacy coach and it that's a lot of money when you're looking at these are just uh stipends so you can have a lot more leaders and they have kind of uh they have some skin in the game because it's accountability every two years uh well i was just saying and and i looked at your numbers ahead of time on the my school info and it looks like you're narrowing your achievement gap too which is the purpose of the esa used to be in sla

123funds so that's a maybe a goal or it may have been a nice side effect i just want to add to our when we interview for mcl's drts and ras pardon the acronyms uh we select people who they it's a rigorous interview process it's very structured very rigorous they actually go through like three different levels there's a writing component there's they have to show two years of growth not the drts in the ras but but the direct reach teachers do show some of those same higher level achievements as even the mcl's do so it's a rigorous structured interview process and then they're added again that accountability is added to it had to interview the incident i think i think one question that we always like to ask for on the 12 40 waivers is have

124you spoken to your parents and teachers are they aware are they buying into this or is this something that you're doing to them when they choose to have opportunity culture in their school it's a team it's a it's actually a staff a lot of parents are involved as well and we have lots of parent nights any other questions and we also present to our board you have a motion this is a request for five years yes ma'am oh there was one other quick thing i just wanted to add to the flexible scheduling we are not asking for the a waiver from the recess portion of that law thank you i'm not always comfortable with the five year i'd like to make the motion that we approve the waivers for a three-year period i think you

125have to ask them if they're willing to this is different from the charters you you asked them if they're willing to modify their request am i correct on that yes dr aklan here comes the country thank you for that i guess i would just ask why good question i think to just to be able to review it again in a shorter time period i would be more comfortable just personally i think if if if we dropped a ball along along the way that you all would have opportunity to bring us back in so we really would like to stick with the five okay that's your prerogative yes yes we ask for good vote okay am i correct that we would get a report on the status of the waiver every year uh i think we

126already do that those the under the consent agenda that we hear that is the update of course okay i moved to grant the waivers for five years i have a motion by ms newton uh to grant the uh waivers as requested to have a second second second by mr pacron i'll should i get a roll call let's see how the vote goes uh all in favor opposed hearing none motion passes congratulations we look forward to hearing from you in a year okay um lunch is here and uh ready so we'll take a break now we will come back at one o'clock and you did you all get your little things yes [Music] it works for me oh [Music] [Laughter] uh no when we moved because i didn't think i'd be coming back but i did

127i dropped out but i have uh i have to have federal background check for that and tv shots so i'm up on my would you look and see if mr williamson is on the door if he's still on the phone that's fine like a big sister is [Music] laughs afternoon session of the state board of education will come to order the board recognizes there's a great interest and at least one of the items that we'll be discussing this afternoon however anyone in the audience who speaks out of turn or without being recognized by the board forfeits the opportunity to give public comment if public comment is allowed and may be asked to leave the auditorium it is expected that everyone in the audience be respectful of the board and others speaking and not shout yell

128or otherwise disrupt the meeting anyone who is disruptive to the meeting will be asked to leave and may be escorted out of the building we're using robert's rules of order the fire have people have asked us that no one stand there is overflow rooms and live stream in those rooms if a majority of the board votes to allow public comment each person who signs up to give public comment will be allowed two and a half minutes unless i as the chair specifically allow otherwise i would ask that you be respectful of those who are speaking behind you so that the amount of time is not cut short anyone who does not respect the time limitations may not be able to permitted to give public comment in the future meetings public comment will be allowed as

129i said for two and a half minutes on item 13 which is probably the one with the most interest it has four subparts the community advisory board the board member zones the mou and the attendance zones as a public board we welcome public comment in an effort to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to speak we will hear public comment uh following the presentation and discussion of all four sub-tops the part the public comments will be heard prior to any vote if there is a motion and a vote when it's time for public comment i will call names in the order they are listed and then i'll probably call three or four you can line up so that there's no lost time in between when one's person speaks in the next each commenter will be

130given two and a half minutes given the number of people here today to comment please be respectful of the time limit okay the first item on the afternoon agenda is the wilson succeed transfer request ms salas ford good afternoon courtney solis ford for the division yes the first item is a request from the wilson family to transfer their son's succeed scholarship as you know according to the rules that request has to be approved by the state board and mr wilson i believe is available on the phone if you have any questions [Music] miss wilson yeah okay miss wilson is on the phone okay does anyone have questions of this parent do i have a motion move to pray by ms newton second by miss dean all in favor aye thank you the next one is

131yours as well it's the consideration of the diversity and inclusion report on household academy yes and before we get started um with your pleasure madam chair i'd like to introduce the members of our equity assistance staff you all know several months ago they were kind of transferred around the division and brought in as part of the legal unit and i've just really enjoyed working with them being able to see that the work we're doing with schools and improvement and so i would really like to recognize even though they don't want me to lasagna johnson and daisy reyes oliver dillingham couldn't be here today but they have done outstanding work on this report and with schools and i just really want that to be recognized the things that we plan to do and the things that

132we hope to do in making sure that all kids have an equitable access to public education thank all of you very much do you want to explain a little bit about what this group is about the equity assistance yes sure um so the equity assistance unit is the unit within the division that focuses on things like bullying like harassment um recruitment and retention of minority teachers um title ix of um the federal law ensuring again it's all about ensuring equitable access so if there are any barriers that are preventing kids from accessing their general education curriculum activities anything that would prevent kids from being educated as all other kids are being educated those are the things that we are looking at whether it's from a proactive approach such as in with hoss hall what can

133we do to prohibit this from happening or a responsive approach such as if a complaint is filed we also look at section 504 of the rehabilitation act in conjunction with the office for civil rights and making sure that that's followed thank you all right so as you all know on april 11th of this year the state board requested that the equity assistance unit work with house hall academy in a review of diversity and inclusion procedures and develop an action plan if there were areas where we thought they might be able to improve so the equity assistance center the staff that i just mentioned along with our charter school unit mr ballard met several times with staff of hoss hall academy in northwest arkansas we reviewed all of their procedures all of their policies many of

134their practices we went on site and met with them twice once in june and once in august to look at their facilities to actually um excuse me to actually you know look at everything going on in the school districts to examine the facilities we developed the following report to outline for you the activities that we observed the um conduct the actions that were taken and develop some recommendations looking at five key areas which are important in any school to have and ensure a diverse environment so those are maintaining a common understanding of diversity and inclusion establishing diversity goals and recruiting enrolling and retaining a diverse student body and staff and so for each of these areas we looked at again households policies procedures and practices included in the report are the evidence that we found

135where they were meeting these goals and then we identified some areas where we thought additional steps might need to be taken or could be taken in order to help advance their i'm sorry it's very distracting um to advance and continue to meet these goals and progress further so if you look at the report we have each one broken down into those five areas so for example the first recommendation is to maintain a clear and shared understanding of intentional diversity inclusion so even if you have a diverse community in which your school is located you have to be intentional about the actions that you take you can't just let it happen or assume it's going to happen you have to intentionally take those actions so we have included there many of the things that the school

136is already doing as well as the policies that they have in place to encourage diversity inclusion but we did list a few action steps that we thought they could take such as establishing an advisory committee you know representative of the parents and the staff there that could give feedback to the school and i'm not going to go through every action step recommended but if you all have any questions please feel free to let me know the second recommendation is to develop diversity and inclusion goals and actions that have well-defined outcomes a specified time frame for measuring progress and are based on sufficient data analysis again we've listed the things we feel that they are already doing to achieve that goal but then a few additional items that we think they should do such as again

137reviewing their civil rights data looking at maybe complaints that have been filed the outcomes of those complaints doing reviews consistent reviews this is also not just a one-time thing where you go in and look it's having a consistent practice of looking at the data and making adjustments as needed the third recommendation is to utilize targeted recruitment strategies that increase the diversity of student and staff applicant pools again we list all the things that they are currently doing they have you know very clear procedures and practices in how they are recruiting and attempting to get more apple more diverse applicants we did list several recommendations on how they could partner with organizations in that area there are lots of diverse organizations in northwest arkansas that tailor specifically to a certain population and we feel like there

138could be a lot of opportunities to partner with those organizations as well as talking to other charter and traditional school schools throughout the state to identify effective recruiting strategies that's also something that we are focusing on a lot at the department is recruitment and retention and different ways of attracting diverse teachers the fourth recommendation was to maintain an unbiased hiring process for classified and certified staff this says maintain because again we didn't find any indication that they had a biased practice but just steps that can be put in place to ensure that that continues such as using interview questions designed to measure diversity and cultural competence things to eliminate unconscious bias again i think that's something our educator effectiveness unit can very well help the charter school in doing that areas that we're looking at

139through our poverty simulations and our cultural competency to ensure that this continues the fifth one i definitely want to call your attention to because in this we included a lot of data that we think more accurately reflects the current situation at haas hall you know there had been a lot of questions in prior meetings about how they are serving students with needs related to dyslexia their special education students we have included all that data for you they're english learners the languages that were identified by the students and families as being their primary home language information about free and reduced lunch counts the clubs that they have available to students as well as the athletic programs they have available to students and all of that is related to the fifth recommendation to maintain a school environment

140that intentionally supports student and staff diversity again making in those intentional programs intentional steps to foster that that cultural awareness and understanding among all students not just of their own culture but among other cultures a few recommended action steps there as well we do again intend to continue working with hoss hall throughout the next several months you have requested that they come back in june of 2020 and report back on the progress of implementing some of these recommendations the equity assistance unit as well as the charter unit we'll be working with them we will be available to them to help implement some of these things as well as hopefully come up with some other ideas as we learn we want to share that with all of our schools as well from hoss hall today we

141have amelia donovan who is their executive director of special education um and rebecca mall who is their executive director of culture as well as their attorney mark henry who also are available to answer any questions you might have about the work that we've done together or about their continued commitment to you know achieve these goals to work with the department on increasing their diversity among their staff and students dr schottmeyer apologizes he could not be here today he actually is at a diversity certification training in houston um or he would have been here but with that i'll be happy to answer any questions as with the staff from household okay any questions on this side miss newton just just one question um you've got a lot of recommended action steps do you have kind of

142a timeline of kind of how on implementation about you know there's too much to do at once i'm sure so so kind of what are the most important things and kind of a timeline for for implementing those so now that we have compiled the report and gotten all of those our plan is to sit down with the school and develop that timeline like you said some things are more pressing need to be done sooner other things will be long-term plan so we don't have a specific timeline yet but i do know that the school has already been looking at this and in the supplemental report that they provided they addressed some of these things they're already starting to do so it'll just be a collaborative effort of us to develop that timeline okay thank you

143in the report that we got this week and uh this is something that i want to that we've been talking about i've noticed that the number of of uh minority teachers have decreased from the last year and and i know there's a lot of plans but i think it's very important that we have a specific target that we're trying to shoot from so we'll know if we're making progress or not we've had these balloon numbers with no specific target that what we're shooting for and to me as i've shared with the administration at haas that i think the administration will help grow diversity of the school by what they have rather than i see all this focus on the students and i i admire that and i think that's great but i want to see

144a targeted effort on the administration and on the faculty because while you have those teachers identifiable role models i think that would help so that's really important to me yes and i agree with you completely um and i say that because because those numbers there in from 1718 to 18 19 have decreased so you know it's hard to grow when you're declining right and again i agree with you and i as i said that is one of our goals is to conduct an assessment of them as to you know looking at maybe why are they losing staff and what can they do to continue to increase that diversity in their staff but that anyone from the school did you all want to address well well i've been there and and and i think it's so

145important you know it's hard and i know i sound like a broken record but it's hard to go higher from somebody else's diversity of their institution but you have to have a strategic plan to grow your own and i've said that now for three years and and that hadn't taken place so i mean so i think that's important as you go to ask these questions because i've been there and we've heard you don't have to do it today because there's really no explanation that's going it's going to really satisfy what i'm the goals that i'm trying to meet you but that plan because if we come back are you making the first down or are you fumbling you know and those are things that i want to see but i i think it's important to

146come here and say we have a diversity plan but the diversity is decreasing and that that you know i'm on board on the ward now going on four years and this has been on here four years so i think one thing that i would recommend i know the superintendents of fayetteville springdale rogers bentonville there i think there's two others they are all working themselves to get more diversity of faculty and administration within their own schools so i think if all of you working together because if they come up with a candidate but don't have an opening in that area hall might have an opening in that area or now that lisa academy is up there so i think this would be a great way for the charter and the traditional to collaborate right and and

147you know what are y'all doing that's working what have we tried that's working those kind of things so i would encourage that because the diversity up there is is as much in the marshallese and hispanic community as it is in the african-american community so we they need to look at the full spectrum correct and i think working with the institute department of education university of arkansas the elementary i mean the graduates are coming out to have that pop that pool that you can work with and intern and do those type of things you have to be very creative rather than saying we're going to improve but we don't have them don't have a strategic plan that's all i'm saying yeah diversity is tough if you just got five and you get two well it's better

148than what you got right yeah now again i agree with you um those were some of our recommendations as ms zuck stated was to work with those other schools in that area to work with the university of arkansas academy for educational equity they are working on those same things and so instead of reinventing the will we need to be working on those partnerships and again the work that our educator effectiveness unit is doing on training recruitment and retainment so i completely agree with you i can promise you we're working on that and promising last time that we won't come back before us without some specific targeted goals that we can measure because anything that can be measured can be improved but we don't have measurables you don't know if you're improving exactly okay thank you

149i wonder if the university of arkansas would be receptive like the things we heard earlier where they have uh your last semester once you've met all your goals as a teacher to to go into the schools to do their final uh semester and you know once they pass on it like they're doing with magnolia and monticello and uca and ualr and harding and and you know become creative uh in that regard as well so if you will pass that along and those of you thank you for driving down we appreciate it uh do i hear a motion to accept this report and is there a caveat in the acceptance based on having specified goals in the next report because we i just didn't see those goals she's working through that i just want to make

150sure we come in here next time that we're not looking at information without specific goals i know i have to i'm going to step in on that dr hill i don't think it's the department's responsibility to set specific goals uh in this regard for a charter school so if you're asking the department to do that i think that's not appropriate i think that would be something that the the school should come back well i understand okay that's fine i just wanted to clarify who what entity you're asking to do well whose response i guess my frustration is secretary is that we have had this for four years and i've never seen her so we asked did we continue but that that that's included in the charter application and review process which you all have ultimate

151ultimate authority over uh and if that's something that becomes part of that process that's different but but in the middle of a of a charter cycle or of a charter an approved charter so when they come back up for review i i think that would be more appropriate than than requiring those right now and you know i think courtney did a good job of describing what this unit does but i want to just go a little bit further and say you know before this unit was simply um in many respects a compliance unit you know we'd get complaints and they would go out what i've asked this unit to do is to be more proactive and to go and under courtney's leadership to actually offer their services and support to districts to charters to appropriate

152organizations and work with some of those partners that she referenced to to help with regards to districts or schools setting the goals and working to attain those goals but not for us to set those goals themselves we we don't we're not in those communities so that's uh that's something that's more appropriate to be handled at the school level so you can make your motion that accept it with the understanding that the school will come to you with measurable goals but not the department will that work yeah that's okay okay i have a motion by dr hill to have a second second by miss mcfaddridge all those in favor opposed not available [Music] uh the next is uh miss deadman and the public school choice governance rules final did i say all that backwards yes madam

