Agenda Meeting/Board Work Session - Jul 10 2025

001Good evening. We're going to go ahead and get started. Our agenda meeting, board work session, July 10, 2025 here at 5:30 p.m. Uh, let's go ahead and call the meeting to order and we'll go ahead and move forward to 4.2. Let's do 4.2 first. No. Well, it's not an actual meeting. We don't have them available. >> All right. Well, then we'll move back to 4.1 unless they are available. Are they? We're starting with the agenda meeting. Yes, ma'am. Are they available? They are coming in person. Okay. But we'll move to 4.1. Then we'll just go forward in order. And here a discussion review and feedback planning session of the draft new school board zones with citygate GIS LLC and prepared by Dr. Wright. >> Uh it's prepared by me but I won't be doing much

002talking. I will introduce uh Fred Hijazi. Hope I'm saying the last name correct. Jazzi uh from City Gate um who has been working on uh the draft zones that we've been getting feedback from board members and the community and so I'm going to turn it over to him. I know he has a brief presentation uh prepared and the rest of the meeting will be devoted to um the board having discussions around the draft draft number two and what changes and recommendations we want to make to that. >> Very good. Good, good afternoon. Good afternoon. I hope you guys can hear me. Okay. >> Yep. >> Uh, by the way, you pronounce my name just great. >> It's rare. >> And board members, you do have a copy of his presentation in your folders. Um, so

003what I thought I would start with is just giving you guys a little bit of a background about how we went about do drawing the these boundaries and um um what the what the basic process is that we go through. Um I I have been doing this since uh 19 97. Um so many number of years and uh we uh we did um we've done redistricting all over the US and North America actually and uh I worked with the state on developing their data and they used our software for uh drawing the legislative and and congressional districts in Arkansas. Um so to start with I wanted to first talk about sort of how where the data comes from. Um, some of you may already be familiar with this, um, but but I'm going to briefly

004cover it just so that everybody's on the same page. Um, we start with two different data sets. The first one is called Tiger, which is the geography. That's all the um roads and blocks and precincts and county boundaries and town boundaries. All of the geography that um that the um the census bureau collects is uh they um provide that in a data file called tiger um and they provide that to us at usually at the end of the decade. This is not this cycle wasn't a perfect cycle due to co um so some of the deadlines were missed but normally by uh by the end of the decade we get the the the line file the following year they do the census this is the dennial census that um that we use and um that's

005done under the public law 94171 um and we use this data set because this is the most comprehensive um tally of the population in the United States. Um then we put the two together and uh we clip it in this case by the boundary of the uh school district and then uh that becomes the data that we use. So what is in the data that is collected by the Census Bureau and the data that we end up using um uh in our redistricting? So the first thing they collect is the total population and they tabulate that at all the levels of geography all the way down to blocks. And basically a block for the purposes of our our discussion you can think of it as a city block. it has roads on each side but

006blocks also can be made of you know roads and maybe a power line on one side or a river or a county boundary. So um blocks are essentially the smallest piece of geography for which the Census Bureau tabulates population. Um the data that's collected includes racial demographics um which basically if you recall having filled out your um your census forms you would have put how many people live in your household, how many white, how many black, American Indian, Native American, Asian, Pacific Islander or other. You could have also selected multiple categories. So based on those multiple categories altogether there's 63 race categories which the census bureau creates out of the forms that you fill out then they tabulate that for both total population and voting age population and then they repeat it for Hispanic versus

007non-Hispanic. So altogether we get about 310 columns of data um from the dennial census. Now, in this context, Hispanic and also in the context of the census, Hispanic is not considered a race. It's considered an ethnicity. So, you could be white and Hispanic. Um, so you select your race or racial combination in one question, then you um select whether you're of Hispanic origin or not in a in a different question. So, that's how um the data is tabulated. So now that we sort of know the data, how do how do we actually create districts? Excuse me. So we try to we try to balance population and come as close to equal population each of the districts as we can. So this is based on the concept of one person one vote. So if you have

008one district that has 500 people in it and another district that has a thousand people in it, well the people that live in the 500 district have twice as much power on their votes as the other side. So that's why the districts need to be balanced or as close to zero as you can get. For congressional districts, that's usually down to one person. For most state and local government, um the balance that we want to get to is no more than 10% between the the two highest districts, which essentially the way that I explain it is we like to keep everything under 5%. So if everything is under 5%, the difference between uh the highest and the lowest is always going to be less than 10%. Now our goal is always to get as close

009to zero as possible. Um but um the geography and the shapes of the districts and the and the um and the um um the existing boundaries sort of play a part in that. So, as I said, we uh may not get down to zero, but we'd like to get as close to it as as as practical in redistricting, race cannot be the determining factor. So, you can't decide to create districts based on race. That's there's um several Supreme Court um rulings uh that essentially prohibit that. Um, however, we do keep race visible as we're doing the work because we also can't uh inadvertently disenfranchise voters. So, I don't want to create a situation accidentally that I've packed a certain minority into one district or divided up a neighborhood into multiple districts. So, I don't want

010to inadvertently create a situation that could be considered as disenfranchising uh voters. So in this case the way we started is um we started with the nine boundaries. We removed two of them to get to seven and then we balanced the rest um with as few adjustments as possible to get under 5%. So that was how the first draft was created. After that we received the uh comments and then we made some additional adjustments based on those comments. Draft two made the deviations smaller and where possible we moved the boundary lines to major roads. So the idea here was to um create to not split uh neighborhoods and communities as best as as we could based on major thoroughares. We also added locations of the schools to the online uh platform. Although the locations of

011the school isn't necessarily a driving factor when you're when you're creating um election districts because um the population is a driving factor. But to the extent that that um u the locations of school matters to um to the uh to the board, we'll make whatever adjustments you guys want to see so that we can do that. Um so that's the end of my presentation. And if there's any questions, I'm happy to happy to answer them. >> Can you pull up or at least share your screen so that we can see what the current draft two looks like? And um I guess we can uh take comments and recommendations from there so that we can see >> certainly. So, this is the screen that I look at when I'm doing the work. >> Yes, ma'am. Questions?

012Yes, we're ready for questions. >> Sure. >> Um, hey Ann. Um, first, thank you. Um, I know that this was a really short timeline and a big ask to to change our zone so quickly and um, lots of feedback and and thoughts from our folks. So, thank you for that. I wondered if we So, one So, I uh, I currently live in what is zone five on this map. And I wondered um on the western end of zone five and the eastern end of zone one. Yes, right in there. I wondered about the population impact. I just that to me looks a little um well I wasn't going to use that word. It just it doesn't look natural. Can is a very natural boundary and you know that's but I would say there is probably

013more in neighborhoods if you used Mississippi. as the dividing line between that that zone and or I430 north of Canrol. Um so basic I don't know this is Mr. Adam's thoughts on that. It's just an interesting way of putting those two zones together where they almost look like a puzzle piece where they're kind of fit together there. >> Are you talking about this line here? I am talking about the entire northwestern border of zone five and south eastern border of zone if you zoom out even a little more than that. So if you look So are you from Arkansas? >> I am not from Arkansas. I have been to Little Rock a few times but not enough to know the neighborhoods. >> So I guess so I guess what I will say is that the

014very far eastern border of zone one is kind of in the middle of Heights in Kamik Village which is kind of a pretty continuous neighborhood and it kind of comes down the middle of that and right on the edge of a school Jefferson Elementary and there is probably a lot of like neighborhood continuity of like that all the way out to you could stop it at various places but there's it's hard to find a good dividing line after McKinley which is I think what that is um unless you go much further west to either the area between Kingwood and Foxcraftoft or the area between Foxcraftoft and Robinwood or there is a neighborhood right past that and I'm blanking on the neighborhood right now Robinwood >> it's the one right before 30 >> so yeah all

015I was saying was like wondering and I had asked Dr. write this, but like what would it look like if you used Mississippi on the western part of 630 and then I made this comment on the map. It's easier for you to go look at it, but Mississippi, which is the left hand edge of zone six down there at the very bottom of what you're looking at as the dividing line up to Canrol and then kind of went a little further west on that zone at the on the north side. And and I I don't have an opinion about this, a strong opinion. I just like as a person who lives in that neck of the woods like that feels like more a little more contiguous with neighborhoods. >> Um so just to explain um

016the the numbers that are on the screen, these are the population numbers for each of these uh blocks. So um they're all densely populated. So making adjustments here will mean making adjustments elsewhere to get rid of um to get rid of uh population. And one big issue that I had was this particular block has about a thousand people in it. So this is right on the border. So if I start to move this line um east or west, I'm going to have to um um account for that. Now the the way that um I mean just to give you an example I'm not um this is not the plan that we have but um if I start I mean adjusting things is is not that hard you know I just click this and it just

017calculates the numbers. So, if you guys have another plan you want me to try out, I I'm I'm happy to do it. >> I could send a drawing of what that what I'm talking about if that would be helpful and we could see what the population numbers look like, but like I said, I don't have a strong feeling about it. I don't know if others have thoughts about this similar to this in other kind of, you know, there's Well, that's what I was kind of saying. Basically, make it more of a vertical line between those two, right? Candiece like a puzzle. It almost looks like a puzzle. But like I said, I have no feelings about it. I just wanted to bring that up if we were thinking about >> I mean if I understand

018correctly you you want Let me uh get a uh what you're suggesting is that we bring this one here to fill this area and then move this line this way. >> Yes. So yeah. So, I would continue I would basically end zone five on Mississippi on like where it's gray right there. See the green at the bottom? The zone six >> road on the west side of that is Mississippi. Oh, it can put in zone there. >> Yeah, I'm trying to figure out where Mississippi is. >> It's the yellow. It's the big line on the west side of the zone piece that comes up if you zoom back out. >> Oh, this one right here. >> That is Mississippi. So like moving that to there and then up north of Canel having some nearby way

019of going kind of in between neighborhoods. There are some really natural places between very like kind of neighborhoods that have a lot of hills and valleys between them that don't have houses in them up there. So there are lots of places where you could make that cut if you needed to for population wise. But again, like I said, I don't want to I don't want to make it complicated, but I need to be complicated if other people have other things to talk about. I'm not upset about it. I just wanted to bring that up. I'd love your thoughts. >> I don't have any objection to tweaking it in that regard. The comment I had which I put on the on the latest the second map and thank you for your work on this and I

020in general I like this. I do think that the second map to me was an improvement. I like that it used the major roads as boundaries. It felt like felt more natural in that regard and it kind of the eyeball test of just looking at the map, you know, things for the most part looked like they made sense and didn't look like they were too convoluted. My my one concern for me is right at the corner there were four and one and five Um there's there's an elementary school that is elementary and um >> let me uh display that so we can I can actually figure out where it is. So you know among the to me among the various considerations obviously we have to be the zones need to you know need make general

021sense when we look at them that they don't look too convoluted and they and they um but I I think the other thing that I think about is that our schools are spread around and they're not spread equally around the whole city. There are some that are clumped in one area and another And I think that for for governance purposes, it's helpful, you know, to have them spread those schools spread out as we can among different board members for um and so right now in zone four as it's as it's drawn, there's two schools, which is significantly less than any other zone um in there. And McD Elementary is so close to that border. I wonder if it's possible to adjust zone 4 so that there would be three schools for the future and it

022would be wouldn't be quite as much variance between schools in different board zones. >> But look at those populations. >> That's the exactly the trouble that I ran into when I tried that. >> Big numbers. >> Yeah. I don't Yeah, I don't know what it would be. No, when I when I just eyeballed it, I didn't look at the numbers. When I just eyealled the map, it looked like, okay, you'd be taking some significant numbers out of zone five, but but we also had zone six had that northern notch that goes up into zone five. And I wondered if if that could be lessened and and then you'd have to adjust zone six and but you have zone seven which is coming in from the east and has a notch into the middle of zone

023six. And I wondered if if you if that was lessened and then you made up for it at the on the north side of that zone. So, you know, there'd be a domino effect to do, but I but it seems to me like you could have still good integrity of shapes by making those kind of adjustments. >> Um, I'm happy to try it. Uh, >> director Bali Thank you. Um, so I got a couple of questions I want to write down. I reached I reached out uh to City Gate uh after the last meeting. I didn't hear back from you all, but I'm glad that you're here virtually now. And so I just got a couple of suggestions and some questions. U my first question is was there equity impact analysis done when drawing these

024maps and uh also I wanted to suggest um because we are a multilingual district is there a way that we can have these maps translated specifically for the Spanish speaking community so so that we can get more feedback on these maps as well as are you willing to host some community feedback sessions here in Little Rock before the next meeting uh where we make our final vote, I'm assuming, uh so that we can get some uh more feedback and from the public that may not be interested in u making comments online and also uh are you all willing to make a plain language explanation of how you drew these maps so that people can get an understanding if they're not you know listening right now watching on YouTube uh a plain language explanation of how

025these maps were drawn why they were drawn uh so that people can get a better understanding because My main priority is the community needs to be able to make input in various uh ways and have an explanation of why this is being done outside of the reasons that we have to do this. >> The um so to to answer your question about the uh the multiple languages um that's not an issue. Uh we certainly can do that. Um, we have the uh software right now in uh if you give me one second, I can actually tell you what uh it's definitely Spanish, I believe, Chinese and Korean. Um, so the the commenting um tool, yeah, uh, English, Spanish, Chinese, and Korean. Um, so it will actually display the information in in those languages and updates