153chair uh this is jennifer dudman i'm an attorney for the division um before you for final approval you have the proposed rules governing public school choice um they are uh coupled with two repeals of the two old school choice rules you'll see the repeal of the opportunity school choice rules and the old public school choice rules because they've been combined into this role the rules were released for public comment on september 13th and a public comment hearing was held on september 26th although we did receive public comments there were no substantive changes to the rule before i find out if others have questions which time stamp will take priority order the resident or the receiving it and it references in 2 3.02 i understand your meaning and the timestamp will depend very much on on

154which district is looking at the student and here's what i mean by that applications are considered in the order in which they're received which means that if i am a non-resident district that's receiving an application i'm not only considering that but also both districts are timestamping it so if i'm the district that is saying i've reached my three percent maximum i'm also considering as they go and you'll see that uh when a student when the three percent net maximum is no longer reached the district is obligated now under these new rules to notify the family of the student they will be doing that in the order in which they've received that application so it depends on whether we're looking at it from how many can come into my school or whether we're looking at it

155from we've reached our three percent maximum on students who are leaving and now we need to notify those families as more availability is reached and that will be explained to the districts yes what's happening the rules is both of them are date stamping their applications so depending on which one is relevant they will all be considered when they're received okay well thank you anybody else have questions yes i know the application is not included in here but that's something that y'all make right we've talked about it before are you all planning to change it this year so that it takes off the portions that are unnecessary i have not discussed the proposed changes to the application if any i think that it's to make it more flexible because we are moving from having forms promulgated

156with the rules which is very inflexible right um to moving to forms that we can put on the website and make more readable or add additional explanation from the law that kind of thing it's to make it more flexible i think that'd be great to make it more parent friendly readable and take off race and special ed and things that aren't information the districts don't need to have at that point in time yes and and right now if a parent wants to access the application through our website they would need to go to the rules and go to the end of the rules hopefully we'll be able to direct these forms in a kind of group setting okay good thank you do we do anything to be sure that the districts are in fact informing

157parents on the school choice particularly the opportunity school choice yes we we definitely released commissioner's memos periodically to discuss these matters i know that when we were aware of some issues with the the various ways that districts were approaching opportunity school choice we did reach out to those districts okay any other questions comments do you have a motion to approve moved by miss newton to approve second by miss dean all in favor opposed motion passes thank you next miss farino the final rules for the department in elementary i mean the division of elementary and secondary education rules governing the regulatory basis of accounting thank you ms yes these are these rules are before you for final approval we had a public comment period and a public comment hearing there were no public comments received and

158so no changes to the rules made and these rules are were put in place to implement act 867 of 2019 which eliminated the alternative basis of accounting and even though it's my understanding no school districts participate in the alternative basis of accounting the fact alone that we had that is an option it disadvantages school districts from a federal audit perspective so it's been taken out and we seek your final approval on these no questions do i have a motion to approve motion by mr peck bronze segment by miss mcfettridge all in favor opposed motion passes thank you esperano ms alice ford final rules governing the arkansas educational support and accountability act for those who don't attend our meetings regularly what these are are after the legislature passes a law then depending on the department that

159that's affect this being the education department the legal team is charged with the responsibility of writing rules that helps the school districts understand what it is that this law impacts so that's that's what we're doing right now yes courtney solis ford for the division as you stated we're requesting final approval of the rules governing the arkansas educational support and accountability act we did put these through public comment have a public comment hearing we did receive a few comments man made minor corrections but nothing substantive so we are requesting approval pending alc review any questions comments do you have a motion move by miss mcmatridge second by miss dean all in favor opposed motion passes let me get caught up here consideration of final approval for a division of elementary secondary education rules governing test security

160testing violations and testing improprieties yes so we are again requesting final approval these rules govern testing irregularities violations regarding standardized testing so it's a little bit new process that when a complaint comes in regarding someone that may have violated test security into ranking them in certain degrees of severity so that then it can be dealt with appropriately so we did have a public comment period received only minor comments that led to corrections and we are requesting final approval questions or comments y'all have all done your homework ahead of time good do we have a motion moved by ms newton second by mr peck run to approve all in favor opposed okay thank you miss hyatt final approval for rules governing class size and teaching load mary claire hyatt uh the division rules governing class has

161in teaching load were amended to incorporate the provisions of act 979 of 2019 as well as to include a definition of the phrase elementary model because um we're getting a lot of feedback that there there was a need for some clarity on that um we did receive public comments no substantive changes were made and we request final approval for these rules any questions or comments i think this helps because we had gotten a lot of questions particularly in the fifth six i have a motion miss newton move to approve second by miss dean all in favor opposed thank you and now the next ones are in that category where the rules have been written but the um passage or denial will be pending the governor's review so be sure that's stated in your motion or

162if you forget i will try to remember so be sure we understand that uh miss hyatt the divisions rules governing kindergarten through twelfth grade immunization requirements and we're requesting that you really some for public comment changes were made to incorporate acts 676 of 2019. do you have any comments or questions you have a motion motion to approve pending governor's approval motioned by mr peckron pending governor's approval second by dr hill all in favor opposed motion passes next miss alice ford all right the next ones up are consideration for lease for public comment the rules governing student discipline and school safety um these are implementing changes from several acts but primarily 640 which was the result of the disciplined subcommittee that you all appointed some time ago that did a lot of research and made recommendations

163on changes in legislation so you'll see very substantial changes to these rules most importantly that originally they were just guidelines and so now they are rules and include all of the requirements under the law that school districts have to have in their policies in addressing bullying corporal punishment so we are requesting approval pending governor's review okay and before we uh move on from that i want to thank dr hill and miss dean for their work because they took a lot of time and and studied it thoroughly and we appreciate your leadership in that you have a motion i have a motion by miss dean pending governor's review do i have a second second by miss mcfettridge all in favor opposed motion passes i'm getting to you next we have the rules governing special ed related

164services ms alice ford these are specifically the special education rules regarding discipline and so this one of the same provisions that we had included in the general rules we added to these the corporal punishment because of the applicability to students with disabilities and that was the only change made questions or comments have a motion uh we have a motion by miss mcfatry it's pending governor's review do we have a second second by dr moore all in favor aye opposed motion passes next to the rules governing special ed related services regarding residential places yes these rules were amended to incorporate changes from act 523 regarding students in out-of-state facilities being eligible for state funding reimbursement we also made a few additional changes regarding procedure just to make sure that it was clear to everyone the necessary

165steps to take when a student is placed in a residential facility and i'd be happy to answer any questions seeing none do you have a motion motion to approve pending governor's approval motion by mr peckron pending governor's review doing the second second by dr hill all in favor okay and in case the public is wondering why there is no link here until the governor has reviewed it then it's sent to us but it's not linked out into the public in case there is review correct the next one is consideration for release of public comment the repeal of the vision of elementary secondary education rules governing special ed related services and you can go into the details of that yes so to kind of explain this if anyone is familiar with the special education rules it

166was promulgated originally as one large volume with 30 parts and as we have been amending separate sections parts of that that whole we noticed that a few of these were actually general education rules that had just been copied over into the special ed and were not being kept up with the standalone rule and really didn't need to be part of the special education whole anyway so those were the section 22 regarding home schools section 23 the old act tap system section 27 charter schools and section 28 uniform grading scales so we're only repealing them from the special ed whole not you know as a stand-alone rules the standalone rules are still remaining just to make that clear okay you have a motion to approve governor's review motion by miss mcfedrich second by ms dean all

167in favor opposed motion carries thank you okay next is the little rock school district reconstitution i had stated earlier that it would be two and a half minutes which gives a little space in there leading up to the three minutes but i will need a motion to have it let anything less than an absolute three minutes so if i have a motion to that effect fine otherwise it will be three minutes per person okay then we'll do the three minutes and um uh let's see do i need a motion to accept public comment before the public comment that's on the agenda i think that's been the process in the past miss hyatt if you'll come and advise us mary claire hyatt with the division so if anyone notified the department prior to wednesday they can

168give public comment without a vote if people came and signed up today you will need a vote it's my understanding based on what you said earlier that you're going to present all of the item and then allow public comments so you can either make the public comment motion now or wait um and make it when you're about to hear public comment up to you guys okay uh we did have three people who signed up ahead of time so we will hear them first uh and do i hear a motion to hear public comment prior to public comment occurring on the agenda are we going to have to comment before we do presentations will the public how might be before the presentations or after i think we'll have the presentations then we'll have public comment and

169then the board can either discuss in the midst of the public comment after the public comment or before any motion is made i moved to hear additional public comment at that point in time okay we have a motion to hear public comment before it occurs on the uh agenda uh all in favor do i have a second second by miss dean all in favor opposed okay uh miss freno and dr hernandez laurie freino um if it's acceptable to you i'll just move on to the first item which is item a and that is that the division is seeking the board's approval to expand the community advisory board of the little rock school district by two at-large members the list of candid a list of candidates will be submitted by the mayor's office to the division

170division will then screen them you know check them out and make recommendations in the same way we do with the community advisory board that exists now make a recommendation to the board for the board's approval but right now we're asking for is that you all and we're not going to vote on this yet we're going to vote if it's acceptable to you at the very end after all the public comments are made but to expand that by two at-large members okay okay that's the does anybody have any comments or questions on this item yeah to that madam chair for me you know this is something that goes back a couple of months that when you all were discussing the expansion of the board to nine members as we approach the excuse me the november 2020

171election and reconstitution of the district there have been some public comment and other comments expressed about the makeup of the community advisory board and maybe allowing some additional community input there so this was an idea to present to you all to see if it was something you would be open to and could approve and then we would work with the mayor's office to work out the process because under the old system when there was a statutory community advisory board we had applications that were online on the ad website and you all will remember that so this is a little bit different but in keeping with what we had talked about or at least in some of that public comment i felt like this may be something that we could present to you all as a

172way to continue gradually working into the turn back of the district to local control back in or in november of 2020. question so am i hearing you say that instead of applicants it will these two positions will be appointed once they're recommended well they're they're appointed anyway that the process for appointment rather than taking those applications would be the input from the mayor's office right too and and the mayor's office could use those applications that we have if they want to and we are certainly open to them using that process we just haven't explored that with them until we actually have that conversation with you all yeah i think that my uh obviously want the community involved i want i think i have one concern that in a period of transition of people coming on

173that have not had the community advisory board experienced during the time of the intervention uh it would be a pretty steep learning curve with regard to that but uh anyway just something to think about as as we proceed on miss alice ford can i ask a question on that sure can we will there be training for those individuals once they are appointed uh prior to joining the board yes okay okay and that will be done by the department or the district or worked out just past we've done both we we've had part of that training was performed by the department part was uh conducted by the the district's community advisory board and each districts or each of the districts that where we have one have a little bit of different whether it comes to policies

174or procedures or anything like that so we work together to make sure that training takes place great thank you so they would the the city would give us six or eight or however many names people could apply to the city and say i'd like to be on the list or or would that be up to us or the city to decide well i think i'm envisioning that the mayor's office city would would vet and receive applications or folks who are interested and then um submit you know a set of names and then the board would actually approve the two additional members and then we currently have a resignation on the cab at the moment and will that go through the city process or the representative senator process well we did miss craig just uh recently

175resigned and so that i'm open to your thoughts on that but uh we haven't established how that uh position would be exactly what zone is that i don't recall i'd have to get somebody to check it's five so i don't know um he said confirmed by misalis foreign thank you somebody from zone five uh the other two would be you're envisioning atlanta there are no zones uh at this point so they would by necessity be at large okay so we will have one from zone five and then two at large if that is the vote yes ma'am okay any other questions or comments on that okay miss alice ford thank you courtney solis ford for division so as you all know you voted to return local control to the little rock school district through the

176election of a nine single member zone board in the november 2020 election one of the things that we provided to you all is the timeline and process for how that will occur leading up to november 2020 all of these dates are required by statute and things that have to be done in order to get to that process one of the main things that we have to achieve is development of those nine single member zones since previously the local board was seven members we are starting from scratch and developing nine new member zones obviously that's not our expertise and so we contacted arkansas gis geographic information systems which is the state agency responsible for maintaining school district boundary maps they after looking at the data and our request came up with three different options of nine

177single member zones each one of those was presented to you in a map form each one is based on a different method or a different basis on which gis came up with those the guide i guess you could say the guiding principles that they used in developing these three options was to make each zone as compact as possible to maintain contiguous territory within each zone meaning there's no islands or nothing that's you know not touching land wise each zone should include communities of interest and who share commonality so not trying to split any well-known or well-established community maximize the degree to the to the degree feasible any use of existing physical boundaries so existing roads rivers you know anything that could be used as a natural boundary using that in identifying board member zones and

178then as to the degree feasible attempting to coincide with other electoral boundaries such as existing election precincts and the reason for that is because it makes it easier for the clerk's office when establishing the voter zones already has that type of information blocked off so they have existing voter blocks that that map if that was the way the board decided to go would already have that information it wouldn't be starting from scratch so with each of those three zones um you know there's there's pros and cons to each we can discuss those if you would like you were provided with updated maps yesterday that contained the racial demographics information that we just received from arkansas gis just a note on that information that is 2010 data and that is because the law requires that the

179zones be based on the most recent decennial census data and the last time that was done was 2010 so that is the data that we are legally required to use even though um you know seven nine years later is probably very different we cannot take that into consideration legally now two years from now when the 2020 census data is made available if there are any significant differences or you see anything that is significantly unequal based on racial components and the population data then the school district at that time would be required to revise these board member zones but as of now we must use the 2010 census data and again all of that was provided to you along with each map and i'd be happy to answer any questions that you might have okay all

180right mr peck ron i think this is less of a question than a comment i certainly understood what was intended to do with the election precincts i understand not wanting to overburden the clerk's office but looking at that as an attorney i see some districts that have a four to five percent variance and i think i don't think a court would allow that to go through i have some real concerns about those being too uneven i like the idea but i don't think as it turned out it's acceptable i don't know if there's any tweaking that can be done on that to smooth it out um the ddb district is 4.12 high and the jje district is 4.99 low if there's any way to smooth those down to closer to two which i think is

181closer to what a court would find acceptable i think so you're saying uh it's more appealing to you on the lowest variance as opposed to those that have such a wide variance well i mean i think you know generally the rule for election precinct election districts is they're supposed to be as even as possible and i think five percent which you know we've got one that's five percent less than other districts i think that falls outside the balance what a court would find acceptable and if there are some minor tweaks to a couple of these districts that could be made i still like the idea of using election precincts if possible and i think with a couple minor tweaks that would be the best option right so these are drafts so adjustments can be made

182in discussion and consultation with gis to your point about a court obviously we never know what a court would decide we did look at past cases and found that 5 was the maximum that they would allow to be and still be considered substantially equal so that's why we made sure to not go over 5 but obviously as you pointed out 4.99 is very close to that number i just i just think with a couple small tweaks you could probably get it a lot closer if possible okay and still not excessively burden the clerks do you mind talking a little bit about the process so after we talked about today it's going to go to the cab what that would look like yes so um we're presenting these to you today of course to get your