026the map as well. Actually displays the map differently as well. So then people can comment um a little easier. I do want to also mention that they can comment with a phone. They don't need to do it on a computer. So the the software does work on a regular cell phone. Um, as far as hosting other meetings, um, certainly virtually is not a problem. um coming out might be a little bit more work and and um I can um I can u um figure something out. Um but obviously we want to get as much input as we can and make this as open of a process um as you guys would like it to be. And uh I'm not sure if you uh when you called the office I didn't get any voicemails so I

027don't know that um >> I reached out through email >> uh >> info at city gate >> G whatever the rest of it is. >> Yeah I'll I'll I'll provide my email directly. So, um the person that checks the info may not may have not understood that this was having to do with the uh with um this particular project, but um I'm happy to provide my my uh email and then you'll definitely get a response. >> I think there was one more question. Is that right? >> Yeah. The equity impact analysis was that done when uh when you decided to create this map? >> So, when you say equity anal When you say equity analysis, what what exactly are you talking about? I'm not >> well, you know what I'm saying? like uh for instance

028when we talk about policy and how it impacts certain communities uh there's usually in the work that I do there's an impact analysis done or or racial equity assessment done to determine how uh it will impact certain neighborhoods certain genders race uh all of that and so I was just wondering if some similar type analysis was done when we talking about uh school board zone maps. >> Um typically um elected maps that are used for electing officials um typically are drawn based on population. So my my goal here um is to address population disparity. And the second part of it is to try to keep the districts as cohesive as possible. So um what I'm trying to do is stick to as closely as to the districts as they were without um without making um

029um basically um destroying the core of the district as it existed. So, those are the guidelines that I that I would that I would go by. There's really no way for me to be able to analyze if this particular map would affect um individ um male or female individuals uh in one way or the other because it's just a voting map. It's just it's just going to the polls and it doesn't change um necessarily how you would vote. >> Okay. So, uh I disagree um because when you look at the metrics on what people use as far as like the ass uh assessing the voting strength and racial equity in each zone, it it does need to be taken into consideration. Uh but I'm not going to um like I said, it was a question

030and a suggestion and and maybe it's something you should consider in the future. And uh but my my last thing I think I had like five uh different things that I said, but uh is will there also be like a plain language description of why you all decided to uh zone the way you uh created the zones for the public to at least like read and uh get a better understanding of. Like I say, everybody's not going to be able to uh watch this. We don't have a lot of people in attendance here. And so uh if there's that also explains why you created the maps in the zones the way you did uh that we can out actually put out there to the public just written. >> Yes, and I'm happy to do that.

031Um, one of the driving factors just sort of to explain is I looked at what the comments that are placed um um the comments that were placed on the um site. They they're they're visible to to to me as I'm working. So, for example, the the first map had this section carved out and added to number seven. Um, that's just how the original maps were done. But there was a lot of comments here that said this shouldn't you shouldn't carve this out. So the next time I drew the line, I drew it down and I moved these guys into the same district. So we did look at these comments and wherever the comments um there was a cluster of comments of a lot of people stating the same thing. Um, we went ahead and tried

032to address those as best as we could. And to answer your question about racial disparity, what what we also did is we did look at how um so if I um um can show you that for a second. >> No, this information so this information has to um Yeah. if I can explain. So, this has to follow what I'm trying to do here. Um, let me kind of go back here. Um, I think the question really and you guys if I um was just about a plain language document. Is that right? >> Okay. So, I think you answered that question. You said yes that you would be able to pro provide that. Is that correct? >> Yes. >> Okay. Director, you had a question. >> Yeah. I think he was also going to address the

033whole racial equity piece to his understanding. But, uh >> if you if you I'm sorry. >> Yeah. So, if you Yeah. If you'd like to do that, that's fine. It sounded a little >> No, I I I I do agree with what you're saying um >> with the I I do agree that like community input is needed and that the community uh the folks that in um uh responded online it's it's really a handful of um people and and so you know when we're talking about access we do need to think about uh digital equity as well because everybody is not to um respond online and um in past times uh recent even recent past times we typically have um in person uh community input and so uh if you um I I think I

034heard you say that like you're willing to work it out uh to come on the ground in Little Rock. So if you are going to do that that would be great. I'm um planning to have or host a meeting Thursday next Thursday. So, if you're able to make that happen and so um folks that will um to where everyone or everyone that's able will be able to have input instead of a few um folks uh right in such a large um district and particularly the city because our school zones doesn't um mirror our other elected zones and and and everyone who lives in Little Rock is not a part of Little Rock school district depending how they're uh zoned. Um and the last part, there was a couple of things that I thought that stood

035out, but they're really small. um particularly uh zone 4 coming down into um um taking in J fair which I know that that was a question that you know these every um change you made it was based off of um the comments uh in the comment uh bar. However, uh the children coming out of J fair that attend J fair live in zones three and six and the children who lives in zone four, they go to Terry and Fulbright and so on which used to be Robert's um zone and so um but uh I don't know how how much time we need to really spend on that especially since we're going off of 2020 census. That was five years ago. Since then we have had um buildings built and so um and so the populations

036are not um the numbers are not as accurate especially since we're going to go through another census in a few years anyway. But my my my question or what I would like an answer to is um right if you're able to make it down next Thursday so uh we can have an inperson meeting about these zones and really that's really something I guess um of course each uh member is able to do but more collectively uh we're able to do that um because we're up uh time. So my question to you is next Thursday uh will you be able to come down? >> Uh that that's more more of a contractual issue, but as far as my ability to come down, that shouldn't be a problem. >> Okay. And so, uh, would you be able

037to I guess we would need to get these these maps printed in, uh, large print. And so, um, to where the vendor have, um, contractual, um, issues that is preventing him from coming at the moment. And so, to our community that we represent, then we just need to get those maps printed out to where we're able to have um, inerson meetings to where our constituents are not um impacted based off of a vendor's um ability to come and meet. >> So just really quickly um I don't know if we've talked about this as a board um because I mean it's not a bad idea at all. However, um we don't want to have one meeting per se um but perhaps a number of them. >> Yeah. I mean you know what I Typically, typically we

038would have a number of meetings. I mean, it wouldn't rush. So, my >> I I I guess the um and then if we're going to build it backwards and and problem solve backward, >> you know, just to you know, make sure that we're all working collaborative. >> Yeah. Well, I was like I said and then I am going to have a meeting next week just because this is coming at some point, right? And and then if we're going to have >> uh community input, we need input from the people who live in these communities and not um a few of the communities. So, >> right. >> Um my my uh question I guess is each member is able to hold their own meeting because we are elected officials and this is part of our job

039to do this, right? Even though we're not paid to do it. >> Um the question is this. I know um someone mentioned an August date, but you know, you have until November to file because the fing period don't open until November. and then like you're able to start collecting signatures in August. So really we could possibly push this to an August vote um if if if there's no legal leaves that uh legal requirements that will prevent us from pushing it a vote to August because because those comments there is more population driven. It's not um you know like uh it's it's not a lot it's not a lot of jury mandering in in those maps there. There's a couple precincts that are split split but it looked like he went down and tried to keep

040the precincts together and so um that's uh pretty good but community input uh if we could push the bullet out until August to our August business meeting and then gives us time to truly and from a um authentic way of engaging community to get their input and then we are still able to meet the deadline that we need to meet. So I would like to hear either from >> um if u attorney know but um particularly from um >> I don't know if he's able to get something from him. I know that we'll be moving into a, you know, and we could definitely take a break if we need to address that with the other attorney. >> Well, I see >> if we can think is that just making sure I mean it's that's great.

041Like we could address it, but just making sure that we're able to make um to get a factual answer to be able to make a decision about pushing it or having a discussion about pushing the vote to August. as possible. >> Yes, that's what I'm talking about. I'm just wondering I need we need to get his input because he clearly was the one that you know provide us with the July date. So, we just want to make sure that we have that >> bewildered. >> Yeah. >> Made changes based on the online comments. I didn't I don't understand why. I don't care. It didn't matter. They talked about having >> Let me just Let me just make sure you're finished, director. >> Oh, I'm engaging with her. >> Okay. You're engaging with her. I'm sorry.

042>> Oh, I'm sorry. because I didn't say my name so I didn't know >> I'm sorry that's my fault I didn't say your name director >> had start >> you were just saying that like you are bewildered and that you're satisfied with the online comments >> no I'm not satisfied with the comments I didn't I don't understand why >> I don't understand why we made changes based on public comment because this is a science and they balanced the zones as best they could by population I don't understand what you would do with more comments. You're going to ask them to change the maps to match those comments as well and you're going to wind up with a mess. The reason that uh five is too big population wise is because comments wanted them to reach

043up and get that they reached up and got. So they changed the balance of the numbers. >> Yeah, they did. But but that's not what I was saying. And and I do understand that because the first map that I saw um the reason I didn't uh um uh post it back out because it was only one map. Normally we have multiple maps, right? >> But but yes, we normally we have multiple maps. >> But but but I'm going somewhere with you because I do agree in part of what you're saying. They he changed it based on the comments coming out of um look like maybe zone well our current zones would probably would be five, four, eight, maybe nine. Um and so and so based off of those comments, those comments was pretty much centered

044around zones 8, 9, five, not so much for Greg made the comment and wanted the the J fear brought down to bring that into four, but and PH was um initially in zone seven and then um Anna wanted that moved back up into five and so I I I do get what you're saying, but for clarity and transparency, >> I'm saying um public comment needs to happen because we represent the constituents and voters in those areas like right where the buildings place that really doesn't matter because we know like in zone six and zone three like we're going to be an educational desert at some point because like we keep losing our schools and anytime you're continuing to close schools in certain zip codes you're going to have a desert and and sparity like that

045and that's why you have so many schools right where they're at now. So, I'm just saying just to put a button on it is that I hear you and I agree in part with what you're saying as far as changing on the map based off of those individuals comments. I'm saying community input needs to come from the communities that are always paying an educational price in loss of educational facilities in their zones to have a or at least an understanding of what what what all their new zones would look like. >> Okay. If it's understanding what zones would look like, if that's what you're going to engage the public with, I don't have a problem. >> And have their feedback. >> Well, when you get your feedback and start they start questioning where the zone

046borders are, the only thing to do is either move them or not. And I the more they get moved, the further they get from the the balance, the number the 20 2500 >> 25,000 I'm sorry 25,868. >> That's the number that they were supposed to be aiming for >> based on population. >> Yeah. And then too, I'm not getting into a population debate. However, what I am saying is that having a level of equity not only in um different zip codes but also within digital access. Like we have to provide um our constituents with with with the opportunity uh to respond on their um school zones being moved and and necessarily and let's and let's clear this really quick up. Um it is the election zone. And so our election zones are not the same

047as a person's school zone. And so we're talking about their representation. And so if if folks know that Vicky Hatter represents the central um the central portion of Little Rock and Director Callaway represents the um central uh direct um portion of um Little Rock and West Little Rock and I also come down into a little bit of Southwest Little Rock. Those voters need to know that right where whether it's director Bali, director Rose or or Johnson, they need to know these boundaries and where they sit and going and transitioning from, >> you know, 9 to seven. >> Absolutely. >> So, so we agree we're we are saying we're using different language. We have different slightly different focus points, but again, this is really just about transparency. thinking about if transparency is wonderful and we need

048to aim for it. We need to have some kind of public engagement. >> It seems to me, maybe I'm just way wrong, that voting is um well I know this is right, voting is a privilege and if people want to vote for somebody who's not representing their zone on the maps, I don't know what to do about that. Well, no, this isn't I I don't even think he and and two, right, for the public, I think this is a good little dialogue, but I am going to put a button on this one and answer your question. >> The way the maps are drawn, they are they're not based on right where we live because there's multiple of us in the same zone. This is really about the transparency of This is really about having voters,

049which are our constituents, having a say and an understanding of how their school board election zones are shifting. That I mean, >> again, we're in complete agreement except for that except for that little bit right there at the first >> input doesn't make any sense to me. If I can >> I like the input that we had. It's a science. Demographics is a science and to start having opinions moving borders around you get further away from the ideal and I'll stop. >> Okay. Thank you both for your comments. Um was there a comment coming from the fender or was it M? >> Yeah, if I can if I can help a little bit here. Um um f first off, I think it might not be a bad idea to separate the public comments from the

050board comments. Um because as I'm going through this, I have a difficult time figuring out specifically who's commenting because I don't know everybody. Um so ultimately you guys are going to be the one voting for this thing for this plan. So if I can address all of your comments, um that would smooth out the process much better. Um, the second thing I wanted to explain was, um, when I made the first map, I tried to stay as close to the lines, um, that existed as possible and retain the edges along existing precinct boundaries. On this particular map that you're looking at, um, that's the orange lines. These these lines up here that are the orange lines are the are the precinct boundaries. We do that normally. That's a normal part of redistricting for us because

051the precincts have already been adjusted by Palaski County and so it doesn't make sense to make more split ballots for them. Between the time when the first map went out, I called the board of elections at Palaski um county and I spoke to the person there and I told them this is what we're trying to do and do they care? And what she told me was that no, not really. um because >> um this these lines are already so um crossing each other. There's so many districts crossing each other. There's so many split ballots that we have to do that you making new bot new splits isn't going to matter. So I said between one and 10, how important is this? She said three. So then I made more lines along um the the the