183feedback and input um they then will be presented to the community advisory board so that they can of course review these and provide input they will be directed to hold community meetings so that the community can provide feedback as these as well these are available on the division's website so if anyone is not able to participate in a community meeting they can provide feedback through the lrsd feedback email that we have established and monitor once all of that information is provided of course all of that will be compiled and considered the commissioner will make the final decision on the final map and then that will go to the pulaski county election commission for approval that has that has to be approved by them and they said that could take them up to two months to

184do that given their meeting schedule and then it goes to the pulaski county clerk's office to get ready for the election and all of that has to be done before may 3rd so that candidates will know what zone that they could be possible for and begin collecting signatures that's helpful thank you okay i think the only tweak that that came to mind as i studied this is that uh rather than the suggestion because this was our we initiated this to begin with is that the uh input and the public input uh come to us based on the public feedback and then we make the final decision in cooperation with the commissioner but not uh solely taking us out of it at that point but you know we can talk about that as we go along

185okay and on to [Music] the draft mou miss frino and miss hayan lori freno as the mou which was attached to the agenda reads i think it's really important that everybody looks at the disclaimer at the bottom in the footnote this memorandum of agreement is a working draft and has not been reviewed and approved by all proposed parties as strapless changes we receive feedback from the little rock school district community we're sure as well as this this board the little rock school district itself and the city of little rock so what this is is this is not intended to be something that's ripe for vote today what is it this is intended to be it's just like a framework kind of i keep calling it a skeleton just something to work off of and um

186so i'm just placing it before this board today to to start the conversation and we would be happy to answer any questions that you might have i had some comments on this it to me it was unfortunate i understand under foia this had to come out i was i thought it was unfortunate that it came out when it did because this mou was not what i had envisioned last month when i made my motion um when i made a motion to return the board to local control with an mou i what i had in mind was a few albeit obviously big picture items i'll mention in a minute but other than that that it truly would be local control that the district [Applause] we also try let me finish before you applaud but so you

187know i think i do think that there are a lot of things in the mou that are good ideas but i don't think they're things that we should be dictating um i think there's a lot of good things there in terms of organizing the community to run schools for example i'm not sure that at this point i don't think we as the state board should be continuing to run those schools at some point we've got to let the district take control take charge what i see is an mou with a few what i would call guard rails this is the part where you probably won't applaud but um i see for example a guardrail on changing principles i see a guard rail on recognition of a bargaining unit i see a guard rail on litigation

188while they're in level five and the other thing on that is you know i think at some point we have to give this district a clear set of ideas what do you need to do to get your schools back completely and get out from even under those guard rails i think the community has felt that we've never done that at least that's the impression i've gotten i don't know that that's intentional on anybody's part but i do think we're at the point now where we need to have a very clear set of exit criteria that are spelled out in this mou that say you know the three things i just laid out if they're met those are going to be in place while we're under level five and once level five is lifted those restrictions

189will be lifted but we would also have to tell them what they need to do to get out of level five i think we need a very clear understandable set of exit criteria that anybody's grandma can understand i think they need to understand that but i do think those big important guard rails are important to keep in place while they're in level five but other than that i do believe that the district should be in day-to-day local control of the local school board with all the support and responsibilities that come to the state under level five so what i'm not planning to make that as a motion today but what i'd like to see next month is a revised my sense would be a revised mou that looks more like that the one other thing

190i'd mention is i've heard a lot of discussion about including something in here about charter schools i don't think that we have a board have the legal authority to impose any sort of limit on charter schools i think we're required by state law to evaluate each application as it comes in on its own merits i don't think we can artificially agree to any sort of cap if people want to cap on charter schools i think that's something that would have to come from the general assembly and not from this board ms newton my questions that i had were around the community school model i had a lot of questions on how it would work in members and who would be making decisions so that that was where my biggest area of questions was that i

191was unclear on was in that was in that section okay and uh mr pepperon are i i know we've tried their best to give you everything that we have but you know there was exit criteria qualitative and quantitative and you're saying if that is being uh monitored or adjusted or changing in any way that that be gotten out sooner than later well the the draft mou says that the state will work with the district to develop a set of exit criteria whether their existing criteria that are spelled out or something that's worked on i think they need to be clearly stated in the mou and not something that's put off for a statement of it not necessarily change it but maybe change it just make sure it's clear yeah i'm not sure what those are

192that's i think those are conversations that we'd need to have okay but whatever they are i think they need to be clear miss newton did you have anything for further right now yeah those were my questions dr hill christine ms mcfedridge i think my question is again working with the ppcs in our schools and making sure that each school is represented on the ppc panel i think that's in my heart that's really important knowing that there's a teacher in every building that's represented on this committee i brought that up i did check with districts larger than little rock districts about the same size a district smaller and the general consensus from those superintendents would agree with that i know that the the date for application or submission uh has passed but with the vote of

193this board i think we could reopen it i think a lot of the teachers who [Music] are not a member of lra are asking that we consider that because they don't think they'll have an opportunity to be on this initial board where the bylaws will be established so i tend to agree with what you're saying i've seen it work and i know it works well okay when everyone's working together okay thank you okay mr williamson oh my concerns have been addressed okay dr moore yes i i and i think it's a limitation of our model of a board model in which we can't have conversations outside of up here and so i've been grappling in my head i haven't had enough time to flush this out with the department um do are we can we

194have a work session should we have a subcommittee i would like to ask questions of the mayor's office of more staff and so i don't know if which work session or you know subcommittee or whatnot but i would like to have more um time as we have these discussions i think what i'm hearing everybody say is they would like a work session where we can can flesh out things and then maybe bring back something for when we have an official meeting to to do a vote or not but we'll see how it goes from here okay uh miss mcadoo well i have a lot of questions one i'm very interested in your definition of community schools that's the first thing secondly when you were talking about ppc and having representation from every school so are

195you envisioning 41 people on this body like how does that work well i've seen it working closely microphone i've seen it work in springdale they don't have 40 i believe they have 30. and it works very well where each member of the ppc committee goes back to their school shares information gets the feeling and the vote from that school and then brings that back to the full committee they discuss and move forward with the majority vote so it's worked very well okay okay i i just know that it feels like the board here is just very anti-lrea and and that you felt as though lrea didn't represent like it only represented the members and that's not how that was so i don't really see a very big difference in this model of making sure that

196people are heard or whatever it is that you're exactly i mean i think you see that representation in every building they also worked very well with the springdale education association so all of them are working together for the same goal to teach kids so again they worked with the education association and the ppc all together there was a good feeling there so okay anybody else that's dr hernandez yeah dr hernandez can come and talk about the uh the community schools because there there have been some things that have changed since then since uh the mou was drafted there were some national organizations that have been in i think the clinton school sponsored one of those events where there was a lot of good information um and to ms mcadoo's question about what do you mean

197by community schools there's we we didn't want and we thought it would be irresponsible for us after the motion was made and we went back and looked at the transcript to see what we could ascertain from the motion and then went back to the public comment periods and other discussions that you all had had to form the basis of of that draft and again made it very clear as ms freno said that it was a draft it was a starting point i mean y'all can throw it out completely but for us to go from october to november and not have anything for you all to look at wouldn't would have been irresponsible so that's that's why that draft was uh was put forward but as i said and dr hernandez mr ballard and some folks

198from the department were there with uh lrsd folks i mean there was a community members at at least one of these events and then there's been other research done about community schools and that model and so if you all would allow i'd like dr hernandez to talk a little bit about that yep so no uh commissioner key did a great job mike hernandez office of coordinated support and service uh so when we did write the mou one of the things that we were researching was about community schools so we went to the coalition of community schools website um and and got some components of those things that were needed to be incorporated as just kind of a starting point we then were invited to go to the clinton school along with little rock and other

199community members to learn about a specific model that fits under the umbrella of the coalition of community schools specifically communities in schools was the presentation that was done and so while we were there it helped us to learn i think to ms mcadoo's point is what what what is the definition of our community schools in the model and so you know we brought back the information from that and there may be some potential site visits of schools that are implementing that model but it opened our eyes to many more models that are out there and so uh one of the things that's kind of up the discussion as the mou is modified is is that even going to be part of the mou that the state has to have a specific model in that if

200that were to happen or if the district decided to do one would the district then put out something like a request for proposals would that be something that the city would do would that be an outside community group that would do that and so i think we're really flexible in what that looks like and but just making sure that at least the schools that will be participating do have a model that way there's not you know multiple ways of doing this and the decision-making process and getting lots of feedback to where the community partners are a big piece of that and so those community partners know when and how they should be plugged in to working with the schools and so that that's kind of the latest in terms of where we've gone with the

201community schools part i think my hesitation is that we're talking reconstitution and do we want to leave the impression that a reconstitution has a community school or is that something that the community that comes from the ground up not from the top down so i think that was my uh reaction i obviously think that there are communities within and i think that the community and the people at the school can better decide what that looks like for their school then i could you know if i go over to earl i'd have to have a lot of input and it's like we heard from batesville this morning in independence county so i think that's when i was thinking reconstitution community school is is that something that a reconstituted district wants to do or a district that's

202never even been in level five wants to do so that's sort of where i'm coming from in a lot of the areas uh anybody else all right thank you i do i do have one more okay yes miss max just for the record when i think of community schools it it is not where the state tells us what a community school is like it really has to be community has to be a part of the decision making not just you know where you allow them to say this is what they think about xyz and i think i don't know if that was the intent it's like trying to figure out the intent of legislators when they pass a law but i think on first glance i thought one thing and then as i got into

203it i think they may be saying uh while we're in the a district is in level five then we want the them to know that the division is there to help there to provide support there to do research you know that but it more than it was them doing it to you it's like we can help you if if needed that but you know i don't know we can look through that as we go along mr pacquiao i was just going to say i i think what ms mcadoo is saying now is what i was trying to articulate a few minutes ago i think that euron i think the ideas of these schools of most significant need having all these resources poured in from different locations from the city from the state from the school

204district i think that's all great things i just think at the end of the day at this point i don't think we should be steering that ship i think the school district and the city need to work together and then we serve as a support role and help do whatever we can as the state with the resources that we have to make sure that that gets done like pilot projects in in different districts with plcs and the different things that have come and then they you know give us input this worked really well this did not work well and you know what you might need at uh central might not be what might be different than what we're going to find at southwest or different from roman to washington and um then that they it

205may have more in common than it has differences but uh you know get your faith-based community your boys clubs all the in the and the parents you know work with them on that okay uh next we have before yeah before we leave that topic madam look i think the the department or the division could use some direction so whether it's now or whether it's at the end of all the sub-topics i would appreciate uh you know the board because last time we had we we kind of had to extrapolate what you all wanted all right and so this discussion has been helpful but if it is a scheduling of a work session or a series of work sessions or something like that we're you know we we don't know how to modify the mou at

206this point without a lot more clarity i agree right and then and that is not your fault or if we even have an mou that that is you know so so that that'll be very helpful to us okay i think you know i said earlier the three guard rails that i think should be in there to me the mou should basically be the three guard rails a set of exit criteria and that's it it should be on a page uh now then we didn't have a link for this on the lorac attendant zones this is a result of the court order that was brought by the covington and the settlement there this was not something that was prompted by the state board but i did ask that someone from this board as well as from

207the cab be able to give some input and uh mr um can you hear me now um uh okay this is a result of the covington court case that required the little rock school district redraw their high school attendance zones and or reconstitute and make them use tell me exactly the word where you had to make it uh draw your zones without making it we okay good afternoon i apologize for that no good afternoon um i'm mike poor superintendent of little rock public schools and uh the i believe maybe the word you're looking for is to create a re-segregation or to create any kind of racial imbalance uh and make things worse in terms of uh right so the what we have and i i don't know if the powerpoint is ready to come up

208um that would be helpful and that will help guide through the slides that i'd like to deliver that kind of give you an idea of a model that we will present and then work on that at our community advisory board meeting next week and make that we'll have all these documents live and public by no later than tomorrow morning so that people can access them and and and be able to dive into the the details of it so i'll go ahead and begin on this that um the justification and miss zuk you're correct that really there's there's actually two things that are driving the need to modify our attendance lines or making changes to the boundary the first one is that if you go ahead and advance one slide please first at your podium okay

209well and you'll see in a minute that this gets a little more complicated that we have to kind of come in and out so it's actually helpful to have a driver the the first justification is that we have a a blueprint that was approved and you see that was approved in both january and february because our community advisory board approved it in january the commissioner then approved what the blueprint represented in february of 2019 additionally the other reason why we needed to do the blueprint is that as the opening of of southwest high school one of the things that came up in terms of the agreement was to say that we were we would modify our attendance lines and we knew that we needed to do that um in in one respect because of hall

210high school what you'll hear is a real key component in all the adjustments that we're going to make in terms of what we're trying to think to improve the situation at hall if you'll advance the next slide the intentions uh for any kind of attendance zones changes is we don't want to have any form of re-segregation we want to improve feeder patterns which is something that all districts strive for and and larger districts have a harder time or even districts with growth have a harder time trying to create uh feeder zone patterns and so as you review this that's kind of one of the these are all standards that we want to try to fulfill we also want to enhance school choice options for our parents so we have more things that make the district

211attractive either to bring in families or to hold on to families next we want to utilize our district resources efficiently especially we have had a loss of students this year we had less loss than the previous year you might remember last year was approximately 650 students that we had a decline this year we're just a little over 100 students where that we lost and naturally the most important thing then is that we also want to elevate academic performance if you go to the next slide this then shows a little bit of the the community blueprint and you know it's it's kind of funny that that was such a dominant um visual for much of last fall and now it's probably like god wasn't that like five years ago you know it just tells you how

212many things that we all think and interact with uh it was a process of trying to do a lot with community i will say up front whether it's in the blueprint or when looking at attendance zone boundary lines it's it's nearly impossible to get to a an overwhelming majority to say we love this okay um and so whether it's trying to if you're trying to seek an 80 approval or even a 70 approval on attendance lines i've never seen that be the case and it wasn't necessarily the case it wasn't the case excuse me with the community blueprint either but we did try to go out to the public and we had seven different community meetings there were times where people got to work in groups but there also were times where people spoke individually

213all that information is captured in in our website and ultimately we came up with a blueprint that was presented the big thing about the blueprint if you look down at the bottom of that kind of the colored map so to speak is the opening of southwest high really spurs everything in terms of making changes within the district because once southwest high opens up it brings fair and mcclellan students into that campus but it also brings down as you can see 300 students that are coming down from hall and coming into uh southwest additionally then you have to try to work to come up to you there for those who don't live here that's uh before they had the newcomer center for the hispanic students so they were taken out of their attendance zone and were

214at hall and that will not be necessary going forward thank you and and if please feel free to interrupt me if you'd like the uh those 300 students do live in the southwest and so they actually will be live going to school in their their home area you know from that then you've got to think about what do we do to make hall stronger we also knew that we have growth out in the northwest part of our community and this year we opened up an innovation high school and it's still being worked on in terms of what that innovation will ultimately look like we've got the beginning stages uh going there we have a students that are attending theirs ninth graders next year that would advance up to ten and then we're making changes uh