052um major thorough affairs based on that comment. Now the part about community input that we use is tip and we we do these maps all the time. So we get a lot of I mean we had 44,000 input um comments on the map we did for for Michigan. Um, I don't I don't address the ones typically that just say I don't like this. I don't like where this line is. I can't that's not helpful. I can't do anything with that. But if somebody if a group of people tell me that this comm this neighborhood is part of this other neighborhood and you've come in here and drawn a line through the middle of it that's information that I can use and if I can correct it and if then my suggestion back to the stakeholders

053would be hey this is a a neighborhood that I wasn't aware of but apparently it is a neighborhood um then that's how we address community comm community input typically. Okay. So, um just to I guess I hope that clarifies um um how these comments um would get used. >> Okay. Uh a several question. Director Johnson, then we'll go to uh Director Callaway. >> Zone seven. Can you pull up >> the schools in zone seven? I have a question because I noticed that Stevens was added and I'm not really sure why, but has it always been there? I don't think so. So, can you give me a reason why Stevens was added into zone seven? Because I'm thinking I already have six schools and so you added another one. So, you took away from the zone

054that was that was in. So, what what what I'm trying to say is that if Stevens has always been in my zone, I do need to apologize for Stevens because >> that's what I thought. So, I was kind of confused. Does it in zone seven. >> Um I don't know that it belongs in anywhere specific. Um there was a lot of people here. >> No, no, no. Wait, wait, hold on, hold on. Okay, so Stevens was moved and it's okay. I just need to understand what schools I'm representing. I have no problems with that. I just need to know what schools I'm representing because from the last map, Stevens was not there. And so I need to make sure that I include Stevens with the other schools that I uh represent. >> So this red

055line is where the boundary used to be. So Stevens was on the other side of the line >> and now it's been moved over to um to district 7 mostly because of the um thisa the large population here. Um, and again, >> I mean, I got no problems with it. I'm okay with it. I just need to know, you know, where where I am on that. >> Are you talking about their their first map they put out? >> You know what? I didn't look at the first map because I feel like this would be the map that we're going to deal with. >> Well, no, we have two maps out that we're talking about. I mean, he has the first one that's out and there was changes because uh J was in zone which is

056now in zone four. Uh Williams was where it should have been like in zone five. Now it's in zone six. Then Stevens got moved and then zone six lost went to zone seven. And so like there was very slight I mean really not >> I mean there was very slight. It's okay. It's just that I just needed to know that it is in zone seven. That's >> okay. Okay. So, uh, director, I'm sorry. I think >> about lost all of it like memorial of. So previously zone 5 went all the way like it went all the way down to Stevens I think to say that it went fast instead director Callaway. >> Yes. Um, hi. Um, I understand why your your reasoning, but I'm still back to I don't I think that all of this

057reorganization is just going to simply cause additional confusion within this district. and we are going to lose additional kids because of the weight of this map because we're still confused. So my question is, did we ever look up do we ever talk to the to the uh attorney about taking the State Department to the uh uh uh uh taking them to uh taking them to court to challenge the validity of even making these actions? >> Who are you posing your question to do uh director K? to whoever can answer that. >> Okay? >> Uh because I don't I don't have any direct contact with the attorney. Some of you all are privileged to doing that and that's fine. But >> I I brought this up more than one time that I really think that the

058the attorneys needed to look into the validity of this law. Now I realize that okay if we don't try to do this we're we we we're breaking the law but you know breaking the law is something that the president does daily but be that be that >> you know generally I think that that would be um Mr. Heler that we would speak to specific to that is that >> but I was asking had someone talked to him because this is like the third or fourth time I question that >> right >> because like we would not even >> we would not even >> let's get a response from you >> from the board. Is there anyone who is privy to that information? >> I don't know but he said that he was going to look

059into that. >> That was the last response on that >> and that was a long time ago. >> Okay. >> And that has not happened. I think that perhaps we wouldn't have this problem right here if that had been done. >> So access to him. Um and so you know you can you can reach out to him director Callaway. You can reach out >> and one on one >> you can reach out to him. >> But I thought that what we were doing was like uh like the uh the officers were the ones who reached out reached out to him. See, I really think that we had like I don't think anybody likes having to do this over again. >> Sure. >> And uh we're causing more and more additional problems by doing this. You

060see, and uh which is one of the reasons why consistently most of the time was voting against this whole project because I felt it was red lining. Okay. Now, uh uh Mr. Fred, because I can't pronounce your last name. Okay. Uh, I wouldn't expect you to know about any of this. And I see what I see what you did with uh the um um with with the numbers. I see that. I understand that. But yet still, what we're still causing is mass confusion here, which is going to eventually hurt our entire district. Now, that's how I feel about whether or not who has what seat or whatever is not important to me. To me, it's about the kids. Okay? And the kids are going to be so confused and the parents as well. And now,

061we have a deadline, August. So, we're going to have to get the the signatures or whatever if you want to run again for the next uh for the next um in March. So, what we're what what's what has happened here is like we're going to be known as a district of mass confusion. And I thought that was done on purpose. Now, uh that's the reason why Mr. Heler, I asked him that when that was first presented at that meeting, was that March or May? March, April or May when they f when they first snuck that bail that bill in and I haven't had an answer since. Why? >> Okay. >> So, at this point, because uh Mr. Heler is not available at this time. It may be something that we need to address where it

062is clearly something we need to address with him and um I think that um we can we can absolutely address that going forward. Okay. >> Okay. I'm going to ask you would you do that as being the the chair? >> Okay. or uh uh you know uh anybody who who's currently well yeah >> we can put it on the agenda for that session >> whatever you know I you know because I won't be there for executive session but I'm just saying >> not need for executive session okay >> okay >> well somebody can I mean you know >> with him in in public in whatever way but we can do that going forward I mean and none of us are exuded or excluded from um contacting him. I mean that's not that's not an issue.

063So um >> Oh, I wasn't saying was >> money now. I mean we >> Oh, no doubt. Every time we talk to him that's probably too shame, >> but uh I was just wondering had anybody heard from Chris Hiller? >> No, not on that issue. But we can address >> I think we need to look at that too. >> Okay. So, I had a few hands. I want to make sure Director Bali was next. Go ahead. >> Yeah. No, I I don't have a a question. I just have a comment. And this, you know, this is why community input is needed in my opinion. Uh because, you know, science is a process. It's not always a collection of facts. And so, with there's a lot of unchanging truths that happen with things evolve and so

064like through that through us like observing what's going on in our communities this is important why we need to have community input like he mentioned he's not necessarily listening to I don't like this but when the community comes together and says we don't like this and we see it this way it's taken into more consideration and so that's the main reason why I want to push for multiple meetings because Sometimes there are incomplete truths. And another reason why that's why I'm asking for the plain description as well, so we can explain it better. You know what I'm saying? Because I'm not going to be able to go out and explain these seven different zones and why we don't have less two board members unless there's something I can put in front of people to let

065them read from it. Some things get lost in cultural translation anyway. And so also what I would like to say which is more work but you know what I'm saying they want to be. So okay u a comparison map might be something that needs to be considered as well too so people can see the difference from what we are now to what it will become possibly. That's that's I'm done. >> I just No, you had to go. We received a very lovely summary on May 30th from the superintendent about this process in our emails and it summarizes why we're having to do this with the act all the things. It's I I actually copied and pasted it in part to my social media. >> Yeah. Because you're saying you need a plain language summary. We

066have it. We've had it for two months. >> Right. Right. And we we also have that we also have that in our email as well explaining that this is a draft map of going from 9 to 7. Dr. Wright's email on the 30th on May 30th explains why we're going from 9 to 7. >> Okay. Well, you said something about explaining why we were going from 9 to 7. I'm just trying to say that like the information is is out has been Yeah, I mean it's in the PowerPoint. It's been on the website tonight. That's >> And see the thing about it is you might think I want to be combative. I do not I want to explain to the public >> didn't go out to the public >> and and it's not even explaining

067what I'm asking for and you're not explaining it either. We're trying to explain to the people why the map was drawn a certain way and why it looks that way and what were all the things that were taken in consideration. If the public has that, please send it to me and I will put it on social media and email it out and print as many as I can. I haven't seen it and the people that are talking to me asking these things haven't seen it either. So send it to me. >> Okay. Sounds good. also the existing zone maps. I will also just say the existing I I spent probably two hours one evening with our existing zone map, the first draft zone map and every all the elementary, middle and high school and KA

068zone maps and I looked at it and I was looking at where there were weird lines where there was a little tiny section of one one schoolboard zone cut out of something. I spent a lot of time with this one evening and all of the resources and tools are out there. I put all that out in a my community on all my social media platforms. Um, and I know that and then I also reached out individually to people who I thought could get that out in their local school communities in every school in in my zone. And so I just want to say like we have had this information to be able to share with our constituents. I know some people in my >> since May 30th I mean we we have not had the

069match since May 30th but we have until August 14th to have this certified completed and certified by the state in order to have an election this fall. >> And so I make I'll make I'll make one last comment on this because I I feel like >> everybody might understand my point, >> but I'm I'm just basically saying that we need to get this out to the public and be better at explaining this because I reached out when I became a new board member uh to Dr. and to Miss Hudson just even how many schools in my district because I was confused about the map at that time what schools I'm covering >> and I'm not the smartest person I know I'm not but if I couldn't understand that I just want to be able to

070say hey look >> this is a way where I can explain it to you where you understand this map and that's just what I'm talking >> so um just to both of you all's point I think that both of them are valid I mean you are from what I'm understanding you're saying that it needs to be explicit. It needs to be um able to be um relayed to whomever. However, and the information that is there, it is there, but it it can be perceived in a number of ways and explained in a number of ways. So, I think both both points are well taken. Nothing wrong with either. And honestly, um, just it's so important to me for us to recognize we don't have to have the same ideas about anything. I mean, it is

071of no consequence that we see the world the exact same way. It's okay. So, we can ask for what we believe that we need and believe that we've received what we need, but that may be different from somebody else. And so let's um I'm sorry. >> No. Amen. >> What happened? >> Nothing. Agreement. >> Okay. And so and so and so let's let's recognize that it's okay to have different ideas, relay them, and leave them there. It's that's okay to do that. Uh we don't have to try to, you know, well, I agree with that part, so it doesn't matter. You don't have to. That's why we have a board to make a decision. That's why we have Why is there an alarm? I wonder if it's because I need to be quiet. Okay, maybe

072my time is up. Okay. So, so I just wanted to relate that just because I think it's important for us to recognize what this whole board process is all about. And when we have comments, we make modifications, the decision rest with us. So, it really honestly doesn't matter what modifications are made. We don't agree with them, then we don't agree to them. So, you know, we can we can kind of go around and round. Director Heather. >> Yeah. Um, thank you for those uh words, but I also um I think that that I think that this dialogue and this exchange it and and then it speaks to the public and then like the various ways of communication and sending out information in order for people to be able to understand it and to digest it.

073I think that there's blind spots and then right when information is put out in one form um and then uh it is expected for 200,000 people that live in Little Rock to uh go to a website when maybe less less than three dozen people have been commenting on these maps um whether it's the first or the second version. So, um I do I don't want this to get lost. Um and if if at the next meeting I have to make a motion for us to um vote on it for us to have the the um uh the public meetings in a more formal way. And when I say that, that is al also paired with each elected official sitting around this I don't know what um shape this is, but this I don't know what

074it is, but but sitting on this floor in these chairs um anytime we have a meeting, it is an official meeting whether we're meeting with our constituents um and then we do not have to seek um permission to have meetings and The last thing I would say on what you said is this is a working board. So although we don't get paid to sit here, but yet we take an oath to um be and uphold the state constitution and uh we do a duty for a duty to our constituents. If then why if we're loyal and have an alliance to anything, it should be to our system to make that our system is um running correctly and that we are doing our job with our voters and communicating with our voters and not um falling

075into this like control thing. Well, the information is out here. I then I spent this much time going through it. Well, some people may do that. Other people might be out in and running the community more. Some people are going to get villainified for this thing and someone is going to get praised for everybody. to have the same exact um interest. So hopefully um I know I'm going to do a meeting. Um so if y'all and y'all know I like to tag team with folks to do meetings. Um so I'm willing to do that. The only request I'll have for the district is to get those maps uh printed in the large our normal large uh prints and so we can um go out to our community with sticky notes and markers and bring that

076information um back for the official um public comment. >> Other comments, questions, other comments? Thank you. >> You were supposed to go I think after school. >> It's all right. >> No. Um I appreciate the idea of having something written that is the plain language so that everybody can understand to me to hear what Mr. Fred shared tonight as far as some of the guidelines that he used as far as previous zones and major thorough affairs and the necessity to keep things balanced population wise, but that we couldn't take into account things like racial is not legal to do in this situation. I do have a concern for the timing and I appreciate that. timing is tight and as far as being able to get community input in but whenever you do speak with Mr.