215to utilize the facilities in a greater way we don't want fair which is really an excellent campus to not be utilized and so you'll you'll see in just a minute with the attendance lines that we tried to make a k8 option we know that the 1k8 we have right now is successful create another k8 that would be on the west side utilizing the fair campus on the east side one of the more dramatic changes that we'll see within the boundary is that we have rockefeller washington and we also have two magnet schools over on the east side of our our city and so we were in the blueprint it was approved to move rockefeller to being totally a pre-k center and then the rockefeller students coming over and joined washington that kind of gives you

216a little bit of context there's a lot more whether it's for you state board members or those are listening in the audience or watching this via a feed that you can access the website and see all the components of the blueprint so and the blueprint was prompted by the district not by the state board that is correct uh next is that we'll go to our elementary zones and i'm going to stop just for a second before we blow it up but this is where we kind of get into the drive is this actually shows the existing map for the elementaries and so in uh in just a second i think now switch it over to mike helping navigate this for me so that we flip into a different screen so that we can kind of

217blow up and enhance certain areas so with the elementary really there we go thank you with the elementary the um the changes really go back into honoring what we've approved on the blueprint and so the recommendation here is to if you can see where romine is and mike is going to move the mouse around that area that'll help romine is going to join dodd which is in the pink those are both right in the kind of the middle part of our district on the west side those two campuses will join together to come into the k-8 uh at fair and so the attendance zone change so to speak is to have the role mine dot kids come together into one that's fairly simple in terms of the execution if you go over to the east

218side of our community that also is fairly simple in the fact of having washington uh go in excuse me washington except the rockefeller students i will take note again that there are actually four elementary schools in that area that represent washington and rockefeller two of those campuses don't necessarily pop up with the tenant zones because they're magnets carver is a magnet as is uh booker and so we have a stem type approach at carver fine arts approach at booker and then we're moving the rockefeller students to washington when you move the rockefeller students to washington basically what you're doing is that we we know we have a large capacity to receive students at washington we also know that really when you look at just the the tenants line and transportation we are not making anything

219that's a a drastic transportation delivery or modification for the students because washington students already are traveling from all over the rockefeller students are fairly close right there and we would be able to receive all those students into one campus if you kind of take it back out just a little bit mike and go to the south the other thing that i will make of note if you can kind of hover around the metal cliff and baseline area in the blueprint it was shared that we would like to make another k-8 at the mcclellan campus mcclellan is a high school that will no longer have kids next year but we also know that mcclone's not a good campus we also know within the lawsuit cloverdale middle school is down that area and it was identified as

220our number one priority that we have to do something about in terms of a facility change so we presented in the blueprint to move forward on a k-8 with both metal cliff and baseline joining with cloverdale and having that campus there but that is a one of the areas of the blueprint that you know a board might make a change on because that is not something that we can execute right now we do not have the financial resources to move forward on modifying mcclellan we have met with architects we have a facility that i think everyone will be extremely proud of we've utilized teachers to help us map that out to what they would like at that campus we want even more community involvement if we choose to move forward with a funding source we

221do have a funding source even from the state we applied for partnership funds uh at that school but right now we don't have that dedicated big number um and so that's on a holding pattern and that will be something that the the board when it gets seated in 2020 will have to come back to is it something where you could move the cloverdale students to mcclellan and as a first step and then if the funding does become available then make it a k-8 or is because then mcclellan in better shape than cloverdale no i i personally i mean that may be a personal thing but i don't think so and the other thing is that once we get the the resource then we would basically we're leveling mcclellan to create a brand new school so

222um we would have to have that space and we wouldn't want to move students more than once i didn't know that you were leveling it if we'll go to the middle school model uh yes it is thank you and if we'll go back to where the k-8 is um really the k-8 um begins where the the kind of turquoise green color is because that is our current henderson attendant zone and you'll see that the henderson attendant zone does drop farther south you can see a green highlighted area that drops south uh to encompass what is the dodd attendant zone so that we bring in the elementary that's already going to go to that school and so that everyone knows that as they start that k-8 that they have a guarantee to be a part of

223the k-8 that will be at j fair so the attendant zone looks like it's a fairly large area but one of the things of note is that if you look and mike if you can kind of show where the interstate is that comes across the central part of our city and then also show where markham is which is just directly north in that area um yeah you probably have to scroll there you go in that area anything that the students that we have going to henderson above markham right now there are only 45 students that are accessing henderson that are above markham so that it will be the largest transportation ride for students to come down to j fair but we have a limited number of students that that we're serving so most henderson students

224uh that attend the school come from uh south of the interstate or south of markham so that is the the one adjustment the second adjustment that we will be presenting uh to our community advisor board is over at dunbar um there's a lot of uh folks that have uh at different times tried to say well the district's not investing in dunbar and that that really couldn't be farther from the truth we have invested quite a bit in that campus it is an older facility but it's an historic facility and that's the last thing we would ever want to do to lose that campus we've worked to try to remediate the issues in the basement not to say we don't have problems but we've taken huge steps there we've worked on um you know the the

225roof on the other parts of the campus we've improved the exterior of that facility and then with this recommendation uh what we're trying to do is is make dunbar have a a boundary line that we hope makes sense and also creates a better feeder pattern there's a very little small chunk at the very south west corner mike if you can hover around the area where it used to be cloverdale so it's the only yellow on the top half where there's that big white space that that little area right there contains seven students but those seven students get shipped down to cloverdale so we just think it makes sense we don't know why that i can't i can't find anyone that can explain why that little area was initially included for cloverdale but we can move

226those closer and have those students have an easier access into dunbar than going down into cloverdale yeah do you know why the the uh gold color is not touching there's a gold to the right and then a gold the pulaski heights area yeah i'm going to cover that next okay so you're just leading me into it so the the pulaski heights area uh to the right that's one of those things that is a an attendant zone that probably makes people scratch your head like why is it the pulaski heights has that whole big stretch in the north and then it goes out and juts out into the east we actually under this proposal we'll be looking at moving the students from that area that's on the eastern part of the city to be a part

227of dunbar we also know that that area you know they they are all weren't going to pulaski heights anyway again we have two elementaries that are magnets and so many of the students that are part of those magnets then matriculate to man so there's kind of a mix there of students that go to man and we anticipate that will still happen no matter what happens even with the number of students right there in that area we would not have a major issue in terms of them going into dunbar and then and in pulaski heights the other adjustment is that that actually creates just a little bit of space for pulaski heights middle school to take on more students and mr powell has done a great job at pulaski heights in terms of building uh people's

228belief in the school we have more people matriculating from the schools in the northern part of jefferson and forest park coming into pulaski heights than ever before it's a really strong diverse school and a good academic school and uh so we think it will be fine so that's the adjustment for the mr poor yes i'm right here i'm sorry i got stuck for a minute um on the other side when you were talking about cloverdale i thought i heard you mention that it was identified as your number one priority structurally or something to the other effect what did you say would become of the students at cloverdale in all of this are they still going to be at that same building that i appreciate the clarification um we cloverdale students will stay at cloverdale for

229the time being right now but we know that that is something that we want to change and we want to have cloverdale students eventually get into a brand new spanking campus that would be at mcclellan if we had the money today we'd still probably be two years away from being able to open that campus so um we're gonna have to to work on that end of it and you know um the the effort to go forward to the public to say we need additional resources i think everybody in our community believes in that that thinks this district needs additional resources the board that was uh in place in 2014 did a study and at that time they identified over 300 million dollars worth of needs certainly we've taken a big chunk of those needs and

230been creative we also failed in a an election where we tried to extend the debt but we need additional resources and it's not just for fixing mcclellan and fixing cloverdale central has portables we have growth in the northwest we have other campuses that on average ages 60 years of age and so the reinvestment into these campuses are needed and we're going to eventually need the public to support something like that okay so and i'm sorry i kind of get stuck but if i'm hearing you correctly it was identified you said around 2014 as needing as being a high priority and we're going to they're still in that same predicament right is that what you're saying well they're like we're shifting all of these other zones to other buildings because of whatever reasons but those students

231are going to still be structurally in the building that has been identified for many years as being a high priority for improvement correct and you know one of the things i would tell you is that's why we went for the debt extension was to tackle that if we'd received that money which would have been over 160 million dollars we wouldn't be talking about the cloverdale mclone problem so but that did not pass and so when it didn't what we had to do is try to work we did get one thing done which was even a higher priority than cloverdale which was mcclellan and having the students of mcclellan get to a better campus so the the the students moving from mcclellan to southwest that's just going to be a dramatic game changer in terms of

232the facility that they will inherit that was the number one priority that was done by the community at that time if we go now to the the high school it's probably the one that will take us just a little bit longer a little bit more complex to work through i would like to present three options to you today that we will then present to the community advisory board and to our community all of the discussions that we're talking about on boundary adjustments would happen at the start of the 2020 21 school year so the things i'm talking about this is coming into play for next school year um if it's approved that fits in with what the uh the blueprint had also suggested in this this document right here probably the the linchpin to kind

233of start to wrap your arms around is hall high school and so if you could circle around or kind of open up where hall is that in in this model and subsequent models that will come later uh with hall high school uh the approach we'd like to have considered is to have hall become a total magnet school it would come up magnet school over time gradually meaning that we would all the students that are currently at hall that are 9th 10th and 11th they would stay and they would maintain the attendance zone but we would start to grandfather in the concept of having a magnet school that would have a stem and the ford ngl type focus that we've been working on uh within the community the key about creating a magnet at hall is

234that we've got to have programming and that's going to have to take the efforts of a lot of folks to make that something that our families our students say oh my gosh that's where i want to be we would love to have the reality and a part of this blueprint is to say that this this design on a boundary adjustment is to allow forest heights as a part of the magnet any student there would have a guaranteed right to apply and to enter into hall if but we they're not going to go right now folks unless we make hall super attractive and so there's some work that has to be done and i believe we will get help from the department on that i believe we'll get help from the the community on that and

235uh but that has to be executed mr poor can i ask you a quick question you said it was stem and what was the other thing that you said would be the focus of the magnet also a ford ngl type concept model and and really i look at that probably in two things that make sense for hall one is a technology component um that would come into that school and um because that fits in well with what's already happening at forest heights stem so we've got to have a tech piece on that and what that might mean that that's still to be determined the second thing is because of hall's location next so close to the medical community we've had initial discussions with the chamber with uh hospital groups to say would you be willing

236and those have all been very positive to say that they would like to develop that type of programming there in this model parkview still maintains its magnet school and is a fine arts and science magnet the central attendance zone under this concept grows by 600 excuse me 456 students um before i go to the central zone let me just go to the southwest because it's the cleanest you can see that the colors of green and blue that's mcclellan and fair obviously all those students go there but then we've added one more group which is where the mouse is covering over right now and if you look at the interstate there is to the north on the eastern side of the boundary that's university that heads south and so that's the eastern boundary is university and

237then you take it over to the right again the interstate that heads north and south so we're adding that little group into there and what that will do is it will increase the attendance at the new high school but it also creates a balance then within all the rest of our campuses the um area to the very far northwest i'll hit that and then go back to central if you look at the very top of the map you can see that under this one we basically identified that if you think about pinnacle view as a high school campus it's limited right now because we only have a little over 400 seats that are possible because of the space that's available there so what we tried to do is generate a map that would say okay

238if if we were to just understand the dynamics how big of of chunk could we say would be an option zone for people to attend either pinnacle or go towards the the magnet concepts or to go towards central that was the line we drew the rest of that then becomes a wide swath that goes from the west the most western edge where it's yellow with central and then it would cut all the way across and remember that that map will become more and more yellow if you will the central color as hall moves forward in terms of becoming a magnet and i think you re-enter specified on hall but all of the kids that are currently 9th 10th and 11th graders would have the option to stay at the school where they current the high

239school where they currently are that's correct we want we want to make sure that we we do that to allow that that transition for kids to stay within the school that they they care about and have you thought about uh if if the pinnacle view not eighth graders want to go to ninth and then ninth graders uh go to tenth and and grow since we have a high school where we use portables already if you have more than 400 students that you could put portables there for them to put portables up in the pinnacle campus um we have not explored that at this point um and we'll take that in and and there may be other community members that would show i was contacted that the portables that were used or which are new except

240for one year that were used in forest city by a charter over there that they are available for the moving so i don't know what it costs to move a portable but and i know portable isn't ideal but i also know uh funding is a concern yeah and it kind of goes back in a little bit um on the bigger funding issue within the district that we really want to get out of the portable business um and and i'm not trying to disparage your idea because we know we have a large number of we have growth going on in the northwest and we want to try to keep as many students in in that northwest area but the bigger picture really is that we've got to do something you know we need to get rid

241of the portables as central and so you know that's that's another factor for us in terms of uh you know getting our public to be behind it um and you know that's the the challenge of the times right because we want to boundaries are just not easy okay they're just not but it we want to try to develop strong schools within each of our campuses that that make parents and kids say oh i can't wait to get there um if we go ahead and go to option two that's one question before so the pinnacle view that you have drawn there would be what it would look like for a 400 student 9 through 12 high school yes okay but if you go to the next one it'll give a little bit better another way to

242do an option and there's really no other adjustment on this that you'll see that there's a central zone here that has a red lines going through it and what that's doing is that if you combine that area then with the the area that we previously looked at on to the north you combine those two spots that actually is pinnacle view middle school's attendance zone so under this idea what you're the only thing that's really relevant in terms of difference is that you're trying to say that any child that's in pinnacle view middle school would have the option to either go to pinnacle view high school or to access either of the magnets or to attend central so it becomes kind of an option area okay next and the very last one this is one that

243probably i i would say meets the the bare minimum in terms of adjustments to allow hall to continue to be strong and also meet the criteria of the lawsuit so under this one you still um maintain kind of the all the the areas that we've talked about there still would be kind of the choice option up in the northwest for students to go up to to pinnacle high school if they want to they either go there or to haul or to the parkview magnet or try to get in in central in terms of its magnet status this one also has an attendance zone adjustment four hall so hall in this model option three is staying a traditional um high school and not a magnet it still has its boundary on this one we're extending the

244boundary four hall and if you go down the line of where the interstate is that goes from north to south we are bringing in a area right there that's a part of central and bringing that into hall the second area where we're making an adjustment is over mike's got it exactly right on the north east side that basically is uh the area right around downtown uh bringing that in and then finally bringing in the area where mike's point right now when you bring in all those areas basically what you've done is recover the students that are leaving hall that are a part of the program that for second language students and so that recovers all those students so that's the third option that we are going to share with community and with community advisory board

245i know there will be a lot of folks that are going to want to dive deeper into this so the powerpoint will get put up also there will be the type of maps that you're seeing right here that will allow you to kind of blow things up and and look at it a little bit different because it's it's harder to to work with it in the powerpoint just his community members so anybody that wants to access it or you as board members want to access it you will get the same documents that we are flipping back and forth to so that everyone can have access into manipulating those maps we will have as a part of the community advising board this kind of the same presentation will be delivered and then we will allow community

246comments of course um and and i'm not sure what approach the the community advisory board will want to go from there whether they'll want to have other steps that they'll want to take before we have any action or how they'll react to it so we will be presenting this on the 21st we will continue to make sure that we communicate out and continue to share the plan and then the other factor that we're kind of in a little bit of a bind on just to be real with you is we've kind of got two things that smack you up the side of the head to make sure you got to keep everything moving one is that this is typically the time in december where we have families really make choice options that's a tradition within

247the little rock community and so we've got that that's staring at us and then we also have high schools in february because we now know where everybody so to speak is headed they then go with their master scheduling and push out allowing students to make the they're starting to create their schedule of what they want for classes for the following year so those are kind of two dynamics that are at the end mr hill uh um talking about dunbar and uh in that on a national register of historic places yes and so it's just from a funding standpoint have you just keep in mind as you're looking at your budget for all of that the historic tax credits to work on i mean at the end of federal and state which which could help you

248on on that building if it's there on the basement those type because i know you've done a lot in the community because i've seen it but i just know sometime in state and federal historic tax credits you can qualify for those and banks have to use those just keep that in mind it's just something you're working toward that funding source thank you we do reap benefits more easily on that with uh central high we've perceived a lot but i think right now yeah dunbar i got thought of from something i saw happening over there in the community that would they would qualify based on that designation as well so any other questions or comments miss mcadoo um so you said you're going to roll out or post where where can the community access this information

249and when they're able to access it will they be able to clearly see the options and the reason i'm asking is because right now out of all of those three scenarios that you pre that you shared the one that when you talked about pinnacle view i kept hearing the different options that those students in that i think it was the second one where then they would have an option to go to this zone or an option to do this or an option to do this and i don't recall hearing all of those options for the students in the other other zones well you know one of the i hope i said at the beginning but i probably could have done it better is that you know one of the things that we're trying to do

250um that was a part of the blueprint and then even with this uh moving forward is trying to create greater options and choices for families that will hold on to them so we already have a great deal of choice within the district in terms of magnet opportunities and we don't want to diminish any of those things we want to enhance uh some situations you know you look at at hall high again kind of one of the linchpins of thinking about you know what do we do there it's had two years of of growth which is outstanding and a real tribute to the staff and to the principal and to the community but it hasn't it hasn't brought any new students to it okay we've got to have a different level of programming a different level

251of support from the community to be able to draw and attract even more students into that campus and so that's kind of the intent the other things that we have in terms of drawing people in you know we know that's happening at central we know that's happening at parkview and the excitement that we've seen so far about southwest um especially when we've had kids even go go through the the new facility it's it's like it makes you feel really good i guess what i'm asking is will the parents be able to readily see their options like will that be very clear to them i i don't know if i i i to be frank with you that's probably something that we're gonna have to figure out how to to package that a little better and

252i'll try to have that a little bit better prepared for the community advising board mean um because the current thing that we've worked hard just to get to this with just these these set of slides um i'll have to give that some thought dr moore looking at the three different high school options is there one in which all students at a middle school would matriculate to the same high school that limits that or is it too difficult enough it really does not we can't guarantee that and um you know even in a you know you go to bentonville or springdale even within those two school districts or rogers you don't have clear feeder lines necessarily let alone in a high s in a setting like ours that has five and then you have dramatic differences

253in the sizes of the schools that create challenges on the feeder patterns because you have some elementaries that are at two well 300 to 400 capacity you have other elementaries like roberts that are at 900 that's the other extreme or a thousand kids and so you know trying to create those feeder patterns aren't as clean we we think that the new map from elementary to middle school is is much improved and even the models that we're talking about for the high school it's not perfect but it is better in terms of a feeder pattern and then can you speak to i know so currently parkview and central are magnets correct correct so this would add hall what would what does student selection look like at those three magnets in this proposal i'm not sure that

254i understand that you have to audition what does that mean how are students well the only one that's uh right now that's an audition is at parkview and the um so we do not anticipate um auditions for hall but that hasn't got worked out yet because this isn't an approved plan okay but and so there hasn't been discussion about what that would look like yet it hasn't worked there's no discussion of tacking that on i have not none of our team have brought that up we would like to have something that people are saying we want to come there and then we end up kind of trying to figure out how to go through a lottery to determine who gets in that would be the ideal i'd advocate student choice that's great thank you mr

255poor just to follow up on something that ms mcadoo said i think as you explained the one plan i think some of the confusion may have come up because you said there were four different options for students in that one section pinnacle view central or the two magnet schools to be clear every student would have three options right their attendance zone and then the two magnet schools so it's not four versus one it's four versus three is that right that's actually correct um so you know what we're doing is we're kind of enhancing even another option or choice for parents by making hall a magnet okay thank you and there would be ap classes everywhere and you know opportunities for students to to not have to get label gifted in order to go i appreciate

256you bringing that up for two reasons one is i do want to share that every one of our campuses have those gt programs at the secondary level both middle school and high school and second the other important point about that question is that as a part of the lawsuit we also had to do everything we possibly could to enhance ap options for the students at mcclellan and fair and hall and so what we did is we created a different delivery in terms of uh greater access for uh ap opportunities for all those campuses we actually just by creating southwest will jump up uh in terms of doubling more or less the size of ap opportunities inside the buildings when those two campuses combined and the simple reality is just you're combining mcclellan and fair that

257currently ballpark both have about 700 students so you bring those students together along with 300 all of a sudden it creates a whole different level of staffing as a former high school principal you get above 1500 in capacity it changes the game in terms of what you can do in terms of your program offerings everything from gt to performing arts and career programs so if uh back to the ford ngl if uh because i think you mentioned it at southwest and you mentioned it at the what i'm calling the k-12 magnet for hall if i am zoned for central or if i am zoned for west high school uh will i have an uh opt-in opportunity to go to a school where there is a ford ngo program yeah the the challenge at um pinnacle

258is that the campus is limited in terms of size and so you really can't no i mean transfer to where there is one i'd like to go to hall or to go to southwest if if my school didn't offer it yes under under school choice opportunity yes you can the um we also know that that parkview is looking at at ford ngl in terms of what they may want to do to enhance their own science and their own fine arts uh they're they're an exploration of it central has kind of been um has not moved forward on that at this point in time in terms of of looking at it in in in a deeper way not really looking at it in terms of a new delivery for the 2020 21 year whereas southwest hall

259um definitely are and it looks like probably parkview will as well yeah i think one thing as i was studying uh the pattern which is nashville that they're sort of playing off is that for example at central there's almost 37 in need of support and what they discovered is some of those students were needing more reading instruction they needed more uh to look at an apprenticeship or an internship and then that in turn they had students that went through the program got a trade or got a licensure and then they could pay for their own college if they decided to go to college so i just wanted to be sure that that we were uh looking at that uh for for some of students at schools where they didn't have a program miss dean uh

260just to go back to ms mcadoo's point that's something that i've also mentioned in our family and community engagement is ensuring that our parents are made aware of all of the options they have within the school district so i'd like that's something that we definitely want to focus on so i'd like to partner with you you're welcome to help us in that endeavor but i definitely want to make an avenue for our parents to be aware of every option that they have in little rock school district and i think on those maps if you could if they could make it uh larger to where you can see what streets you know or where because then you know well here's where i live and hear the streets that this includes i think that was the the

261difficult part for me until i really studied it so well and once i could share this with the public once you you access the map let's say tomorrow you will if you go into the as we're kind of toggling back and forth between the things the powerpoint doesn't let you do that as easily but if you go to um the individual map that will be there as well then that allows you to blow things up much easier and really be able to go down into a street level to see exactly where maybe your home is or um you know so that that's going to be more available and easier for people to see okay let me interrupt are you taking care of the house miss chambers got put on hold so we're working on getting

262her back on the line this might be a good time for a short break yes let's do that while we get miss chambers back on the line and uh if if if they have more questions we'll call you back and they may have more after the punishment to be here the rest of the afternoon okay thank you [Laughter] welcome this service is provided by freeconferencecall.com please enter your access code followed by the pound sign please enter your access code followed by the pound sign nice choices welcome service is provided by freeconferencecall.com please enter your access code followed by the pound sign you entered three on seven eight six one if this is correct press one two please wait you are the first caller you will be placed on hold until the next caller arrives so

263welcome this service is provided by freeconferencecall.com please enter your access code followed by the pound sign you entered three three please wait are the first caller you will be placed on hold until the next caller arrives [Music] so [Music] where we can have an opportunity to talk about all the different options i think once parents realized how many different options they have they would um be more inclined to stay within the district and utilize the sizes as long i think a lot of people just don't know there's so many options there thank you [Laughter] then [Music] [Laughter] chance [Laughter] me [Laughter] [Music] oh [Music] [Laughter] [Music] know uh [Music] [Laughter] oh [Music] [Laughter] [Music] um [Music] [Laughter] i [Music] yes [Applause] uh did you know that cancer no well he's got bad cancer man's sick

264and her dad just died [Music] men are worse than did you do that [Laughter] [Music] she said somebody put her on hold okay [Music] anyway uh what the governor the former governor told archie told randy i don't know if it's like the game of gossip but if it was um [Laughter] [Music] and i don't know if it's sick [Music] texas [Music] me [Music] [Laughter] [Music] it's [Music] hello i hear you [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] oh [Music] here [Music] oh [Laughter] [Music] is dan is miss chambers on the miss chambers are you there i am thank you thank you very much okay uh the first three people signed up yesterday so if you'll come and in this order and be uh one behind the other i will ask that if if you have something

265to say and it's already been said a time or two then if you'll give up your time then i uh you know it would be appreciated uh and if we if you could focus it on the things that have been uh addressed today oh where is mr pool over there did y'all have any more questions from mr poor before we move on i did okay thank you for that presentation what your next step is to present this to the community advisory board and then what happens after that well we we're going to try to educate people as quickly as possible because we are under a little bit of a time crunch of what the possibilities are gather the feedback and then make a final recommendation whenever we make a final recommendation we'll have another chance

266for community to give feedback to that proposal before we submit it to the commissioner okay thank you so if you could present it to the cab at your november meeting have a couple of weeks for community feedback then y'all will have a meeting in december yes that that's that's kind of where we're going we may want to try to generate an earlier meeting just because of the timing piece on the choice element um try to keep everything going so yeah that's that's the a little bit of the confines we're under yes so we're we're all headed to no later than mid-january parents knowing principles knowing scheduling all of that at least knowing the school that that they have is their choice or what their attendance line their tenants their home attendance line would be okay

267anybody else one thing and uh the map's not there anymore i i don't know if they bring it up but it doesn't matter i know you had gotten a lot of feedback and we've gotten a lot of feedback about the central zone and you kind of briefly talked about it but could you just reinforce what the net effect of those options are on the central high school zone now i didn't bring my document up with me commissioner so it first off it the the things that make central attractive maintain itself in terms of uh its programming and its gt option uh and its international studies but under the attendance zone it when the changes it basically creates 450 students that as the lines change would say this is now my home central and that may

268freak everybody out but the reality is that those students already are selecting central uh for their school of choice so it just actually modifies it the key again to all this is that we've got to work hard to support hall to create dramatic program improvements okay and nothing's off the table reconstituting teachers who want to work in stem teachers who don't feel they do so it would be like a if that's the decision a k-12 stem starting at forest heights and then going over to hall if that's what the parents and children chose well and i'll frame and you and i have gone back and forth on that before that in my eyes on the on the reconstitute is that with the programming that we put in in the ninth grade whether that comes from

269the hall staff or whether that comes from outside staff uh that would come in that with whatever programming is developed we would want to get top talent that could come from the hall of staff itself so and if you do just a broad reconstitution then that creates a different dynamic for the entire district so i'd be against that but i'm for making sure that hall gets to pick some staff again whether it's internal staff folks or those from maybe from elsewhere to be able to come in and say boy i want to teach that because of their excitement about a stem or technology bent or because of the medical thank you anyone else all right thank you very much thank you okay i'm going to call out five names so if you will line up

270behind each other yesterday or day before the three who signed up ahead of time were mr mcadoo joelle fayham and daniel block lebron mcadoo and elizabeth dear go if you will state your name for the live streaming public yes my name is charlie edward mcadoo and good afternoon to everyone as a former school board member all that has been said here today to me could have been taken care of if we had not been taken off the board with the exception of one dysfunctional board member that i had to work with for a little time and i'm not gonna call in names if you are silent about your pain they will kill you and say you enjoyed it a form former a sorority sister man noah question we will not be silent we will go

271through what you've done with us in the defranchisement of us and what you're doing to the teachers union in such a way but we would not be silent we've been marginalized but we will not be silent we have been brokenhearted but we will not be silent now you might ask who are we well the the we is not just the little rock school district it's not just the people of iraq it's everybody in the whole state because every child every teacher every community is subject that happened to what happened to us of course what happened to us was you kept moving the goal post every time and then after you got rid of us you changed the rules uh god bless you ms mcadoo but i wouldn't believe nothing any of y'all say up here

272because i've seen what you've done to me personally and i've i've taken this personally and i'm mad as hell being taken off the board but i just want to let you know that but no disrespect for that but let me say also that what the state board is doing can happen in any neighborhood i call it a cancer i call it a cancer that could spread over this whole state think about it medically that if you're doing something here in little rock to the little rock school district to the little rock board to the little rocks teachers union it's like a cancer and it starts spreading and then arkansas becomes a place that has an educational cancer to it i would like every child in the state to not be educated by a substitute a

273teacher spends more time with your child than you do i went to a two-room school i had one teacher for four years my whole life is based on miss young you're fifteen four years how many fifteen fifteen more seconds i'll assalam alaika shalom i leave you in the name of jesus miss payholm hello my name is joel fahum and i'm a junior from little rock central high school as a regular competitor on the lrch debate team i've learned that you have to speak up and especially when insidious forces try to silence you we the state board do not believe that students are capable of advocating you believe that we are not smart enough and you believe that you can silence us and our teachers by the revocation of the protective union that protects our interests

274from special interests but what you have failed to realize is that the teachers you are hurting are the ones who taught us how to identify those injustices and and fix them we recognize that each step you take to dismantling the district is a step closer to stripping our chances of a future and we will not let you i am here today against the wishes of my parents who did not want me to be charged with an unexcused absence because i support my teachers i'm here hoping that you will listen to students since you have ignored teachers experts community members parents former members of this very board who compel you to return true local control do you think we cannot recognize that what you have done is try to gaslight our community into thinking you have

275actually returned local control do you think that we are not capable of sensing the despair that our teachers feel when they are trying to stay strong in the faces of the suppression that you this oppression of their voices do you think we don't understand these issues i'm asking you today to consider that we the students of little rock school district are in fact smarter than you could ever imagine and we are certainly smart enough to recognize that what we have to make our voice that we have to make our voices heard in any way possible if not at this meeting today then at the ballot box when we become of age we will remember that you used us as pawns we will remember you are you should heed the voices of the children and of

276their teachers you should listen to us today thank you [Applause] elizabeth dear leanne wilson and charles zuk will be the next three mr blanc you may start well before i begin i would just like to say i'm keeping track of time just to you know keep up with consistencies and um i would like to acknowledge mr key and thank him for wearing red for ed today and without any further ado i will get started so hello my name is daniel block and i'm here to set the record straight because contrary to the popular popular belief held by those who are wanting to cause harm to the little rock school district i am not a puppet being controlled by my teachers or my parents i do not have to be told that what is being done