077Helder I think the question is to me is at what point do we have to have a decision so that the maps can be filed as appropriate so that we can meet that August 14th deadline um for gathering signatures for not us for those of us who might decide to run, but also for anybody else in the community so that we are honoring that. And so I am concerned that if we ended up voting at some point, for instance, at our first scheduled meeting in August that we there may not be enough time to have those maps certified and be able to meet that August 14th deadline. So >> exactly. >> So whatever it means, >> you know, for us, if we If we could do that if the January July 31st is where we

078have to vote make a decision in order to make the 14th and I think we we need them to decide then if we could do it the next week and we feel like it's important to have one more week and that we could do it then but whatever we need to do so that we can I think honor the law and honor our community and give people a full opportunity to decide about gathering. >> It's clear that we need to talk as a board to Mr. And I think we should >> You didn't spell it out. Didn't say it loud enough. I think we need a section of the next meeting set aside to discuss at least three legal matters that I can think of. The one I talked to you about earlier, which is

079about joining a lawsuit against the Learns Act. >> U what you and what what the two of you have described, you know, how much time do we actually have? And thirdly, uh, Miss Callaway wanting to sue over this. So, that's at least three things that Chris needs to be in. He needs to have an opinion. >> Okay. Questions or other comments? Yes, sir. >> U, I I'd like to go ahead. >> Okay. Um Tony, that was exactly my point that I don't think there's time to do any of the above. I think that if we were going to do that, uh it should have been done before now. I think it was intentional that we did not have time so we could make snap decisions and cause confusion. And uh that's that was my entire

080point. I felt that we should have talked. He should have said something. I said, "Can we sue?" Well, everybody can sue about something. That's true. But now we're here. I agree with all of the confusion that we're having about whose is uh or what school and whatever and whatever. But right now, the length of time that we were given, it was meant for us to fail. in doing that. >> I don't I don't strongly disagree. >> Well, I strongly agree with myself. Okay. How about that? >> Be careful about the way you're going to vote, though, because we might wind up with all those ties that you have to call back. >> Well, how about this? If I make that statement, I meant it. >> All right, Director Strong. >> I can appreciate that, right?

081Strong. myself. >> All I was gonna say on your second question, we were given I don't know I took a picture of this on May 8th, but I can't remember the exact date, but we were given a very clear timeline for all of this to submit by the end of July for Mr. Hill. So, you asking about the timeline, right? >> Okay. And the other >> we have that on paper that we were maybe we could be that again. >> I know what you're saying. >> I understand what you're saying, >> but also this is and this is really more so for the public. Um because what what some of my colleagues are are including myself is saying as far as there is this question about whether or not we need to have it done

082by the 14th. It then it hinges on our attorney saying that he is going to seek more guidance on that >> or file the lawsuit. And so like we do have options. Although it may seem from some of my colleagues that this is our only option, we do have um options and and two I'm always um happy to do a second um to to um write to things that make sense. And so um and so that is right where uh the question mark in the questions continue to come in from because we was told that we have other options. >> I'm absolutely combat anything anybody said. >> No, no, no, no. That was just for Little Rock and Beyond. >> Okay. >> I wouldn't feel like I was facing an Inquisition. >> I'm right over

083here by myself in the middle. You won't talk. >> Other questions? >> There's really not too much more discussion. We've already decided or at least had her decided she's going to have a meeting. So, all we need to do is meeting up and then from that point on what everybody is requesting, we just do it from that point. It makes no sense to spend two hours talking about the same thing because we basically almost saying the same thing. And so I'm going to be a part of a meeting. So that way you won't have 20 meetings before the end of the month. So I want to step in and be a part of your meeting. So that's where we >> Okay. >> Other questions? Other questions? >> I have a quick question for uh Fred.

084Um, in the in the essence of time, are you able to I guess I just need some guidance in in getting the maps uh the the big version of the maps um in a timely fashion so we can have them available for the board members who will be hosting meetings. >> Yes, I can provide you that. >> Okay. >> Um copies of uh something that you can send take to a u co or uh a print shop and get printed. >> Thank you. >> Very good. Just a quick question on that. Are are people taking the version one and version two that were on the board meeting tonight or are we taking something different or like what is everybody interested in? I'm just curious. >> I was planning on having uh because if he sends

085them then we could take them to the is it the Pali County Commissioner because they normally would print those big old maps, those plot maps or whatever. Um both I I would take both versions because both versions were present it to us. >> Okay. >> Director, where are you having your meeting? >> Where are you having your meeting? >> Yes, ma'am. Um I am waiting back from two locations um to hear back. >> Okay. >> And two, I don't mind um stacking them because you know how all of you know how our zones are like butdding up against each other to where multiple people can come and not have to uh travel. So, I'm looking at two different locations um about two hours um start times apart, but I'll let you know. I'll call you.

086>> Well, well, I will I will I will communicate somehow some way to you. >> Okay. Director Adams, anything else? Director Callaway. >> No, I think we need to sue. >> I do. >> Director Adams, >> no. I was wondering, you know, tonight, >> you know, we gave feedback, two board members gave feedback asking for some adjustments to be considered to see a different versions of what that would look like. Miss Strong did and I did. I wonder if if we could get versions with those options so that we could look at them and and have those for at least for the board to consider and and if we're going to do public meetings for the the public to consider, get feedback on those. So, what the two board members are asking you to do,

087would that change the uh population of what you've already um >> Yeah, it's going to change everything. It changes everything. >> Yeah, absolutely. Balance it. >> I really think we probably but it's okay because it's just another option. Um, what I like to I mean the ideally what I'd like to do is send you guys a uh an the same thing that you are familiar with as far as commenting, but have it not be made to made available to the public just for you guys to put your comments on. So then I can address that. And if um that would really expedite things because uh I'm not familiar necessarily with all the neighborhoods. So, if you guys sort of give put your comments on something that I can then specifically address, that would move things

088along much faster. But I can't produce the the process of creating a map and putting it online is minutes, not hours. >> Okay. Go ahead. Hey, wait a minute. Okay. So, in in a nutshell of what I said is that we have two maps presented by our GIS um person and that since these two versions of the maps have already been brought to the public, these are the two versions that should go out. Now, what uh Director Cal, Director Strong and Director Adams is proposing is very small population changes, we are not talking five, six, 7 thousand people. We're talking a small number of folks. And so if that want to be done, then I think that those um comments should come as a board vote because it's going to change everybody else's. And just

089as she said, uh she's um saying that October or August 14th is is a hard date that we have to stop and um have it all done. Well, if we keep changing because they want this zone, this these streets in over this street, which changes all of our zones, that isn't for the good of the entire city. So, right now, we have two maps and we could take it to the city and we can have our city residents tell us um how they feel about that and then we can move forward from there instead of making all of these treats to small neighborhoods. >> Okay. >> Director Ed. I just disagree. I think I think that this meeting tonight was a time for us to give feedback and to continue to refine and think about

090different versions. It was my understanding it was not to say yes or no on this particular one. It was for us to continue the discussion and the two versions that we have have been based on feedback and we may not choose to go with a different version. We may prefer version two instead of version of version three or version four. But but I don't I would disagree that we need to freeze it right now. If we're going to be asking for feedback, especially from board members, and we say, "Well, yes, but we don't really want your feedback from board members. We're going to freeze it." And it's and and and I don't think that's right. I think that we can have a choice about which versions we prefer, but but if we're asking for feedback

091in discussion, then I think it open for revision for us to consider because it might be that we would look at that for what suggested or I suggested we look at and say you know it doesn't make sense I don't think it's as good as version two unless we have a map to look at I don't think that I'm not in a place I would suggest that all of us would not be in a place to make a good decision >> okay other comments other questions yes >> on that um you know Just on that note, if we are not accepting changes, then we should just wait and do the public meetings after we vote on it. I mean, unless we're doing it to inform our vote. I mean, if it's really just to tell

092people what their zone is rather than get feedback and be willing to change it, I don't see the point in rushing to do that before we vote. >> Okay. And keeping keep in mind, we do have a um special board meeting after this meeting uh to address changes. Is that correct, Dr. Ryan? What what would that look like as it relates to the change piece? What would that um kind of yield? >> So, we only >> to what extent? >> We only we put that on a special meeting >> if needed. If the board needed to >> vote or take action on anything, we just didn't know how the conversation would go. It's just there as a placeholder. >> Okay. Okay. Yeah, that's right. Okay. Uh other questions are coming. Yes, ma'am. >> Question. So,

093we're going to be going discussing three maps at your meeting. Is that correct? >> Sorry. Right now, three maps doesn't exist. Right now, we just have two maps. So, I'm going off of the two maps that we have. And if we decide to go with or those maps are made to accommodate zones five and eight, then that naturally is going to shift all of our zones potentially. And if My only concern is right, if we're in this crunch time, um then we don't have time to have another map um done to shift these these zones because we're trying to educate our constituents about their zone. But if we're I don't know what they're going to do, but I will share out the information. >> Okay. So, what happens now if they make those changes and

094things in other zones shift and those board members have a problem. So, that have not that impacts our zones that our people have not been able to speak about. So, um they have already made the changes and so now they are looking at it publicly and they want to make more changes which then have a some level of impact whichever way right on our zone. So I don't know but I'm looking at two maps right now. >> Okay. Okay. So >> yes >> I would I would still think that this process is being rushed and we we need more time but according to the state law we don't have any time unless there is a lawsuit and if there is a lawsuit then everything will have to stop. I think that this is something that

095needs to be thought about. That's my opinion and I've I've had it ever since they brought it out. You can't rush drastic changes unless you are a dictatorship and they can do it overnight. >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> I just want to respond to Miss Johnson. Let me just make sure make sure. Director Callaway, where you finished, director Callaway? >> Oh, yeah. Because like you're right about we saying the same thing. >> Yes, it is. >> What I was thinking, the way I was looking at it is is that for public that that if we had right now we have two versions, we end up having three or even four versions. And if we go to the public and we're running input, then we're giving people samples. the feedback. So they might say, "I like

096this one the best because of this, and I like this one the best." And that could be useful feedback for us as we hopefully make a final determination about what we're going to do within a couple weeks. And and Mr. said that he could make those changes in a matter of minutes, that it would not take days. And so it's not delay for him to have another version or two for us to look at. Okay. >> Okay. Now, I don't have no problems with that. I just don't want it where the changes you want everybody else and now you got a negative map. Okay. Because what you guys want to change has a negative impact on us. Is that a map that you want to >> Well, I think that's a that's a question I

097think for us to decide about whether the changes are negative or not. You know, they're they're changes because you can't make a change in one to keep the the population balanced without making changes other places. But I think whether or not the change is a positive change or a negative change, I think that's going to be up to us to make a value judgement on when the time comes. It'll be a change. >> Can I ask you what is it a certain neighborhood you guys are going after? What is your reasoning for doing that? >> I'm curious. >> Well, yeah, the reason that I my point in the beginning was that I thought it was helpful to have We have a great disparity in the numbers of schools that are in different zones and that

098it would be helpful to to try to decrease that disparity of number of schools in different board zones. And one way to do that would be to make a a change for zone four which is not the zone that I would as this as these two maps are drawn. It's not my zone. This is a broader concern and but to have zone have three schools that were in that zone as opposed to two and the very first map only had one and so this would be to try to have three schools in zone four. This board may decide that that's not a priority and that that we shouldn't go that way but that's what makes sense to me at this point. >> So what about zone seven? You think you could reduce that number in

099zone seven? >> Yeah, I I'm not >> Yeah, I'm not making any comment about about that? >> Yeah. >> Okay. Dan, >> so I I do I do not my only the only reason I made the comment was because of simply how it looks, which is what we're supposed I mean keeping neighborhoods together, which is how we're supposed to draw these maps. I mean, if you look at the state guidance around redistricting, we're supposed to keep neighborhoods together. And just the way that the way that the two kind of fit like a puzzle piece doesn't feel completely natural to And that was the only reason I suggested it. So what they all have little juts out everywhere. I think these were there was if you I don't know Mr. Fred if you could scroll back

100up on the screen we're all looking at still but um where there's that skinny part where above the gray is zone five and where it goes between the purple and the green there is just a weird skinny kind of puzzle piece situation there. Um it's just a little different. I mean it just doesn't look completely natural and I'm fine with it. I just like and I I have no dog in the hunt really. Honestly, like I do not care. But um I just wanted to bring it up as as a way of keeping neighborhoods together >> and make it look a little more natural with straight straight lines. >> Okay. So, if we don't have any other questions or comments, I think we've commented and questioned. I mean, seems like most people generally like to,

101so why not? I mean, let's just keep your party going. Just come up with something. Okay. So, 4.2 two marketing RFP follow-up discussion with recommended vendor. >> Right. So, if you remember, we had a conversation several months ago about um marketing, branding um and we decided to move forward with the RP. The RP has closed. Um we had uh several folks who submitted bids. You see them in your um agenda. MHP was the one who had the score. We actually uh met with them individually uh sort of a quas interview with them uh just to make sure that we were um uh good with recommending them to the board and so we had a very good discussion with them. We like some of the things that they had to share and so we are bringing

102them to the board uh today for them to uh share um their ideas uh to help us with marketing and branding. Um, and with that said, I introduce uh our going to say friends, but our friends from MHPSI. And don't ask them what MHPSI stands for because there is no real answer. >> Thank you. Hey, hopefully I'm doing this right. You can hear me, but I feel like it's a intimate enough room that you can. Is this on? >> May the Okay. >> Uh, good evening. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to talk with you today. We're very excited to walk through our response to the RFP and um get to know one another a little bit more. As the superintendent said, we are with MHPSI. I'm Kristen Nicholson. Um we are a fullervice

103marketing firm. If I can advance this. No, it's not. There we go. Okay. Uh we're full service marketing agency. We're headquartered here in Little Rock just down the street uh in Riverdale. We also have a full service uh video production studio in West Little Rock and another office in Northwest Arkansas in Bentonville. We are 53 years young. And uh we're full service which means we have everything under one roof. So 50 talented marketers across our family of companies. Uh everything from marketing strategy to video production to digital media to traditional media to website development, app development. We have a whole web development team and uh public relations. So you name it, we can do it. Uh I mentioned we have 150 team members across our family of companies. Uh this uh is the team though