277to my school district is wrong and unjust i know it is because i'm a free thinking advocate a junior at little rock school dis little rock central high i'm a debater who has won many trophies and i'm a future voter and i'm about to remind this state board of education that the only puppets in arkansas education are the walton foundation supported oppressors who force a destructive education agenda onto the teachers and students of the little rock school district you the members of this board doubt us students and don't realize that even though you have attempted time and time again to silence and hurt our hard-working public educators we have still been provided with the necessary training to call you all out on your oppressive and destructive acts against our teachers and students this board has

278forced silence upon our teachers and hopes that they can easily kick the teachers of this district in the teeth without being forced to listen to the teacher's demands for better treatment or as the state board of education prefers to call it disrespectful disruptions i feel no sympathy for your pain when you feel disrespected by the lrsd community members confronting you and expressing their anger and sadness and pain because no matter how much we want and no matter how much we try we cannot fire you because you were not elected by us and you do not represent us the only form of representation that you possess with this city is virtual representation and this is something i learned from a public educator we are supposedly represented by you due to the fact that the person who

279appointed almost all of you is our governor which the majority of pulaski county voted not to elect so if the decisions regarding our school district including taxes are made by people we did not elect which is this board and the person who appointed this almost entirety this board did not elect did not gain 50 plus one of the vote from the county that the district in question sits in then how is this allowed how is this allowed that the people of the lrsg are having taxes that they had no say being forced upon them how is it allowed that the sports reasoning for taxation without rep i actually have 13 seconds remaining how is it allowed that the board's reasoning for taxing trump without representation is that the boards represent all arkansans even the minority

280frankly it is not allowed it is un-american and it is a weapon to keep it is a violent weapon used by un-american people to keep power in the wealthy and keep it from the minority and we want local control mr [Applause] lauren mcadoo hello board my name is lebron mcadoo i want to love and i do everybody i wish i could like everybody as well you can call this a poem of sorts from a transcript of the governor quote i never said i was a segregationist there must be some time for tempers to cool and for intentions to die down and for people to realize that their extreme opposition efforts are futile like in the schools in little rock they're becoming a shamble i can't think of a word hardly suitable strong enough to describe

281the conditions in the little rock schools at the present time end quote although that was orville fathers it could have been asa hutchinson two people noted for being great politicians two people who use the law to get around and undermine justice for schools two people who set in motion a crisis in little rock i've heard someone even say two peas in a pod governor it's on you to be with truth but i want to appeal to you mr asa hutchinson the one thought to be the puppet master the ringleader the orchestrator what do you want your legacy to be what light will the book of records shed on you what headlines will history tie you to how will the national news outlets cover your tenure will they lump you alongside the deniers of truth the

282ones who did nothing the bought and paid for the races who revealed themselves in 57 governor it's on you to be with truth i hope they say i pray they say i wish they say before asa hutchinson decided to run for higher office he recognized the city of little rock wanted to control their own destiny he did what was right he understood the government should be we the people not we tell people he sided with the will of people not the bills in deep pockets he allowed democracy to happen he allowed for justice to happen he allowed for the little rock school district to have a locally elected school board with full power governor it's on you to understand we march with glory we march with glory [Music] glory hallelujah [Music] since i laid my

283birthday [Applause] kimberly crutchfield and roy vaughn it's hard to follow that my name is elizabeth dear i'm a licensed certified social worker and a co-chair of the central arkansas dsa this board is an occupation of a school district and is not considered representation of this school district the fact that you continue to hold these meetings and vote on life-altering agenda items can only mean that we've allowed you to feel emboldened by the echo chamber of your surroundings i'm here to remind you that we in the community will not slow our efforts to stop your re-segregation of our schools and the ignoring of the collective power of people who stand on the higher moral ground our children and families deserve our voices [Applause] miss wilson hi my name is leanne wilson i'm a parent in the

284little dark school district i'm also a licensed social work social worker in the state um today i want to talk to you guys about trust transparency and partnership these things have been lacking with the lrc community and this arkansas state board mrs zuck as a mental health professional you know the most important tool we have is our relationship it doesn't matter what tool i use with my patients if i don't have a relationship i don't have mutual trust with my patient no change will occur this is true for anything people communities or organizations all require mutual trust and respect for there to be progress made the state board has failed to make a partnership with the community and develop trust this board will cast blame on the community for that but the fact is the

285burden of responsibility is on this board the board is the one with the power and any group or person that holds the power holds the responsibility to establish a relationship and build trust and a true progress for progress a small example is the lack of communication the recent community meetings uh are the perfect example for that i attended the first one at arkansas baptist where a room full of over 200 people were told there would be five questions three people could answer for a maximum of three minutes that's not community input there were postcards for people to write down their comments and an email set up for us to email well how many comments did you get what did they say did people want return to local control or continued state control this is just

286one example of the lack of transparency ms suk you stated at this meeting there would potentially be another meeting to go over those comments or some sort of posting their notification but that of course never happened um so you like to state that you guys speak to lots of people in the community community members business owners parents and they tell you lrc has lots of problems and do not like the lrea but how many what is the majority sting i don't trust that these aren't just people in your social circle another example i'd like to bring up is the fair teacher dismissal act this board voted on that to get rid of that for the lrst last year and dr moore i believe you put that motion on the floor and yet you put that

287motion on the floor to reinstate it last month at this meeting what changed why was it magically all of a sudden not hurting the little rock school district back to my original post the lack of trust you truly want to work with the lrc community teachers educators and staff then put something in motion that looks like it schedule real meetings to have real dialogue about what needs to happen give the elected board authority and not just a suggestion box for mr key to approve our veto thank you [Applause] charles zuk and then we'll have kimberly crutchfield roy vaughn allie nolan and reverend allen okay good afternoon thank you for giving me three minutes to speak uh as a former spanish teacher i'm going to teach y'all some spanish today uh take a noscope baccalaureate frassaro

288may 5th 2015 johnny key went on record saying i've been asked many times about a national search and my response to that was we need someone that can bring arkansas solutions and little rock solutions to the little rock school district that means we need someone who has little rock roots and little rock connections i can think of no one better than baker curtis as we all know now mr curtis was fired less than a year later shortly after suggesting a comprehensive data-driven analysis by the state department of education before approving expansion of existing charter schools to my knowledge no such analysis has ever been done yet charter schools have been continually approved even to this day on august 3rd he gave you all a document he did not read at the meeting so i'm going

289to read part of his conclusion comments to the state board of education and the arkansas department of education by baker curtis the desire of some for school choice can never overcome the state and federal constitutional requirements for a free efficient unitary system of a public education a community cannot thrive without a unitary system which meets the needs and serves the purposes of all especially those persons of greatest need separate but equal systems do not pass constitutional muster systems which segregate isolate and stigmatize students in protected classes are unstable or unsustainable as a matter of law furthermore such a punitive arrangement is abominable those are the words in my opinion of a moral man and of a thinking man i do not sense that from this board i feel like what's in front of me is

290a bunch of people with an agenda i feel like y'all know what you're supposed to do and i feel like you're pretty clumsy often and we see that like when you unanimously voted for the deal that got 2 000 people out at central then you came back and mr pekron seems so concerned and he made a motion and without any discussion unanimous reversal that is so clumsy and obvious i mean we're supposed to believe y'all didn't discuss any of that beforehand that is ridiculous miss i see you mr peck ron i see you too yeah you never pay attention to the speakers anyway you have 15 seconds okay take a notes go back a little means i see you although you come disguised purporting to do something else i see what you're about we all

291see you mrs crutchfield after her would will be vicki hatter and laura alvarez okay good afternoon i'm miss crutchfield again i am a teacher at little rock central high a former teacher at mcclellan high and a mcclellan alumni thank you mr peckham for having you know again a conscious to say the mou was trash but the only thing i want to disagree with you about is the exit criteria the extra criteria needs to be obtainable or applicable to you all not us you all need to know we will ask for help when we deem it necessary the lrea again speaks for all teachers miss moore not just the one that pays dues okay if we get a raise guess who gets raised everybody if we get days guess who gets days everybody okay so whether

292they're in the union they might not can afford the union because guess what they haven't had a raise in five years um go and look at some of the uh classified contracts some of them make twenty thousand dollars a year could you live on twenty thousand dollars a year and that's what we were at the table negotiating when you all put out the negotiations you didn't want to give them a raise so guess what they might can't afford the thirty dollars a month but they do support us and the people that come to you miss zuk that are so adamant that we're doing a bad job you see all these people here and all those people at the school today they thought we did a good job and they came out there and they stood

293with us where are your people where are your people [Applause] because you know when we had the crisis at little rock central all those racists and those bigots they were out there they were out there and they were not afraid to tell everybody they were racists and bigots but guess what nobody was there today because we're all out here and we're supporting our school district we're supporting our teachers and i suggest you know if you have a a conscious it doesn't mean you're aware and you understand and you're woke and if you believe in a higher power than yourself then one day you're going to meet your maker and i hope you will be standing on the right side of integrity in humanity [Applause] mr vaughn how y'all doing i stand today um with a

294lot of humility before this board i come with a simple ask is that you don't punitively uh penalize teachers for teaching in schools that you consider to be failing my entire heist my entire elementary and middle school career was was done in building schools i went to school in detroit and in detroit public schools uh teachers in the in the hood where i grew up on the east side often were scrutinized because of our low test scores but i'll tell you my story as to why my test scores were low my last two years in detroit before my mom died she couldn't work i lived in a house with no lights very little water little heat there was a nice lady from down the street that allowed us to run an orange extension cord from

295her house to mine so that we could study by lamp light while we nursed my mother until she passed away i went to school every day to survive not just go to school to learn that's what a lot of our students are dealing with and it feels like this board is is penalizing teachers for wanting to help students like me i teach at little rock central high but i did my due diligence in doing work at mcclellan and also going back and helping in uh in those types of communities that raised me so when i ask you why you would get rid of our teachers union that allows number one for teachers to have a voice and speak their truth because you guys haven't ever asked us what we wanted you guys have never listened

296to what we asked for how now do you expect us to believe that what we're doing here even matters what you believe is the agenda that you set forward the teachers of detroit stood for us in they took a stand against the tyranny that was above them just like we are but i ask that you all have a heart here you guys have shown us no research as to what caused you guys to make this move to say that the union is the problem of this district i haven't seen that there's nothing that shows that the teachers are the issues in those buildings those teachers go to work every day to make a difference in kids lives i've never seen a teacher that says you know what i'm gonna spend a hundred thousand dollars to

297ruin lives you have 20 seconds nobody does that thank you [Applause] after this will be helen davis and veronica mclaren thank you my name is ali noland i'm a parent of two children in this district um i will get right to the merits i fundamentally oppose the restrictions that this board is considering placing on a locally elected school board or the guard rails as mr pekron described them and i want to say that euphemisms like support and guard rails that is how we talk to children it is not how we talk to equals and other adults we're talking about restrictions and prohibitions on an elected body so let's be clear and have some transparency about what this is the restrictions like whether or not we could recognize the union whether or not we could have

298hiring and firing authority over personnel whether we could set our own budget or this new one about litigation that we've heard for the first time today those are highly consequential decisions and i want to point out in particular the one about litigation because that really caught me off guard today under this mou and the plan that you are considering the state will continue to have its thumb on the district indefinitely until exit criteria are met so let's imagine a situation where it is four years from now five years from now six years seven years ten years from now if there is a restriction on a locally elected board's ability to engage in litigation we have no avenue to challenge that and to try to get out from state control so that is a really big

299deal the next thing that i want to say is that in personal meetings and in writing in the past weeks i have suggested to members of this board to mr key to mr poor to other people that there is a really simple way to avoid everything that you saw today the 10 000 students who miss school the hundreds of teachers who are out which is just announce that you are removing the restriction on the elected board's ability to choose whether or not we recognize the union and let everyone work towards those elections as a positive outlet for all of our energy let's debate the issues and look at this on the substance and on the merits you all have never given any explanation for why these guard rails or restrictions will increase test scores will

300help student growth how can you put restrictions on an elected board and link them to having us exit level five if you don't explain to us that they are linked to us being in level five how can you say that removing the bargaining power of the union is going to help us exit level five you haven't established that so before you prohibit an elected board from making those decisions you need to think about why you're doing it is it for the best interest of the students the people of this community have the best interest of our students at heart and we can make decisions for our own children and that's what we've been asking all the way through this process so i fundamentally oppose any plan that will put restrictions on an elected school board

301indefinitely thank you thank you [Applause] maxine allen good afternoon board i'm rev maxine allen i'm a united methodist clergy person and i know that some of you probably don't believe in lady preachers just like you don't believe in a union and so i'm here to remind you uh that before i was a preacher i was a member of the communication workers of america union and so i want to say to you today that as a result of the union you have lunch breaks you have weekends you have paid vacation you have fmla you have sick leave you have social security and some of y'all i know will need that you have minimum wage you have the civil rights act including those that prohibit employer discrimination you have an eight-hour work day you have overtime pay

302child labor laws you have osha the occupational safety and health act you have a 40 hour work week you have workers compensation if you you get hurt on your job at the school you have unemployment insurance you have pensions you and the teachers have excellent pensions if you let them work you have workplace safety guidelines you have employer health care insurance you have except in this state collective bargaining rights for employees you have wrongful termination laws you have withholding taxpayer withholding you have veterans employment and training service you have sexual harassment laws you have holiday pay you have employer dental life and vision insurance you have privacy rights you have military leave you have the right to strike except here you have public education for children you have equal pay under acts 1963 and 2011.

303you have laws that ended sweatshops in the united states of america so that children could go to public schools and be taught by excellent teachers just like i was just like i was at charlotte stevens just like i was at dunbar junior high just like i was at a little rock central high just like my children were at forest heights just like my children were at gibbs just like my children were at central and mcclellan and parkview and why you would want to break up a teacher's union is beyond me i'm a tax-paying grandmother i i believe in jesus and i pray for you every night that the lord will send you a vision to do what is right dr hill amen i i i really do believe you know what right is i i

304believe you know what it is to to live under matthew 25 where you work with the least of these and i believe that when you lay your head on the pillar every night and try to go to sleep you see the faces of these children and so because you see these children every night my prayer for you today is that you would do the right thing and you know what it is amen [Applause] are you miss alvarez i know you're not vicki hatter i see her back there right i just didn't know if they were going to go in sequence i'm helen davis i've taught school in my lifetime and was a member of the aea and the nea however i most recently in terms of public work retired from the state now i want

305to say in a nutshell you know that i believe that you all are all intelligent enough to understand and we're asking for complete and total control of our school district and recognition of our teachers organization now everything else let the district handle it you all go on and deal with the rest of the districts in the school in the state that maybe need something that good support you got [Music] miss hatter good afternoon everybody i'm vicki hatter and i'm a parent in the district so out of my children my children have attended henderson uh bear mccollum gibbs carver and horseman and parkview now my oldest son he have attended what what what you all have said are failing schools he's out of the district now but it was those teachers that believed in him and

306that went the extra mile and i think that uh you all need to value our professionals more than what you guys do i think you guys need to respect them and to really nearly in my opinion to come up with almost a million dollars to hire substitutes to take the place of them today is just straight up disrespectful and my child as long as well as thousands of other children was not in school today because of it i stand with my educators my child's teachers they went through school they passed the exam that that the state says you have to be certified licensed and certified to teach and for you guys to say that you're willing to put unvetted people in our schools is absolutely ludicrous and as a parent i chose to leave do

307i did not have my child there and i think that you guys should at least acknowledge the national attention you should acknowledge our educators taking a stand and standing up for themselves our students who did the sick out are students and parents who stand with our educators so we want as you guys been hearing full control local control of our school district there is a huge gap after june 28th of 2020 from june 29th through from i'm sorry from january 29th of 2020 through january 1st of 2021 who is going to be controlling in control of the district because you guys have to give it up right because of five years in so we would like for you guys to make a true motion to return full and local control of our school district thank

308you laura alvarez veronica mclean jeff wood deanna mccormick it says laura a-l-v-a-r-e-z okay uh and tell me your name okay veronica uh jeff deanna and brian okay i'm veronica mclean i'm a parent i'm a i'm a product of the lrsd i've been here several times um i don't really even know what i exactly what i want to say right now because i feel like you're right and you keep telling us if it's repetitive but do you get it it's repetitive because we're saying it again and again and again because that's what we want and then you sit up here and you say are you asking for community feedback on that but you don't listen what what is this what is it is it just a game to y'all is it what's the point of pretending

309like you care i would much rather you stop with all the smoke and mirrors and all of that and just put it all out there let's quit playing this game i'm tired of dealing with this i'm so tired and i know everybody else in this room is with the exception of a few over there um i'm so angry i'm so very angry because y'all are not listening why why not why don't you care what do you get out of this well i think we know a little bit but not every single one of y'all has to be that way there has to be something better in some of y'all so please when you say are you getting community feedback and we're going to listen to that actually listen to us okay please that's it amy

310bell and mac bell uh the the commenters after me um i think it was deanna and brian and the bells have asked me to read a statement for them whenever i have that whenever their name comes up i want to talk for just a second yeah that's right my name is jeff wood i'm the chairman of the community advisory board for lorac school district but i'm actually here to talk just as a parent of three students in our school district and a proud resident of northwest little rock we are excited about the discussion that has begun about a west high school in our district families all over west little rock are excited about this the the the expansion of a west high school began this year with a ninth grade but there was a little

311bit of a lackluster uh response to that because of a late announcement of that ninth grade and because the opportunities that were being offered to the students at that in ninth grade were not we're not very sufficient this year only 60 out of the approximately 225 students in last year's eighth grade at pinnacle view middle school chose to stay on for the ninth grade but i don't think that would be the case if next year we installed all grades 9 through 12 and offered a traditional student experience at that location traditional student experience including football basketball volleyball cheerleading band choir anything else that contributes to the excitement and the fun that students have in their high school years that is what the families of west little rock want they want community gatherings they want a

312mascot they want rivalries to enjoy recent history has shown us that west little rock families are starving for proximate quality education and when they are given these opportunities they have overwhelmingly responded roberts elementary school is busting at the seams today pinnacle view is a resounding success ten years ago the school district hired a consultant that said in 10 years there'll be approximately 600 students in this west middle school today in year four there are over 900 students at pinnacle view middle school both of those schools are a schools and they are bright spots for the lorac school district according to metro plan west little rock is the fastest growing area of our city and the center of our town continues to move westward but little rock school district is losing half or more of its

313students from this part of town to competition when those students get to high school in fact the largest zone for west little rock is hall and only 14 students choose to go to hall high school the demand is there the community involvement is there and it is time for the supply to be there also if the lorac school district doesn't do that doesn't meet the supply then someone else will more than a hundred choice to nearby robinson high school this year a new charter school will open in two years so for little rock school district to be competitive we must meet the demand of that part of town thank you laura danforth portia casey anika whitfield and george hobbs was was deanna mccormick next masook i apologize after me um i see what you're saying

314okay yeah okay yes deanna mccormick yeah this this is a statement from deanna mccormick she asked me to read this she said my family lives on cantrell road between reservoir and 4 30. our home is zoned for mcdermott henderson and hall high school my two daughters did not attend those schools through much prayer and petition to the district they attended alternate schools in the district my eldest attended jefferson elementary horace mann middle and central high school she's now enjoying a successful first semester at oklahoma state university my youngest attended fulbright and is now an 8th grader at pinnacle view middle school her situation is different than my eldest she has cerebral palsy and her physical limitations create challenges with the help of a paraprofessional since kindergarten she has been in typical classrooms and able to

315keep up with her peers ninth grade is on the horizon and i don't know what to do with the current climate hall isn't an option parkview with its focus on performance and science is not either the layout of central makes the school prohibitive for her pinnacle's school of innovation could be appropriate but attending that school would cause her to miss out on the traditional high school experience that can be so beneficial for our young adults please consider families of special needs children also my daughter deserves options for a safe and effective education just like any other student did you have statements from the other three i do from from uh from brian salerno there was a precedent set when the social workers had 85 people signed and that person read several statements this is not

316a new precedent this is mr brian salerno he writes this to you he says our son goes to pinnacle view middle school and our daughter to don roberts elementary school which have both proven to be excellent schools for academics and the quality of the facilities as a resident of west little rock for over 12 years we have a tough decision ahead of us to decide if we send our son to private high school or go to a public school out of our immediate area we pay very high taxes and should have the right to a quality education for our children like that at other high schools like central we feel we should have a quality facility and staff in west little rock for high school to properly educate our children thanks brian salerno do either

317of the bells have a statement they do a combined statement okay yes this is from amy and mac bell so we come from a long line of public school teachers in arkansas and have been requesting proximate secondary schools in west little rock for a full decade under both local and state control roberts elementary 10 years after its approval and too small which was immediately so full that pre-k was killed after just two years over a thousand students are educated there today it took another six years to finally deliver pinnacle view middle school if robert's sixth grades which have a thousand and twenty nine students and pinnacle views three grades with 903 students if they were high schools they would already be the district's third and fifth largest high schools instead students are forced to scatter

318to various alternatives including magnets charters and private institutions due to lack of facilities in west little rock hall is eight and a half miles from pinnacle view in a different elementary and middle school zone central is 13 miles from pinnacle view equal in distance to mammal high school robinson high school is 2.2 minutes whoever has the music playing either exit the room or turn it off okay go ahead sure robinson high school is 2.8 miles from pinnacle view and now open for school choice which has been a relief option for traditional education development of homes businesses and other civic infrastructures are expanding rapidly in west little rock with plans to develop two downtown business districts at chanel parkway and rawling road and highway 10 in the ranch currently a traditional little rock school district high

319school facility does not exist west of i-430 which is comparable in population to the city of conway if you wait to expand again it will cost the district more than the cost of a building please act now thank you laura danforth portia casey anika wakefield george hobbs hello dr laura danforth here um okay so you told us to stay on topic um misook so i am trying to stay on the points for just today um without looking at your computer and miss mcadoo doesn't get to play because i know she already knows can someone please tell me the cornerstone of a community school since that language is being co-opted and kind of thrown around and used a lot can anyone tell me the cornerstone of a community school without looking at your computer the community

320no so the cornerstone is to pursue equity um i'm i'm pretty disappointed because you guys actually have an excerpt of that cornerstone in the mou which tells me as an educator and as a social scientist that what was put in this mou which mr pequon um covered was was not really looked at by all of you so community schools work actively to identify and confront policies practices and cultures that keep students of different backgrounds and races from achieving equitable outcomes the second piece that's actually here on right here in the mou um this part that you left out was the sentence after that which says community schools proactively and intentionally empower those typically disempowered by barriers to participation that is not in the mou and i think from looking at it i can see i

321can deduce why so on the first page of the mou under the community schools piece where it says community schools will have a community school partnership alliance compromised of community members staff parents but under that bullet it says each cspa will have one cab member one representative from the dese and one rep from the city of little rock so my concern is that those three groups are not at all representative of a community school model and i would actually like to read you what is what that is supposed to look like um so that when we redo this that it we can get it right 39 seconds so collaborative leadership so you must nurture shared ownership and shared accountability specifically a committee for each community school is a representative site-based leadership team made up of

322families students community partners which are the people that are putting in the wrap around services in the school unions that's in there we don't have that community residence principal community school coordinator usually a social worker that is organizing that process teachers school personnel all of whom guide collaborative planning implementation oversight so there's three indicators that i'll hit very quickly site leadership is the site leadership team must be representative of the school and community so the representatives from the cspa the cab member uh one representative from the desc in the city of little rock appointed person that does not fit what you are putting forward as a community school model that does not that is in direct competition with that secondly the regularly scheduled meetings agenda and minutes so ca i do not believe that cab

323members mayoral appointments and desc reps want to be responsible for being on these very labor-intensive committees they meet sometimes once and twice a week um this is very serious this is not a checkbox so again so to do so if you will please stand and finally a clear definition of leadership team roles i'm going to go because go on because jeff wood just talked for an hour so clear definitions of leadership team roles responsibilities and empowerment to make decisions one of the other pillars that of a community school that you guys did not were not able to answer is invest in building trusting relationships that is absent and that is really disappointing so if you want to do this well please listen to mr peckron and scrap this entire process [Applause] uh good evening my

324name is porsha casey i am excuse me i am an alum of a failing school i hold three degrees with an added certification from the failing school i am a teacher of a failing school with awesome kids that are extremely intelligent and smart i am a parent and i am an advocate for the voiceless throughout this entire deal i was thinking of trying to think of something meaningful something thoughtful something impactful to say but the only thing i can do is come up with questions since the takeover teachers have dealt with so many changes school closing in urban areas let's be honest curriculum changes that didn't even have the opportunity to even make a difference to even ask a teacher if it's working or not working teacher burnout i witnessed it almost yesterday security changes

325in our elementary schools to name a few we've decided that rotating security is better than an in-house security and i've witnessed firsthand how dangerous that can be two minutes is too long what started out as six failing schools has rolled into triple that amount under your leadership your guidance your watch so ultimately you all are responsible for the failing schools just as you claim we are responsible for our failing schools so my question is who grades you who gives you your grade um who holds you accountable for your failure because ultimately this is a school so you guys have failed us we've done worse under your leadership um but i say that's just that's just a contradiction and if we aren't allowed to score you then who's judging your performance because this is what it

326is it's a horse and pony show my last question that i would like to ask amongst you all up here excluding miss mac excluding you ms mcadoo how many years of teaching licensed teaching in the classroom experience do you all have collectively how many years because educators we know what we deal with on a daily we know what we need on a daily we ask our parents on a daily we ask our students on a daily what makes you qualified to know what's best for our kids when you all have yet to come up into our classrooms and experience our what we're walking in daily we just want to know dr whitfield hello my name is reverend dr anika t whitfield i'm a graduate of hall high school i attended horace mann i attended terry

327franklin romond and booker and i want you to know first of all i'm going to ask each one of you to put this on your calendars on december the 6th dece i don't see anybody moving december the 6th we are inviting you to an equity bus tour of the little rock school district we want each one of you to come and ride with us and we're going to take a look at two different schools in the little rock school district i asked this board and i know mr williamson and miss zuk was on the board before when i asked this question and maybe you were miss newton i'm not sure not don't think miss chambers was but she might have been i asked you all if you'd ever gone to any of the schools in

328the little rock school district i asked you if you'd ever gone to the ones that are supposedly uh in distress i asked you how many times you'd gone to any of those schools that were in distress and sadly sadly maybe one or two people said they'd been so we're going to offer you this opportunity to go on an equity bus tour with us because as laura dr laura dan danforth said to you the cornerstone of a community school is equity and guess what the state of arkansas has not shown ever equity in public schools and so we are holding you all accountable because for some reason the governor felt that you could do this to get to this point uh i absolutely oppose any additional at-large members for the cab i served on the cac

329and mr key uh you were one of the people who allowed me to serve on that committee and on that um civic advisory yes it was called a committee and i was really glad that i had that opportunity because guess what we did we had multiple multiple meetings with the community and we put together a 40-page review of all the works that we did and guess what you all did as a result of our 40-page response zilch never listen to any of the recommendations we made about not closing our schools down about listening to the community about allowing us to make our own decisions about reinstating a locally elected school board you failed to listen to us over and over and over again that is unacceptable that is why we will keep coming here on

330item number b as it relates to the little rock school district zone zones i have a question for you what is wrong with the current zones that we have why are you trying to extend areas what are you so afraid of c the consideration of the draft of the mou mr key thank you so much for saying that it's not a good one that we that you all need to have discussion and have a session and talk about it and i hope that you absolutely will but let me also say on the attendance zones that mr poor talked about not only do we not like the blueprint and think there needs to be a moratorium on that we also recognize that you keep saying words like local control but we don't have local control because

331if we had local control you would not keep trying to make decisions on our behalf you keep trying to make decisions for us and that is unacceptable so on item a which is the only item as i understand it that y'all are going to vote on i'm asking you mr peck ron to vote no miss miss uh chambers i'm asking you to vote no miss newton i'm asking you to vote no mr hill i'm asking you to vote no miss dean although you will never look at me unless you give me a mean mug i'm asking you to vote no miss zook i'm asking you to vote no mr key you don't get to vote miss mcfederic i'm asking you to vote no mr williamson i'm asking you to vote no miss moore i'm asking

332you to vote no and miss mrs mcadoo thank you for being the teacher of the year you serve us women [Applause] george hogg and then james o'connell will bond senator joyce elliott my name is george hopps um i'm a school psychology specialist for the district and you'll be happy because i plan to be pretty brief because most of the things that i was going to say most of the things that i had in mind have already been said by people far more capable than me especially the high school students who just said everything on my mind uh so i won't i won't repeat all that stuff because i know how to follow the rules uh but i did want to point out i i wanted to speak to something missed mr pekron said earlier uh

333regarding the mou and uh some of the guard rails and clarifying the uh the exit criteria so it's plain and simple uh and i really respect that i really really hope that's something you guys take seriously or really your track record would suggest otherwise but if we're going to take him at his word i really really want to make sure that you guys when you go to your work sessions and you really really consider this stuff i want you to look at those as guard rails i know you want to use them as a leash but please guard rails local control is something that everybody has set up here it's something that i want you to be hearing and it's not local control if it's a leash uh to the exit criteria simple as can

334be you guys have that power you guys have the power to set the exit control the exit criteria and i want you to really consider that and consider good criteria criteria that we can work with criteria that we can actually do something about think long and hard about the importance of uh act aspire testing summative testing that is not aligned with our formative evaluations throughout the year think about things like the impact of attendance uh that we have so very very hard times very difficult but we can't drag kids into the schools we can't get judges to make truancy rulings we need to consider what is in our power to control and if you're providing support we love that but if you're if you're providing a leash we're not interested thank you james o'connell and

335then will bond senator elliott and garmin forthus okay go ahead sorry hi i'm james maynard o'connell i am uh i hold my teacher certification in arkansas i received it 16 years ago i did my student teaching at parkview i am currently a private school teacher and yet i choose to send my children to the lrsd i do that because i love the lrsd because the education that my students are getting through the lrsd is excellent i am very fond of all the teachers that they've had i have three children in there right now one that's pre-k one that's in third grade and one that's in seventh grade at two different schools the meme that the lrsd is failing is false it is false and we have been very happy with the education that we have