104that we have identified to work with LRSD. These uh talented team members represent uh the different departments at our agency. So again everything from PR which is my specialty to uh marketing strategy which is my colleague Whitney. Whitney you want to introduce yourself? >> Yes my name is Whitney Burgess Scales. I'm the vice president of marketing strategy at MHPSI um and really lead the omni channel how the different all work together to tell a full story um and how the creative works and how it comes into have a reporting and performance perspective of media. I think it's my turn. I'm Chris Bell Davis. I'm the content studio director and the resident troublemaker. My job is to challenge the status quo and figure out how we can do cool things even if everyone in the room

105doesn't want to do them and stay on course with the trend. So, I kind of got the coolest job. >> Yes, we love Yes, he keeps us on our toes. Uh, so why us? So, 53 years, but most importantly, we have decades of experience doing award-winning education campaigns. We also have decades of experience with uh DEI communications expertise. We are a Google Premier uh partner, which is the we're the only agency in the state that is a Google Premier partner. Why that's important? um in order to get that status which we've had for 10 years uh that means that our staff has to be certified in Google certifications we have to keep that to maintain it we also have to maintain a level of ad spend but most importantly to you guys why that's relevant

106we have a real life person at Google who uh is our rep and we can call at a moment's notice and that's important and then uh the second most important reason is we get to beta test new products that Google rolls out which means that that gives our clients a competitive edge on their competitors because we get to test out new Google products. So only a group a Google premier partner status gets that. Uh we have coined the phrase tradigital that is our philosophy. We have trademarked that which means we blend traditional and digital. We believe in that holistic approach that has to work together. We were just having the conversation out in the hallway how um people don't just watch TV. It's all about a screen. Even if you are watching a TV, it

107may be an app or CTV. Uh so it we really look at that holistic approach with tradition traditional and digital and how it blends together. Dopio is a proprietary tool that we use. It stands for a double shot of espresso which means we use technology and AI but pair it with a digital strategist so that we can perform campaigns with precision. uh in-house video production capabilities already mentioned that plus content studio with Chris Bill Davis's expertise is all about engaging social first video content and uh crisis communications which is my area of expertise and then we are locally owned but have a national reach. I mentioned decades of education experience. This is just a a small portion of our education roster. We're very proud of our partnership with U.A. Little Rock. We've worked with them

108for over five years. We have worked with Harding for over 20. Um, we have worked and been engaged with Hall High and their alumni group and we're proud of our work with themies of Central Arkansas. We have launched that. We did the marketing strategy for that. We did all the branding. We did the uh the go to market, the launch, the website development and currently maintain the website for that. And then of course be pro be proud and wash baptist. I mentioned our work with Hall High. Uh in 2021, we did a strategic planning project with them. Started off by conducting interviews, uh facilitated meetings with different stakeholders. Uh conducted a full marketing and communications audit to identify gaps and then we developed a strategic marketing plan with the goal to promote awareness and ultimately

109increase uh consideration for a fall high school. jump into our work with Little Rock. I came on to the account of course I haven't I'm just kidding. I came on to the account recently but one of the things when I was brought on again I tell you I'm the troublemakers like how can we reach younger demographics and rural and urban I don't know much about rural but I figured it out and with that we were able to implement some really cool campaigns and I will say that we're very proud to boast that 2024 they had the highest best enrollment that they've had in a long time which is really big in high especially now when there's so many options and then in spring they also had similar metrics but also you know I like to

110think a lot of that was attributed to a lot of the cool things even if they had to march from uh exec hall to office to really cool things on this social. So that was really important. And then jumping to another project that I love. I'm very passionate about um again love making trouble but this project experience rock and color was super fun for me to be able to show the rock through a different lens. Some of the challenges we faced with budget timing. I interviewed 55 people in the span of a couple weeks and we had to get the content out and good and reach out to those people, but it was super important for people to be able to experience color. The campaign was so good, it won awards, but I also got

111to speak to a New York class about how I was able to implement grassroots efforts and how the agency were so big and so that was really fun. When it comes to execution and how do we reach people, it's really about thinking about a neighborhood and understanding that at every household, people are searching for different things and that puts them in market for things and that's how we're able to identify people who are actively searching for solutions. So when you go to Google, you are searching for the answer to a question. That's why it's called search query. If we think about that and zoom it out to understand how do we get different messages to the right people that's what marketing is right message right person right time right frequency okay so let's think about

112a regular neighborhood and at the first house they are focused in making decisions for their scholars about academics and that's what leads really the choice that they're going to make for for their for their scholar they're looking at AP classes that are available graduation rates scholarships awards and college access their primary search function they're decisions on the next house in the in the same neighborhood is about campus experience. Class sizes are going to be the most important to them. Teacher student to teacher ratio, volunteerism opportunities and what the safety is like on campus. And another house is about extracurriculars, sports, clubs, out of time schools. And then the last one, it's a current scholar and they chose based on location proximity. The key is to make all of this work. It's about getting the right

113message to each of those homes based on how they're making decisions. And we do that through precision targeting. And that's why bringing that whole story together that there are schools within Lok School District. They're going to be the right choice for you. The way this works is when you think about each household and the Wi-Fi that it has. On average, every house has about 11 different devices attached to the Wi-Fi. That's 11 opportunities to be able to reach that household. Think about the frequency of that opportunity because remember this isn't just about your TV screen anymore. It's every mobile device, every tablet, every computer, every gaming console are opportunities to reach that audience. And so we think about that to be able to push our overall message and have the amplification of frequency based on

114what they're searching for. The search that happens on their devices at their wi-fi is what determines the type of messaging you see. All right. So then we How do we put an overall marketing strategy together? It's thinking about the who, what, where, when, why, and how. When we're putting together a marketing strategy, we do have to know who we're talking to and what their pain points are. We have to understand how they're what marketing moments or opportunities and how we're going to reach them based on the demographics that we're trying to reach. And we're putting together a program that hits them at each of those stations of that buying decision process through a traditional sales funnel. >> Okay. But first, we've got to start with the strategy, and that means research, conducting research. So, our

115process is four-step process. Step one, it starts with discovery and orientation. We've got to learn, we've got to listen and learn from you. We've got to hear from you. Where where are your perceived pain points? We then go out and recognize all the other stakeholders and hear their perceived pain points. We will conduct a communications audit of all of the communications channels and how you reach each of those stakeholder audiences. Uh then we will uh do benchmarking and competitive analysis. That means that we will look at your competitors and how they communicate to their audiences and then also look at industry as a whole and what are what's best practice um and and weave that into a plan where we will develop a SWAT analysis and then provide recommendations to start building a strategic marketing

116plan. So first we start with research and and those interviews and the listening. Then we move into developing what's the message. What what were those pain points that we heard? We we talked about the who, what, when, where, why. Well, that's how we move into that key messaging phase. And it's not just an umbrella message. No, we've got to tailor that message to that specific audience. We always call it the what's in it for me that everyone's favorite radio station is W I FM. Uh it's only relevant what matters to me. What was going to be relevant to you is going to be completely different. So, we got to map that out through our messaging and uh define that value proposition for every different stakeholder audience. >> And then I get to do the fun

117part. I've been getting nerding out and doing all the research. I get to make it look good. So, my job is to keep my ear to the social media and trending streets. And that's what I do well. And that's where we take all that and we just make it cool and fun. Some people don't want cool and fun, but if you're trying to reach audience that doesn't want it, it's still going to be realizing what your audience needs and how they need it. Videos, graphics, social content, media, commercials, all it works together. So yes, every strategy to just make a beautiful commercial and think somebody will see it. It has to have a based on the audience we're trying to reach. And a lot of time that's really focusing on online first and understand that

118mobile experience is important. Thank you. The fourth arm of this approach is enhanced community relations and you do that through triedand-true PR. That's through grassroots. That's through earned media. That's through direct stakeholder outreach. So we will develop a map where we will identify what are the owned channels that we can communicate to these stakeholders. What are the earned channels? So those news media outlets or influencer outlets? What are the borrowed channels through strategic partners that we can leverage? Um then we move into the uh tactical plan and that looks like the real practical you know how do we identify ambassadors and provide them toolkits um devel we have this great messaging. How do we um how do we train an army of ambassadors who are trained on this messaging and can be deployed out into

119the community. And then lastly measurement is very important. we will be measuring all along the way whether that's through is the creative marketing through our digital ads are we driving people all the way from top of funnel awareness to the action um and same with PR are if we're doing social content are people engaging with it do we have KPIs set for a number of positive news stories we can track sentiment we can make sure that you know doing benchmarks if we have this many um um negative news articles are positive we want to increase positive by We we work with uh Sision and we do media monitoring and track sentiment. We deploy all that feedback quarterly so that we can adjust and pivot the marketing plan. Um so just a snapshot of real tactical

120of what the PR messaging framework looks like. That's elevator pitches, that's development of FAQs, that's issue response guidance, um that is proactive pitching. So putting together a planned calendar to proactively tell all of the great news stories. There's so much good happening in the district. We just have to be strategic about it and make sure that we've got a calendar. And with that, that's our four-step process. But I'm sure you guys have lots of questions that we can answer. >> Questions. when will you get started? >> The timeline it we actually have put a um a timeline in the appendix and I believe I'm not sure what Thank you. Um if let's just say we get the good news this month uh it's four to six weeks for the research phase for us to do

121listening interviews many focus groups to develop the plan. Um so we have earmarked August starting in August and then going into early September for the um the research phase then we'll need roughly four to six weeks for creative development and that is putting all the messaging um the actual if we need video assets we need you know digital assets four to six weeks >> um we can typically get it done in four but it just depends on you know approval processes and getting talent and all that and then uh prepared to uh launch in November. So you're looking at August to September to early into midocctober. That's the research. Let's get ready. Let's get all the creative and then we can be live to go and market in November. And that's based off of just

122years of experience and um you know how we've we've done similar campaigns. And that actually aligns with um uh some of the new uh recruitment, student registration, some of the changes that we're making with the way that we do I'm losing my train of thought, the way that we open enrollment and choice and all those things. And so that that timeline actually aligned perfectly. >> Um so will this interface with with the enrollment because right now processes. So, is it going to just streamline all of those processes in order for you to be able to um check on the enrollment process? Because I heard you mention it earlier on if someone would come. >> So, we will identify goals and objectives when we're in the planning process. I would assume I don't want to make

123assumptions because we want to hear from you, but I would think that enrollment is the ultimate goal >> and the the choosing LRSD is the ultimate goal. So we will build the plan to identify those KPIs and then through the process we will establish that benchmarking and that's a very collab collaborative process because we're going to need information from you, data from you in order to have those checkpoints to make sure that the enrollment's moving the needle. >> Okay. And then like um I have two two more questions. Um you also did central Arkansasies and then of course we're one of the well actually were the district who got the other district on on board with it. Um, so will that be incorporated within our with within because it all works together? >> I would

124think so. Again, we would we would need to hear that from you, but I would assume that that's going to be a part of the strategy. Okay. My last thing, Mr. Okay. So, I was gonna say social media. Um, Tik Tok. So, our kids are on Tik Tok. you know, you you have in there on IG. Um, we know our governor doesn't like to talk for some reason. Um however um creative to creatively think of a way um for us to have um for the messaging to be on Tik Tok because that's where not only Gen Z and alpha is at. That's also where you know the younger or the bridge um millennials are at and then everyone else is still on Facebook. So um so >> I was gonna say I was gonna say

125I'll speak to that. Well, again, that's my job is to be in uh to like being in a know they have other platforms like Twitch and YouTube. Yeah. Well, Twitch is actually more popular among the Alpha Tik Tok because of how Tik Tok is and the age limit. And then the other thing is the age demographic of kids we're market but we would have to figure out ways to get and that's where it's okay it's okay that it's it's a great place and there's a place for everyone but we would figure out how and that's where Wendy comes in with the smart >> but I will add to that The the one thing that I will add to that, Chris is absolutely right, >> but parents are also where their kids are. >> And so

126it's making sure that the messaging aligns because absolutely because the from a paid advertising standpoint, I cannot target minors, right? But I can target parents of twins. I can target parents of certain age groups who live in a zip code who then are interested in this. And it's really pulling that story through. >> Um, but it's understanding that regardless of the making sure that what we learn from Tik Tok has influenced Instagram and LinkedIn and Twitch and what the experience is. So even if we're not publishing on that channel or running ads, we're pulling through what works about that channel and it's about speed because people are watching. If you don't catch their attention in three seconds, they're out. Okay? >> So it's making sure that the video is aligned with that experience and pulling

127it through. >> And there's still ways to leverage Tik Tok because we still do that for our other higher ed. They have the same rules. They can't be on TikTok, but their ambassadors and their advocates and their influencers can be. >> And so there's ways around it. >> Okay. Um yeah, I can't wait to um see um how this is all interfacing on the web 2.0 as well as the web the web 3.0 which is the newest web which is where Twitch and all that is going. So yeah, >> thank you. Um yeah, great presentation. I'm glad y'all locally here because I feel like that's important to understand the community and best way to engage the community and glad to hear y'all work with so many different uh learning institutions. I need to help you

128with their homecoming u because I don't know what they got going on anyway. Um, and I'm just interested to hear um on ways that y'all are trying to engage with ambassadors because I heard y'all bring it up several times. I think the everybody in the Little Rock School District should be an ambassador in some type of way if they enjoying the the experience in in the district, educators, the students, parents, all of that. and um and even um former students because I feel like that's really a way to really engage with the community. So, I'm interested to hear how y'all plan to uh engage with more and and bring on more ambassadors and also uh geo mapping as well too because when we talk about even using social media just making sure you're reaching the

129intended audience and uh because you know even when something goes viral you you want to make sure it's viral in the community as well too. and just ways that y'all could um collaborate on the current uh campaign. So, when I mention that, I'm thinking about like uh for instance, the uh I love the campaign that's that's going on right now with the reading in the rock and and more ways that we could uh bring that to attention to the students as well as like um the various different uh programs at at the schools. Um, for instance, like Southwest, like you can go to Southwest, I believe, like next year or you could do well, it's a it's a program uh where you can get your like LPN >> and and and so like the students

130that are thinking about like I want to go into nursing, how uh how y'all can enhance that. So, I'm just interested to hear like more ideas about all of those different things that I'm mentioning. >> I'll take the ambassador if you want to take the target. So, for the ambassadors, what we do is we map out all organizations that are in the community that have a similar interest. That could look like a neighborhood association. So for the Hall High example, you have the Hall High neighborhood association. The hall, so they have a vested interest in the success of that school. So therefore, everyone that lives in that area or is a member of that board should be an ambassador. Um we call them an ambassador, but we want to equip them with toolkits. So maybe

131that's one cheat sheet, but get just bringing them in the inner circle and and communicating and making sure they're informed and feel good. Um it could look like different community organizations or nonprofits. So you know Big Brothers, Big Sisters, Brother uh the Boys and Girls Club, obviously a nonprofit that should they have a vested interest. They have a similar stakeholder audiences. It could be organizations like park obviously similar interest. um they are um they they are very vested in the success of students. It could be other organizations like 100 black men um you know dedicated to mentorship. So just identifying all of those organizations that are active in the community and equipping them with tools. It's just making sure we're all on the same page and know what the end goal is and we're all

132working towards that end goal. From a geo fencing standpoint, we are able to narrow down a neighborhood all the way down to a zip code level and adjust that. But then I can also do everything from list matching targeting like even thinking about of our current students in households that are that are enrolled. We need to make sure that they are staying enrolled and having a specific message that goes to that group because we need a retention plan and they get a different message than the ones that we're trying to recruit. So from a being able to reach people, there's lots of ways to get really specific. Um, which brings in really kind of the power and understanding where do we need to go, what are we trying to get them to do, what is

133the action we want them to take. So we have that really ability to get down to zip level. Um, we can do we can do everything from live within uh one mile of these churches, live within one mile of this uh bus route. like you can go really thoughtfully into a lot of that and just thinking about what's going to be the right way to reach them and what's going to be the best kind of path of their of their line. Um, so I can get really specific on that end. >> Well, I was going to say I think the last piece to your point that you're absolutely right is the case studies and testimonials. We've got to tell our stories about what's making each school successful from each of those lenses, which I thought

134you did really well with experience with rock and color. So that's why I think I was trying to set you up. >> We can show the video. >> You want to you want to? >> He's very proud of the video. >> I'm very proud. I don't know which one. It's a lot of them. Uh I'll just pull up any one of them. I was going to say bring me to my point. >> You can pull it up. I think she's got it. >> Okay. >> Because it's a great example of how we get community leaders to tell their story about why they're passionate about litter. In this case, it would be LRSD or in the case that you brought educating people on what is also important >> color mean to you. >> Yep. >> To

135you. >> Experiencing Little Rock and Color means to me uh a great uh possibility. It means the possibility of experiencing different people and different cultures really anywhere in the city. >> To me, it says to dive in, to get involved from different nonprofit organizations that you can get involved to, community outings, events that are just being hosted everywhere, and people that want to see the community come together. I feel at home when I feel seen and heard, and it's my job to make sure everyone is seen and heard and paid attention to. So when you say experience little rock and co is to experience our entire city from college station to Chanel from Pedway to Pleasant Valley from southwest little rock to the east end and everything in between that's experiencing little rock and color.

136[Music] >> He's very very proud of it and rightfully so. >> Yes. Thank you. Thank you guys so much for this. makes me really excited about um kind of the possibilities of what could happen in the in the next few months even. Um I did have a question about three three quick questions. Um the first is how do you how would you go about addressing any conflicts you might have with other K12 folks seeking to recruit some of the same students? I think I have been the recipient of some of y'all's um targeted ads for some charter schools and others. And so I do want to ask about that shared members or how you segment and how you make sure that that you're not um I don't know just how do you do that? >>

137We take that very seriously. We have a separation and iron wall and that was one of the beautiful things about having such a deep bench that we are very intentional about the teams that work on different accounts. You get the expertise of being able to have that higher or the education K through 12 and higher ed. Um but we We keep the teams completely separate and again we are very serious about that. Um so and we're transparent about it too. >> On that note though with your other K12 clients like how has that been has your work with them been successful in your eyes and their eyes and what are some of the biggest wins you have from that? >> Um go ahead. >> I'm not a team so I can't speak to what I've

138heard in the office. they have seen really great response um from an enrollment standpoint. Um they've also seen um overall lift and engagement online. >> Um and so really kind of bringing those like I don't have the specific >> I don't either. I am in transparency I am on the UA lit rock and the Harding account but I I do not do any other K12. >> Okay. >> No, it it was a really good question though. I mean, you know, that was a good answer. >> And then lastly, just um what do you en how do you envision your ongoing engagement with us as a board? And do any of you guys or anybody on the team have kids in LD? >> I'm the only one that has a child on our group. Um but

139she she's she's young. Uh we are zoned for uh Don Roberts and for Pinnoke View. And I was asking the superintendent, what is the plan for the new high school? because it's in my backyard and I'm I'm in the early phases of make she's only she's not even two but I'm you know planning I've got you I've got pl I'm planning so um >> I was gonna say I don't have a kid but my nephew >> Oh your nephew you call him your child yeah he goes to central >> central >> yeah he's a tiger actually my address >> I say he stays with me >> never mind he literally does I literally dropped him off. I told him I had to leave here in time to go get him from UA Rock from a

140wrestling. So I have a tiger. >> Director Strong, that's your last question. >> The Yes. So we were very collaborative. We want to be deeprooted. We feel that the best um client relationship is a collaborative and open communication. Um, we can we can do it without access, but in our opinion and our experience, having access to leadership at the very top is how we maintain transparency around are we meeting objectives because, you know, we've got we've got dollars that we've got to make sure that we're moving the needle, but also we need your commitment as well for it to be successful. >> Director B, >> just one more question. How do y'all engage with people who are not online and on social media? Like what other ways do you do outreach? >> That's that's a

141good one. Uh we actually talked about that. A lot of people think I just do social media and just do videos. But uh some cool things that we also do are things like murals, uh yard signs, billboards, like thinking of how to collaborate with like they say associations, neighborhood associations, uh community gardens, um all of us have I have PR background as well. And so we are involved in the community, but we also know how to speak to people who aren't online. So that's like the superpowers like there are certain ways you can reach a director. >> This is this question is about um engaging groups and okay this is about this is about um engaging different uh youth groups and community groups that are not say like the big three or the mega churches,

142you know what I mean? But maybe like the Village Place or maybe like the Carter like like other um uh community or or organizations that have a large number of students that are not particularly touched by those other um entities. How do you engage or else have you engage with places like the the the village place or Carter school or any of those other um entities? I will say that will be a part of our planning process because we will do a very deep dive to make sure that there is every that we identify every type of organization possible that we can infiltrate. Um and so it quite frankly it does take a lot of work. That's where that takes a lot of elbow grease. We're not afraid of the elbow grease though. It's it

143takes a lot of calls to executive directors and you know their outreach coordinator and just lots of calls and emails to make sure that we're getting in front of the right people. But that's part of our uh message mapping process when we identify all the different stakeholders and we when we identify community stakeholders. It's a massive spreadsheet. Um, so we will leave no stone unturned to make sure that we are we are mapping out all of the possible ambassadors or possible organizations for partnership. And then it takes a lot of elbow grease to get in front of them and make sure that we're communicating to them. And we can geoarget them. We can there's ways that we can, you know, just target them with digital ads. um that may not be the most effective use

144of our budget, but again, we don't know until we get into the planning process. But there's all there's so many different ways to once we identify them different ways to get in front of them. >> Okay. Thank you. Okay. Step one and step. Step one says access to communication department and then step four says enhance community relations. So now me person once we can gather that information I think then we go to the communication and say hey this is what people are saying because I promise you community relations and break down community relations that is where I think it's a weakness personally started logic. >> Well, for clarification, step one is actually the research and planning phase. So, we will do a communications audit to identify those gaps and then step four is the implementation

145where we identify where are those weak spots and then step four is we map out all those weak spots and put together a plan to engage and do the outreach. So you're absolutely right, but the first step is auditing where we are currently and what ways there there is to improve that. And then if we're speaking on the terms of how you said like communications some often times the breakdown is how we're communicating what the assets are or what like there are a lot of people there are a lot of messages going out but we don't know which one is the strongest one or the one that we need to communicate to the community. So sometimes it's better to start from like what's our game plan the huddle and then go out because then if

146you go out and just find all these problems uh you don't then you're working backwards on how to fix them. So if you're on the word choice of like communications >> but to that point that's also why we're evaluating every step. It's not just a set it and forget it. Like it's very important that every couple months that we're evaluating because it could be that we we think we know because we thought we talked to everybody but then we get into it something's not performing the way that we want to do it >> and we will need to make adjustments. >> Okay. >> All right. Um to to close this out I just want to say I didn't say this to I know two of you were here with us when we met u but

147I didn't say this in front of you all. I said it to the uh to the team who evaluated all the proposals. Um I went into that meeting um I won't say I was salty um but I I just wasn't expecting that much from this particular group um but I can tell you when that meeting was over um you had all of us sold including me and so I'm definitely looking forward to with the board's approval to working with you guys and for the board's sake we had we have gone as far with Mr. and other folks to actually identify and set aside a specific amount um a not to exceed amount once we complete the research and uh whatever the phase one is um and we decide all the different uh things that we

148actually want to do. >> Um we already have a budget set aside in the upcoming fiscal year to kind of do this work. So this isn't something that we're trying to find money and resources for. you've actually gone as far to actually set aside a specific amount because we know that this is a real a real need for us. >> Yeah, thank you for that because that that was was going to be my last question. Um the the range from 19 to >> the 19 was just for that's just for the the yes the research part >> and then and then the post evaluation work is >> whatever we decide to do >> all the way up until which includes creative and media and whatever we determine from the needs are from that original plan.

149>> Okay. And then like if there's anything additional come back for that. Okay. With the scope of work when it will be okay. >> Okay. Very good. We good. All right. Here it is. We're moving forward. >> 5.1. What is it? 5.1. I'm not student. >> Thank you guys. >> Oh, thank you. >> I didn't say thank you. I'm sorry. >> Okay. Thank you guys so much. We love that. That was awesome. I thought Dr. Wright relayed that. I'm sorry. >> You guys >> um we're going to keep try to keep our cell phone presentation as as quick as possible. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> We um you already Well, we don't need to >> Yeah, >> I I'll just say that the two documents that were linked in the uh agenda is what we have.

150One of them is what we've prepared as the new LRSD updated electronic device policy and the other is just a document outlining some um just some background information around what we've done this year and talking to different stakeholder groups about the the change in policy and the new policy and then some um of our plans what we've been doing with how we're communicating it um what Miss Smith is pulling up um we've already started that process um with Miss Smith's team in filming some students u Dr. Um, and we've got a website up already. So, um, uh, we've been communicating with principles as well. Um, so I don't know if you want to do the video first and then take questions. >> Take questions. >> D Wright, superintendent here at the Little Rock School District.