336received any issues that we have had with the lrsd at the schools that we have been involved with have had to do with underfunding and have had to do with the broader effects of poverty not with local control the lrsd is stronger when it represents the entire city of little rock the entire community the lrsd is stronger when it is well funded it is stronger when the teachers feel heard and supported it is stronger when all schools that receive public funding are fully answerable to locally elected school boards and it is stronger when the success of students and schools is measured holistically not by a single test as such i fully support returning the lrsd to local control i fully support keeping the lrsd unified and i fully support reinstating the teachers union as well

337as ending the movement toward charter schools local schools need local control and all of our local schools receiving public funding need to be accountable to that local control thank you [Applause] who all's tired of sitting through these meetings i know y'all are y'all probably are we are too one thing i wanted to go back over if you remember we were here for teacher fair dismissal seems like a couple of years ago when we had a big crowd and you all voted to take that away in little rock district so we left that and we came back and then y'all threw out the frameworks that issue and then we come back and you back off the frameworks but you get you get rid of the union and then we get out of that and then you

338throw out the mou and so it's a whiplash effect that you all are creating chaos and disruption for the kids that you say you want to help and for the families that you say you want to help so in the spirit of what mr pecron said earlier i hope we don't leave here and the department and the board release another mou that says the state wants to continue to control the district in every aspect and we're right back to where we were before we had this meeting there is a massive amount of distrust between the community and this board i think you all realize that i think some of you see it as well it's just a small minority but in reality i think i spend as much time in the community as many more

339than you all do as i'm elected here it is a significant amount of distrust and so on the mou let me move quickly these zones have to be fully vetted or the distrust is going to build we've got to have meetings on these we have to have discussions of these people have to have an opportunity to look at them or they're not going to trust in the local election that's coming the mou has way too much mention of the cab do you all realize that the large part of the community does not trust the cab do you all realize that also the recon in reconstitution you can't just keep the cab going in my opinion that's against the law you have to reconstitute the board or the administration and keeping the cab going is not

340a reconstitution of the district under the law so establish an interim board it can include some cab members but it can include others and that's what we need to look at rebuilding the trust and communication also the mou includes a lot of stuff there's no reason for the state to have budget control for the state to have all this control the district's not in academic distress it wasn't taken the district is not in physical distress it wasn't taken over for physical distress so we submitted i've submitted a markup of that which says i don't see any way around the november election that's not a popular thing to say here but i think ali was exactly right if you allow us to have an interim board build to an election and give that board full control

341then you will see little rock make its schools world class we need a smooth transition y'all keep muddy in the water tearing us up with whiplash every time we leave here we need a smooth transition back to local control for families for our teachers a board that can determine whether to whether to decide whether the union is going to be involved or not of course we believe that a locally elected board would decide they would be involved right but who knows what a locally elected board will do we'll elect them in a general election any of you who believe it's going to be one thing or another anybody out here thinks that local board is going to be one thing another pure speculation it's a democratic process it's time for the local people to take

342back control taxation without representation has to end we don't talk about that enough and let's get going together come on [Music] [Applause] thank you will um i'm george eliot and every time i come down here i just have these flashbacks to my childhood days when i have actually and most black people in this state have actually lived under what was nothing less than an apartheid system where you did not have control of what happened to you where we did not have control of our schools we did not have control of whether or not my parents and grandparents voted i've already lived so much of what's happening to us right now and for those of you who are fortunate enough not to have lived that and don't even know what it feels like to be a

343citizen in the united states of america and you pay taxes and you can't determine what's happening in your own town in your own city this is not new to me and i really really am sorry that it's not new to me it was not new to me as a child when i went to school i was told where to go i was told to leave a school just because of who i was and i feel like this is what little rock is there's something different about the way y'all want to treat lebron i don't know what it is but there's something weird just like as a child i kept trying to figure out why do those people treat my grandparents like that what why can't they vote what are they doing that's so wrong that

344they get treated one way and other people get treated another way when all we have done is be born into the world as we are where all we've done is to be little rock and there's something about little rock that it's almost we have a theme for it and when i look at what the law says the law does not require you to take control of this school district there are people who think there is a requirement in the law that you have to maintain control of this district that's not what it says it says you may it does not say you must and you have made for five years here and you can choose to may give turn it back to the people of this district just like somebody finally decided to stand up

345for me and say when you turn 18 you won't have to suffer what your parents and grandparents had to suffer if we keep this up our kids are going to be standing right here talking to you are somebody who inherits your position i want to say about the attendance zones and we're going to do everything by the blueprint and the attendance zones and we've got schools that may be closed schools that are going to be consolidated and we keep talking about we're going to make all these changes based on what's in this blueprint in the attendance zones we are did you say we got 30 seconds we could have about 30 seconds if it went off because you said three and try to get there so so i i will be fast because i don't

346want to be disrespectful to the board because i don't mean it that way but we are not we seems we are not concerned about avoiding segregation i'm not concerned so much about resegregation at this point is it seems like nobody everybody said you didn't know what a race neutral school was i don't understand how come you don't know that you know what that work session i know what that is and i would just say on the school board zones um please be thoughtful about what mr pacron said you know there's something called packing districts and what that means is when you pack districts you put certain people in general in this case as black folks pack them into a district where they're all together and here's what people believe that we will patent districts and

347add two so that we can make sure we never have another predominantly black school board you need to know that's what people see in this and here's why because you have never given a single rationale for why we must go from seven to nine something that should be done by the elected school board after november 20th if they decide to do that thank you so much and i want to come here at some point and not have to live flashbacks because this is not american are you carmen carmen tortilla yes then marco dorfman dorfsman and johnny hassan go ahead thank you good afternoon everyone my name is carmen portillo i am a little rock resident i'm a small business owner successful small business owner a product of the public school system and i have a

348bright full of life kindergartner at williams magnet i don't want to come here to repeat a lot of things because you guys have heard them your eyes are glazing over i under understand but i want to instead of speaking in generalities my comment today is for is directed at mr donakey mr key i don't know any organization or business that will allow an employee to remain in control that has con considerably failed to do their job it has been five years since you guys have taken over and since you were appointed by acid hutchinson it's okay to fail it's okay to move on you can accept what you couldn't change and you can learn from your mistakes and maybe find a profession that is suitable for you dr hill you run the two fish five

349loaves ministry at our church so you know the fish stinks from the head down i want you to know that pride is concerned about who is right but humility is concerned about what is right thank you [Applause] hello my name is marco dorfsman i'm a lifetime educator and a little rock teacher and parent over the last five years this board has made a big number of decisions the rationale for which has not been obvious it either doesn't explain or doesn't want to explain why it does certain things now the community has also been speaking to this board for about five years expressing its desires it seems to me quite clearly and this community this board has not listened to the community we've listened to what you say and we've asked why are you doing that

350and we don't hear back an explanation a rationale a reasoning and yet the decisions are taken now today interestingly there was a lot of concern expressed for those teachers who are not members of lrea for their voice to be heard and we might even extend the nominating period so that their voice can be heard it seems to me that every time something happens and the board doesn't like where it's going we kind of revisit the issue but every time the community says hey wait this is kind of not okay we never revisit those now the decertifying of the lrea is one of those examples that decision was made with no public comment it came out in by surprise then it disappeared then it came out in the chaos of a meeting at the very last

351minute people didn't know what happened and then oh by the way they read they decertified the union you guys have the power right now right here one of you can make a motion to recertify that union please do so thank you johnny hassan jason bailey how many more are on the list one two three four five okay i just want to explain uh what dr mcadoo said uh to you when he gave you that reading that greeting is god's peace and blessing be upon you uh he said that at the memorial service at our uh attorney with john walker john w walker who was utilized a few days ago his son said at saint mark church that he would ask the governor and the liberal school district to be returned to community ownership that's what

352john jr said and i quote so the point of this that greeting also means uh a greeting of blessing to those who have deceased and so when he said it over the at the church he was giving john a uh blessing from god that only god can give you a blessing of peace well he said it to you now i hope by your conscience that you are not dead and i hope that you act upon your conscience and that's my purpose for being here two young men come on cause y'all been sitting here patiently one on one side one on the other so patient they haven't been able to get up now i would suggest that you read the book called betrayal of american democracy it goes a long way in enlightening people about juveniles

353that have no power meaning they're not voting so they have no input into this situation many americans think that is how governing system supposed to work directed and dominated by elite few but is is political systems of privilege and inequality a ranking order that assigns most citizens to an inferior status in fact field arguments expensive expertise are only the route to influencing government decisions then by definition most citizens have no excess this is a functional reality this is fairly not democracy this is capitalism at its most because most of the time so the point is for us the issue of racism okay most of us you say those who are not guilty of racism right become an instrument of our prejudice which is by defining by definition is holding on to opinion and making judgment

354about someone without getting facts or regardless to the facts you have twenty this behavior is based on attitude and beliefs uh and uh most of time arrogance uh overt racism by definition is placing a institution where over racism is backseated and replaced by what you call institutional subordination and that institution institutional but support nation excuse me uh i didn't i didn't go to college so y'all excuse me for that a place and place placing a person into a position of status of inferiority by your attitudes and actions and your institutional structures which do not use color or use or inferior ideas and so subordinating a mechanism but instead of maintaining mechanisms that indirect related to color you say that we are inferior by our race so my point is that you have uh the left

355left no screw child left behind this is a document that you're supposed to be uh working on as that recess here academically levels well i just want to for the record put this on for the record so that it tells me that you have not did the 100 grade level of math to 2014 reached the goal of 2014 increasing students proficiency in education you're not talking about that i haven't heard nothing talking about this this gap in our the difference between our school district and the other thing is the resegregation of the schools your own documents i'm saying your own documents here says that these schools are re-segregated so my point is put for the record put these documents okay on file and define why these f schools exist and why here a b schools

356all the a b schools have white students and all the f schools have african-american schools thank you and you defined it for me jason bailey hello my name is jason bailey i wanted to speak last time but you guys took way too long and i had to leave because i'm a teacher and you like to hold meetings when i'm teaching so i'm here to tell you why i'm here today mr peck run i'm so glad you looked up at me because i'm glad that you're paying attention now i'm here because i overheard two of my students while we were doing a lab explain their fears about the re-segregation of their peers so i was in this fight december when i watched you roll your eyes as a as a mother come up here and talk

357about her domestic violence situation i was in this fight already so i'm here today because that lit a fire under me and the hundreds of people out there chanting are ready two there is a dangerous and systemic problem that you have each of you and that is systemic racism please don't let your eyes glaze over mr williamson thank you we i've told you i'm a teacher i can look at when you're paying attention you are planning to divide our district and we see that and you may believe that we're throwing this word segregation around as if it means nothing but to this community it has a visceral guttural historical meaning it is the height of your white privilege that you do not understand that that word isn't a buzz term it strikes it hurts i

358know because i get to see it hurt my children they're using the term the world is watching you mr pekron miss owita newton mr hill miss dean who i taught your students miss zook mr key miss mcfedridge which i'd never hear you speak mr williamson miss moore and miss mcadoo the world is watching each and every one of you and right next to your name in the papers there's reserved terms for you your actions your behaviors are going to determine this not necessarily what you say today because we know that your words mean almost as much as they do with your actions nothing nothing they're empty okay we are one district we are one voice and we ain't going anywhere thank you [Applause] jim jeremy lusk dis dixie what's dixie's last name and then molly

359humphrey will be our last speaker i don't know what dixie's last name is i'm sorry i can't read it sounds like maybe it's dixie fair okay go ahead so i'm jeremy lusk and since mom's right behind me i'll say i am dr jeremy lusk she wants me to say that y'all i'm tired i'm not nearly as tired as some of these teachers here my wife is a teacher in the little rock school district she teaches a stage craft at parkview high school anybody want to guess what time she got home from work last night anybody got a guess 10 o'clock at night so everybody go see lion the witch in the wardrobe at parkview because she's working real hard now i think the world ever but she is not an exception she's the rule right

360to teach our students to guide and nurture them our teachers give everything they have and then some you will not find a more dedicated caring loving group of people so when that group of people stands up and walks out you know you have failed to listen fail to listen to the people who collectively form the heart of this district so here i stand repeating to a group of grown adults when i spent last night pleading with a four-year-old please listen listen to your teachers listen to the parents and the students in this community now i keep coming to these meetings and it's easy to lose hope but let me give you all some hope i got him to put on his pajamas last night miracles do happen sometimes people do listen so i'm going to

361hold on to that hope and hope that you will listen to the people who have spent their day here trying to convince you to do the right thing thank you thank you dixie fair and then molly humphries pull it down hello my name is dixie fair pull it down so we can surely i teach first grade at booker arts magnet i have worked in the school district since 1985. both of my children graduated from little rock public schools and um actually i had a dream that i was going to stand before y'all and ask why didn't realize it was going to be a nightmare but um and and my one question that i was going to say was why you're the very people that should be our cheerleaders and is it test scores you can't

362tell me that compare my babies to the same children at your three affluent schools you cannot tell me that the teachers at those three affluent schools work any harder than the teachers at booker yet we have [Applause] her school has a letter grade of a d [Music] my babies aren't d students my babies hadn't lived long enough to be a d at anything anything [Applause] how many of you have been in in booker how many of you have come out and watch our babies in the best school plays that you can imagine um i had a situation one time and i could have been recognized by every union in the world i could have been making a million dollars i was well trained in what i did and i had a small group and i

363had a little fifth grader lay his head down and i said you know come on jeremy you've got to sit up you got to learn he's a misfire he said i am so tired there was shooting all night in my neighborhood i cannot fix that those are the kinds of things that affect test scores did you just see the recent report from dhs about that arkansas is 49th or 50th in childhood trauma have you i mean take some of that into consideration there's come come see our school i i've always said that if on the very first day of the new legislative session that asa would let them come and sub and all of you sub in one school at their choice not at your choice in our towards or even drawn out of a

364hat i don't really care if you came and subbed in my class one time this would be a whole different ball game you just don't believe in our kids come out [Applause] uh is miss humphreys did she have to leave okay thank you all right that ends um the public comment uh i think of the things that were on the agenda there are only two things uh that have a need for a timely you decision he was sitting back there one would be whether or not we have the camp expanded so that if we're going to expand it that those people who get selected can be done in december and have chance for some training before they start in january and the other is whether or not to extend the ppc time so that one

365teacher from each building can be on the ppc so do i have a motion on either one of those or both no taxation without representations [Applause] no taxation without representation no taxation without representations [Applause] no taxation [Applause] the board is at recess [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] now [Applause] no [Applause] without representation no taxation without high presentation no taxation [Applause] no taxation without representation no taxation [Applause] no taxation [Applause] no taxation [Applause] [Music] [Applause] hello [Applause] [Music] [Applause] representation no expectation without representation no taxes do not have representation no transactions representation no taxation no [Applause] no taxation without representation no taxation without direction [Applause] oh [Applause] yes [Music] thank you hey ah okay [Music] back [Applause] [Music] [Applause] oh [Applause] uh it's [Applause] uh in there okay the items are under the the items under

366number 13 with regard to the lorac school district reconstitution will be moved till tomorrow morning and we will at that time decide on what points to vote as well as the new business which will be the uh makeup of the ppc so without objection the meeting is adjourned [Music] [Applause] is my name is [Music] texas [Music] okay now oh the fun part