151And this year we are introducing something new, the Yonder Pouch. It's a simple yet secure way for students to store their phones during the school day so they can focus, learn, and connect in real life. We know phones can be a big distraction. With Yonder, we're creating classrooms where attention is up and drama is down. In our campaign, Seal for Success, we're not taking phones away. We're just pressing pause so students can be fully present. Let's keep putting students first. Thank you for supporting this positive change. More info can be found at lrsc. >> I'm ready for questions. I don't >> question questions questions. >> He had I think she That's good. Um those yonder pouches were those purchased I don't know which way to look. Were those purchased with the grant money back last

152year, two years ago, whenever that came in? Okay. And so if they get lost or damaged, we are not going to invest more money in buying new pouches, are we? >> We have a we have we have a little bit of a buffer. So we have some extra pouches. Um so we've issued each school the amount of pouches for their currently enrolled students plus a buffer. Um high schoolers got high schools got a little bit more of a buffer. The middle schools because we probably a handful of middle school students that don't come with loans. Um but so we have a little bit of a buffer of pouches. Um but in the policy is a provision that if students lose or damage pouches that they are responsible for the cost because they are $30 each

153in an effort to try and reduce that. Um we are not some districts send pouches home with students and say they issue you a pouch like Stephanie Vessel this is your pouch you are responsible for it from August to May. come home with it, come back to school with it, etc. We are not doing that because we think that that will increase the number of lost pouches and cell phones will come to school but pouches won't. So, we are keeping pouches at school and pouches you walk into the building through the scanner, phone goes in a pouch, pouch goes in your bag, you go through the day. Uh, leave school, unlock your pouch, get your phone back, leave pouch at school. >> Um, and I could get back in rotation at any point with anybody

154else. >> Other questions? Other questions? >> Okay. Um, my I have three of them, but I only have one right now. Um, when doing transition time, this is a low ball one. During transition time, like other districts in the state, they are allowing their students to have their home out doing either transition or um lunch. >> Not this year, they won't. And so, >> not this coming their year, they won't. According to the way the the law is written, bell to bell, first bell to last bell. This past year school year that we just ended, some schools did that. Um, some school districts did that. If you're following the law the way it's written, that's not allowed anymore. >> Okay? Because um at one of the trainings we uh can't do you remember that you

155remember I can't post the AAA and ASBA post legislative thing where the spoke. >> Yes. So they were saying even up in well I don't want to tell on them but okay. So all right so I don't know. So in Little Rock we are we are 8:00 a.m. to 4 p.m. you know >> first bell first academic bell is the end of day. >> Okay I'll get back to you. >> Okay. Um I I was honestly a little surprised to see like smart watches and and earbuds in here considering earbuds are on the school supply list for my kids. wireless earbuds. >> Well, that's on the list for my kids if they want to bring wireless earbuds for their tablet. Um, on the school supply list, just FYI or at least it just said earbuds,

156so maybe it's not wireless, but it just said earbuds. So, I just want to say that >> like the phones I feel like and tablets and other bigger things like I feel like bigger headphones are easier, but like I walk in with a long sleeve shirt and your watch on is there going to be like a pull in your sleeve. It's not in your pocket. feels like a policy that is that in the state law. >> The state law, the state law goes as far as to say pagers and beepers if you want to get really right down to it. >> Yes, it it says anything. It says anything that can connect to a Bluetooth um and yes is what it says. So, I mean that that language here really is directly from um the

157SB142. >> I just check those are coming out. Okay. Um, and then the other thing on on that list like the yonder pouches hold a watch. >> Yeah, we I actually have a few yonder pouches here we can grab. >> I've had one to use one in a concert one time before. >> Yeah, I mean you can use a phone and a watch in there, but it they're not there's not a lot of room for sure. >> Um, >> so would kids get more than one if they had a watch and earbuds and a phone? >> So So some of that's going to have to be up to the school. I There's not enough for every student to get more than one. Um >> Okay. Yeah. >> And what about Air Tags? Are those I

158mean they don't really have I guess they are Bluetooth. >> Are they How do they connect? I don't even know how they connect to like your phone. I don't know how like if somebody put an Air Tag in their backpack. >> Yeah. >> Does that count toward any of this? Is it connected by Bluetooth? >> I mean Air Tags are connected to phones. Yes. They're not I mean They're notific. >> Yes. I I mean, some of this this is definitely going to be a learning process for us and it's the first couple weeks, if not a couple months of school are going to be challenging and complicated and lots of things. Um, so I think we're going to be learning as we go and probably making some amendments. Every school is going to look a

159little different, right? Southwest with 2,000 students is going to be very different than Dunar with 300 and something in how everything goes. And so we're communicating with principles as best we can and we're going to address issues as they come up um as best we can. >> Director Valent. >> Yeah. Uh thank you uh for presenting this. I was really wondering uh and and yeah, I like Director Strong mentioned. is all like electronic devices that have any type of Bluetooth capability. And so that's why I was interested in seeing it's basically full phone, maybe some earbuds and you know, but if it also gaming consoles that um that's in the plan too. Uh and so I just wanted to uh just make sure everybody was aware of that because you know it's not going to

160cover iPad and hopefully the district and the teachers and can monitor that. But my question really is um did y'all get any feedback uh or any input from safety and security? Because I feel like they are going to be the people that are really dealing with this issue more than anything. If a student refuses to put their phone in that and stop using it during class, first thing they're going to do is hop on inter. So did they have any feedback as far as likeh about policy that you all created. >> Um, so I didn't personally sit down with them. I know Dr. Fields had sat down with a few groups as well. Um, I can definitely go back and talk to Mr. Alamine and his team as well. Um, we did talk to the

161new um, uh, culture team with Crystal Brazil Green and then Clayton. So, they've waited on it as well um, as well as some other groups. Um, and we have, you know, we have talked about how you know, this policy is in conjunction with a lot of other safety and security measures that we're taking as a whole as a district. Um, and communicating that out to our families. Um, but I can we can go back and get some more conversations. >> I'll just add that the the biggest lever for all of this is is not I mean, yeah, our district teams and district folks will be supporting this at the school level, but the biggest lever is school principal, school teams communicating with their staff, communicating directly with their parents. So a lot of this work

162in terms of how specifically this will be in well we have our general plan on how it will be implemented but a lot of the work is happening at the school level >> and middle and high school principles are um you and we're helping them to do that to have a table at their back to school events that is going to be for this policy with pouches like you know to show everyone this how they work this what they look like and to explain that. Um, and you know what we're really also encouraging is we're we're hoping that all of those extra devices can stay at home, right? To try and avoid coming in with a whole lot of things that don't fit in the pouch, right? We know people are going to bring phones

163to school. Those go to pouch. It's fine. But if we can avoid bringing large headphones and and all of the extra stuff that's we're really trying to communicate that out, too. >> Okay. >> Um, I have a few questions. My first question is, what type of policy is this? Is this a Is this where does this like I see it will be in it seemed like it would be in handbook but um >> it's going to be in the student code of conduct. >> Yeah, that's what I thought. Okay, so um so my question Okay, so you answered that question. My next question is like the punitive um piece to this like um there there have to be a level of consequence. Um however, I think um suspension whether it's in school or out of

164school. Um I'm I'm not um in favor of of them going to in school or out of school suspension um based off of bringing a a device to school forever or taking it out forever. whatever um reason, maybe something different, maybe a lunch detention perhaps. Um, and the the liabilities of of them bringing their their whether it's a tablet, whatever device they're bringing because we know that in our district, we are a heavy title one district and um students are going to to work, they're going to pick up their siblings, they're going to school, they're going to trade school after this. And so like they may need all of those things. So um and if and then why don't we start confiscating those items and then we have a liability. But I but I also

165feel like it's not fair to have parents sign a waiver to say that we are not liable for so it's a dance here. Um >> yeah, >> since it's so broad, this bill is so this law is so broad on >> in all of our conversations with various groups, with students, with teachers, et school leaders, the overwhelming uh agreement was that we don't want to be uh confiscating devices and it's not right now in the policy to confiscate devices because like you said, that's a slippery slope. um it gets into liability issues um and fights and if uh someone claims that something was damaged or lost or stolen and so we there is there is no consequence that says that we are consecrating con sorry taking away um devices and so uh that's not the

166plan uh to do that because we don't want to get into that. We don't want have to have worry about waiverss and all of that. Um we went through a couple rounds of talking about these consequences with a bunch of different groups. Um and because we're not taking away devices, uh we did go to having an in school suspension as a consequence. Um we have attention before that the in school suspension doesn't come to the fourth violation. Um so we're really hoping that with education, with conversations with students, with conversations with students and parents and family members that we can really get to the point where we're avoiding getting to that getting to that level of violation. >> A followup question to that is um will will the reset every quarter or is it just

167a continual um from August to May? >> We talked about at the semester break, but I can go back and check that. I'm not I but I will go back and check my notes. >> No, that's good. >> And I'm sorry. And then where it says um inventory and notice, it says LRC maintains records of students property collected by schools. So that that goes back to we just talked about as far as the liability piece or if they say it's damage, it's this isn't mine. Where's mine at? You took it. You know, it just gets into all of that. >> Yeah, that probably doesn't need to be that might have been from an a previous policy. I'll take a look at that. >> Okay. And um >> some of this also did come from what

168was in the bill? >> I I thought it did because kind of given to us. Yeah. >> Um and this is going into the student handbook. >> Okay. And then this year there will be a separate when students and parents sign if they exceed or receive read the code of conduct there will be a separate line a section like with a box check that says I've read the updated electronic device policy and agree to it too. So >> and what about the um there are schools where students have to use their personal devices for educational purposes. So our schools are have Chromebooks are issued Chromebooks and so we're we're under the expectation that students will have access to their Chromebooks during the day. The school issued Chromebooks and that's will be the device that they

169use. >> And what happens when >> there's uh exemptions? So if a Chromebook is damaged or broken and the student is waiting for a replacement, there is an exemption for being able to bring their personal laptop. >> Okay. And this is really my last question. It kind of goes back to culture and climate of the building and if if the new culture and climate department is responsible for culture and climate on campuses, how are principles and staff held responsible for their culture and climate at their schools? >> Well, I think the I mean principles are responsible for their culture and climate at their schools. the district office is there to support them um to provide resources and um over and above what is done at every school but the building leaders are are creating that

170culture on their own schools other >> yeah I was just saying that because at our meeting two or three ago it was said that our principles are not dealing with culture and climate that's what that department's going to deal with and they're dealing with the warming aspect of it so um Well, well, that's what Well, that's what was said. I mean, so I was just curious because it was said at the meeting. >> Um, how how is that going to go? Um, so if it's not accurate, um, I and others would probably appreciate like some clarity on that because it was said at the board meeting. Okay. >> Um, around what does this um Yeah. So it was said at the board meeting talking about that department and the culture and climate of buildings and

171the principles and then it was said that principles are not worrying about culture and climate of the building. They're going to be more focused on the learning and teaching aspects right at their school. So >> So let's let's let's >> let's make sure that board comments no when we get to the comments section that'll be a perfect time to clarify. >> This isn't for a board comment. This goes directly to this um to this >> culture and climate. >> So I I mean I can just speak to one other so principles I've been communicating with principles and they are >> actively working to um integrate this policy with their communication to their families. They have identified if not themselves then um point person or point team of their leadership that are going to be working

172on implementing this. like we are in communication about how we can integrate this into the everyday like what is going to now be the new every day of coming into a public school in Arkansas. So I think you know we are all while we know it's going to be chaotic and not everyone's going to be happy about it. We're all on the same page about working together to enforce it and understanding that we are going to have to have conversations and make adjustments um and and kind of figure things out as we go along. So I've been talking with principles and they've been reaching out to me with questions as well as other the assistant superintendents are all um have been updated um as well as other district staff will have touch points in this

173area too. We're all all hands on deck >> and with that new platform we have um because this is it will be a a discipline issue right if it's um because there's a consequence there um if a monthly board report can be given to um to the board so we can see how much time is being spent on uh trying to make sure that these devices are in their yonder pouch. or whatever device they're having since it's all of them. But yeah, >> I'll also just like to say that we we really want to try and steer away from the consequence side of things. We really want to hopefully do our best to be educating about the policy, the reason behind the policy um so that we're not going to have to deal with the

174the consequence piece. We really want to try and instill the responsibility to our students and our families that we understand this that this comes with a lot of feelings. Um but that ultimately uh research says that this is going to be better for our academic performance and for our school environments. Um and so we're really trying to get everyone kind of on board with that um to make that happen so we don't have to get to the the negative piece of it. you have you have >> any help that everyone wants to do to help us promote >> even even trainings because because students are literally addicted to their not only students but even staff I know at one of our one of our I can't remember where it was at but um the question

175about whether or not um staff would not have out their phones but two staff also needs their phones at times >> as as a being able to call >> that's that's a piece of it with principles communicating to their staff the expectation of we're asking students to do that we want to limit staff being on their >> I think we have one other question. Can we go ahead and move to one other question so we won't bel labor? Come on please. >> So I was not totally clear. Do we need to establish a board policy for this or is the is the handbook sufficient? The law says each public school district shall establish a a policy. >> So if this is >> that's why I said the law requires it. >> I just Yeah, I

176looked that up. So anyway, if we need to do that, we should do that or um maybe our next meeting and maybe we pull a piece of this out. I would assume that would go in section one of our board policy if we need that. I mean, there are also interpretations in some parts of the state law that say that besides big P policy that your handbooks and your rules and other things are also policy. Anyway, >> is there any guidance from ad yet beyond what's in the state law on this? >> Okay. >> Cool. Okay. So, you don't think we need to have a big policy? >> Yes, we can. >> Okay. >> I would love it if you would double check on that before our meeting within two weeks and update us so

177that we could get an email on that. And then the other thing I was just gonna say as you're thinking about Dr. doing more videos and I think you're a great movie star. Um wonder if we could get maybe some ambassadors particularly from the high schools and K8 and middle schools. Um >> the students that you saw in that video did other videos. >> We have a we have a plan to do a podcast with Dr. Wright. We've got >> Dr. is not totally convincing. >> No, we've got more coming. >> All right. Okay. Anything else? I'm not trying to push you guys, but I know that as it relates to this. Okay. I am trying to push you guys because I think we know we need to we've got to do this and so

178I mean we can talk about it till the cows come home, but we got to do this. >> What if it is a policy if if if it's not ready and if not because it does seem like we might need another meeting, not not necessarily to hash it because like this is a work session. So, so we're doing the conversational piece and and doing all that right now, but it seems like um a couple weeks may not be enough time. So, if we can get it on our first meeting in August to like um and so like we're able to vote on it because I'm sure we're going to have a special meeting for something in August. So, >> we can definitely come back at the end of July. I mean, this this policy goes

179into effect kind of whether we like it or not, right? >> No, no, no. What I'm saying is that it's about um um having a a a objection to the policy because right now we don't have students in the building, right? And and we don't have class going. Um what I'm saying is making sure that like we have a thorough understanding of what it is and not just kind of having things in there that just how I pointed out something was in there and you're like, "Oh, no, that shouldn't be in there." So we can fully have an understanding of this policy is to the best of our knowledge what it is. Um without any mistakes. So, and so that's why I was saying if it's not ready in two weeks, we can still have

180the first meeting in August to pass it and we'll still be within the time frame of most >> Yes, we are starting to push this information out to schools, to families, community. We want to make sure that they're ready. >> I hate to be the old man, but I've got I've got to put this in here. >> Making changes in discipline policies. Mark carefully how many girls versus how many boys you have in detention when that fourth hit comes around because you'll put us in court. I've been there before. That's the way it happens. The very first thing that happens is there's a disparity in the kids that are being disciplined and immediately after that we get a lawsuit and we're in court. We don't want that disparity. Now, I don't know how to do

181that if actually you've got 15 little girls and two boys. I don't know how to fix it, but that situation will not go well for us. That's all I can say on that. >> There are other people who haven't forgotten. Thank you. >> Okay. Any other questions or comments? If there's no objection, we are ajourned. >> So, we now will move to the next special board. Unless we need a break. You guys need a break. Okay. >> All right. Please take take 10 minutes. How about that? Because that's what you're gonna do anyway. >> We're voting on some contracts, contract things that have to be done. change. Imagine learning which is enrollment software. As far It's nice. I mean, seriously, it is insane. That was a few She's We allow three minutes for public comment.

182Our responsibility is to listen to your comment. We are not allowed to respond or have discussion. Is there anyone for public comment? No. Okay. All right. So, we're moving on to the consent agenda. The chair will entertain a motion. >> 3.1. >> I move that the LRSD board of education approve the consent agenda items as follows. 3.1 personnel changes and 3.2 round 5A employment cons recommendation contracts for the 256 school year. >> Second. It's been moved and properly seconded that the LRSD board of education approved consent agenda items as follows. Personnel changes in round 5A employment recommendation contracts for the 2526 school year. Any question or comments? All in favor say I. >> I. >> Any oppose? The motion carries. Moving to schools and academics 4.1 contract renewal. Imagine learning. Absolutely. Good evening. >> I

183don't have a presentation. I um submitted this already. So just there questions. Any questions? Okay, I'll entertain a motion. 4 4.2 I think. Okay. All right. It's been that's okay. It's been moved and properly second that the Little Little Rock School Board approved contract with Imagine Learning to avoid service interruption as recommended. It's been moved and properly second. All in favor say I. >> I. opposed. The motion carries. Chair will entertain a motion. It's been moved and properly second that the Little Rock um LRSD board. I'm just so you know accustomed to saying it. Approve the contract with school meant to avoid service interruption as recommended. It's been moved and properly second. Any opposed? I'm sorry. All in favor say I. I. >> Any oppose? The motion carries. 5.1. No, we don't. No need for

1845.1. Bless you. So, we're going to go ahead and go to any comments. Yes, director. I hope at some point um a couple of parents have reached out to me uh concerned about if their ch children their students can start using lockers at certain schools. uh they said it's been a policy that uh they've been following since co and since we're not really tech it's a pandemic still but technically since we not in the uh that phase of the pandemic they want to know when they can start using uh lockers again and um if that's even possible and what schools actually have a policy where they can use a locker or they can't use a locker. So, uh just hope at some point we can discuss that and uh and um moving forward just um

185also explaining better uh the policy about the phones. I know we got videos and different things on deck and so uh being able to share that in the community and communicate it to the kids that uh actually probably will need some type of uh different guidelines with their IEPs and uh smart watches monitoring glucose levels or whatever. Um and then uh also uh it was mentioned by director Hatter and I mentioned it earlier this year uh if there was some type of way even if it's not something that we could do individually at each school but just sharing videos on why this might be a helpful policy for uh Bill to bail no sales uh addressing phone addictions and social media addictions so that maybe we can help uh some of our students, parents and

186educators uh cope with the new restrictions. That's good. That's all I >> Okay, back to Strong. >> I was just gonna add for that, Director B. There's some really good stuff. This is from my day job, but the American Academy of Pediatrics has a really good website um called the Center of Excellence for Social Media and Youth Mental Health. Or I may have those words backwards, but it's a really helpful um it has a lot of stuff about all of these things and it's a really nice kind of friendly way you can kind of go get answers to frequently asked questions to send that out to our leadership to share with the >> Okay. >> Oh, I'm sorry. >> Go ahead. Because >> as an adult or as parents, they're probably having the same problems

187that the kids are having. I have that problem. So, I have to limit myself cuz sometime I'm like, "Oh, this is too much. I have to put it down." So if we're going to help the kids, we definitely going to have to reach out to the parents as well. >> Okay. >> Yes. So uh the discipline and and suspensions in our uh school uh normally we would have a report to the board so we can see uh the number of suspensions and disciplines and just different infractions from um each school down to each grade. Um I do want to um continue that um and and get that information. The other thing um I am interested in is um kind of late on my emails, but we um with with our title ones and some of

188our uh programming that may may or may not depending on when funding comes because that doesn't come until October really. um we do have contracts with these folks and so even though funding isn't there, we do have to be mindful that we're still contractually obligated depending on what language within those contracts. Um and so um I I I do want to um just have a heads up on those um contracts that may or may not be um impacted. Uh and if if there's no caveat, then we still contractually obligated to those um contracts and so then we would need to do some adjustments on our end. So um we are all all good and then um at some point hopefully um we still haven't done a board governance model so we're still not operating under

189a board governance. So, at some point, I would love to um whether or not we're going to continue or have Great Council of City Schools. We voted on it over a year ago. Um to have them either come in because right now we are not operating under a governance model. So, um that's all that I have. >> Adams, I want to ask about that. plan for the council city schools. I have my calendar for the first weekend. Is that still the plan? Is that a dump or >> the the dates have changed so many times. We never it was a request to reschedu and we never um we never came back and settled on the date. And I think I know Wesley and I had conversations. We haven't had conversations with a large group with

190the new board elections in March. We did. We just didn't think it was even >> worth it. >> Yeah. >> Nearly a year. >> I mean I mean if we did it and then half of you all weren't here then we have to do it again. So >> you know I was willing and ready to move forward quite frankly in was it June or July when we had one that would not to make it. I mean, I was ready, but a number of people were not. And so, I didn't want to, you know, make a decision single-handedly. >> I do think that as far as like um the way that I see it is >> even if we go ahead and start the governance model because um operating without a board governance is crazy. like,

191you know, we need to have standards on how we're operating and and it was brought up a few times and some folks said, "Oh, we do Robert rules." Well, that just tells you how to run a meeting. And um and so I think that that um not having a board governance um and I'm just speaking to our our board members um that creates like unnecessary uncertainty especially since we are in a um position I especially since we are a legislative body um board that already have to deal and try to navigate through a great deal of ambig um and not having a board governance model, it it it it then uh my daughter it u contributes to the strife. It it contributes to dealing with personalities over dealing with issues. It it contributes to all

192of these board uh conflicts and just confusion. So, Madam Chair, if we can go ahead and just um try to put something on the for for September, maybe the middle of September because at that point we're all kind of settling in and we don't have a lot of stuff going on. >> I am absolutely open to that. You know me, I'm always ready to roll quickly if we can to be effective in doing it. Um so I have no >> what is it? >> I was just am I not ready to vote? I'm just saying. >> Okay. So, we can we can we'll have that discussion and we'll we'll come back to address that. But I think that sounds great to me. It's fine. >> Okay. Okay. Okay. So, any other comments? >> I want

193to uh give everyone This will save me I know I've been emailing you like 50 times this week. So, this will save me email. want to give everybody update on where we are with the federal grants. So the state has enough carryover 21st century funds and so we were going to use our own carryover title one funds to keep our summer camps u summer camp summer programs going but uh the state is going to give us uh funding so that our 21st century camps that we have going on now won't have to have to close we're going to close them anyway. Um, with regards to the other issue that director had brought up, um, we have had conversations with Chris and while we do have it out in our contract because specifically talks about if

194your position is funded by grants and the funding is no longer there, we're not we're not going to exercise that. We are working very hard to find um alternative sources of funding for those people in uh in those positions for our community school coordinators for the three or four people that we have that are paid through title two. So we are diligently working to find um alternative funding. So we we we we're going to keep our folks um we're just going to find other ways to pay them if those funds don't come through. So that's not going to be um that's not going to be an issue. Programs now that uh city year is if we don't get the title war, we don't have enough. I mean, that's that's almost $800,000. And so, that's not

195something that I don't think, not I don't think I know we don't have $800,000 sitting around somewhere that we could we could we could do that. Um, so that will be a program that will potentially be at risk. >> So, um I'll just say this. So, um if we can have um attorney Heler to look at these contracts because although >> he did. >> Okay. And is there out of that. >> Yeah, we we we yeah, we as soon as all this stuff happened, we were we we've been on top of this since the crazy news that we got. So hopefully not hopefully our personnel were working hard to make sure that none of our personnel are impacted. Even if we have to move them into other vacant positions outside of what that planning position

196was, um we have those options as well. So we're we're diligently exploring every possible >> what I was follow talking contracts and contractual organiz with city for example these and do we know I mean what is the status of of advocacy from the state from the ASBA I mean >> there is advocacy nationwide I mean there's there's there is no >> everybody's advocating so it's over advocating at this point >> there was there was an article from I think New America that said we were we stood to lose 2.8 million dollar from some of these cuts and I don't know what the time period of that was so I should go back and figure that out but it was pretty significant it was looking across the country at some of the districts >> well just

197Arkansas I mean just LSD I mean just LRSD to lose 28 million >> oh yeah that's when I looked at the amounts that I put in one of the emails that I sent that it's adds up to be >> probably about that yeah >> I wasn't sure >> title two alone was over 1 million Okay. I just wanted to make sure that we were >> and Mr. Heler has agreed he will be joining us next meeting. And the other thing that I wanted to >> one other thing I'm sorry >> that goes with what you're saying u with the finances then um it would be appropriate for us as a board uh and I guess this is really to the board to look at our district finances and so we could really project and see

198um to where we are projecting forward and being proactive and not reactive and uh doing a a financial um whether or not we do a a financial um forensic audit on our district so we can see or just a a strategic plan and a strategic plan to where we can really plan forward know for the next few school years. Um because this I mean we all know is going to continue on. And the last thing I would say is um we really need to look at what does Little Rock School District look like in the next five years. And that's something that whether or not we're here or not here, um we we can at least start to plow plow the ground and see what what does it look like. So and so whoever comes

199behind us, they are able to continue um our our work and not have to start fresh. >> Are you talking about uh how demographics will impact the budget? Is that is that what you're talking about? >> No, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not talking about race and class. I'm I'm I'm talking what I'm talking >> I'm not I'm not either. I'm just talking about whether we're going to be the city's growing and we're growing or the city's not going to be growing. I mean, it's just population things. >> Yeah. I'm not talking about and just to get back to Dr. Right. I'm uh what I'm speaking about is the totality of it because our city is growing and districts around us is growing but Little Rock School District is shrinking, right? And so like

200we could say it's learns act but really what have the impact been to learns versus all of these other factors we have and then how can we as a board strategically plan to keep our right to keep our district healthy. That's all I'm saying. And it's really not a debate. I mean, not a debate. It's not a conversation. I just wanted to put that because it went directly with what um uh Dr. Wright was saying as far as the financial impact and then for us as a board to start really doing that hard work of looking financially at this district for the next five years and then for um our residents to where LRSD is the only option for some people. True. um making sure that they have a educational institution that like they can

201bank on. You know >> once word gets stuck on starts to spiral down. We've gotten a reputation in the last few years of not being a great place to go to school for some reason. Uh white black and white middle inome people are going to private schools and parochial schools. And I don't know why and I don't know how to stop it. I hope that this MSPSI, whatever their initials are, I hope that they'll have some real impact on turning some of that around. >> Yeah. And and too, that goes back to experience. And so, if we are providing a good experience for our um students and their families and staff, they are going to move. It's it's kind of like marketing and branding. It's it's based off of feelings. And so, people are migrating

202in and out of our district. It's based off of an experience. And so if we do the hard work and make sure that they're having a good experience, they have, you know, you know, all of the things they need to function both teacher and student, then there it is. And then they they'll stay. But it all goes back to and you have to think about it. Every student sitting in a seat, that's that is and people not going to like it, but it's revenue. So when students leave so revenue and then so does >> that speak to the suit. >> Yeah, >> that correct. >> So much I want to say about that. I'm not going to. But it's anyway, well, no, I'm not going to. I want to close on this. Um, I do

203want to say and we're going to >> dissect our data a lot more than we have already. But I do want to um give a major congratulations and thank you to our students and our educators for just some of the preliminary results that we have gotten back from our um 2025 state assessment. The more I dig into it and the more I look, the more, you know, I don't think I'm ever going to be satisfied, per se, but um I think it's something to say that we have had three consecutive years of um growth and improvement. And I think overall as a district um you know, we had several of our who increase in every single content area, math, uh, literacy and science and our middle schools overall just really, really, really showed out this

204past year. That was one area that I know that we were overly concerned about because we had a lot of our underperforming schools are in our middle school sector and a lot of them um, actually the majority of the schools who had increases in all three content areas were middle schools. I don't want to call names because I will forget but I know but I know man Dumbar Maple Fair um the three elementary schools I do remember because they're on the top of my hand Gibbs had a lot of improvement across all three areas um Gibbs Western uh >> go ahead Western Hills was another one um and Maple Veil Elementary School and I know Prince Glover and her staff have been working extremely hard over the last couple years. And so I'm just happy

205and excited to see