Harmonious Dissension?

Earlier this year, it looked like 2009 would be the beginning of an Era of Good Feeling in the Little Rock School District.

Take, for instance, a spring school board meeting.

Unlike earlier acrimonious meetings, when votes were split along racial lines, members this night pleasantly discussed various issues and were unanimous, or nearly so, on virtually every issue. Things were so harmonious, one observer said under her breath, “Must be something in the water.”

The good feelings flowed at other events, including a groundbreaking for a new school and a court ruling that released the district from a lengthy federal lawsuit.

The Feb. 3 groundbreaking was at a 19-acre site at West Taylor Loop Road and Cantrell Road. Set for a fall 2010 opening, the school will be the first public school built in west Little Rock since 1978.  The school is designed for nearly 900 students from pre-kindergarten through fifth grade and is expected to cost about $30 million. Among those celebrating the groundbreaking was school board member Baker Kurrus, quoted thusly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette: “We’re driving a stake in the ground out here, and we are going to raise the bar. Everyone talks about competition in education. Let me tell you, the competition is going to get really stiff out here. I firmly believe that with a world-class building, with world-class teachers and eager students, we are going to do great things here.”

On April 2, two months after the groundbreaking, came a monumental newsmaker: The district’s long-anticipated release from a 27-year-old federal lawsuit. In the eyes of the federal court system, the district was unitary.

With that, time, energy and money could be redirected from litigation to education.

But, about the time spring was turning to summer, it became clear the board and Superintendent Linda Watson were not in accord on some issues.

One sign of the discord came during a June 18 session in which the board reviewed school administrators’ plans for spending $36 million in money the district is eligible to receive through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, part of Pres. Barack Obama’s stimulus plan. Among other things, Watson and her staff proposed to use the money to pay for prekindergarten teachers and reading specialists and for elementary summer-school programs.

Some board members had issues with spending one-time money on ongoing programs.

“We are not going to solve all our problems in the next 18 months by spending this money,” Kurrus told the Democrat-Gazette. “That’s a systemic change we need to make, and when you make a systemic change with nonrecurring revenue, you start a program and then you must stop it.”

“I’m continuously amazed at the number of things that we crank up and stop, and crank up and stop,” he said.

In the June 25 Arkansas Times, editor Max Brantley reported being pulled aside by a district employee who said Watson had achieved the impossible — biracial agreement on a critical issue. The bad news, Brantley wrote, was that with the exception of Watson’s longtime friend, board member Katherine Mitchell, the board agreed that Watson wasn’t getting the job done.

“She [Watson] hasn’t proven herself as a manager and leader,” Brantley opined. “Her critics think she’s fattened administrative costs, and some accuse her of cronyism in hiring. Her plan for an early retirement incentive to reduce district staff was a failure. It lacked advance detail work, as have some of her personnel appointments.”

The board’s dissatisfaction became more clear on July 9, not so much by what the board did, but by what it didn’t do — it took no vote on extending Watson’s contract.

State law allows a school board to grant a superintendent up to a three-year, renewable contract. If, for example, a board is satisfied with the job a superintendent has done in the first year of a three-year contract, the board can vote to extend the contract another year. As long as a superintendent stays in good stead with a board, the contract can roll on, year after year.

At the July 9 meeting, the board gave Watson an evaluation in an 80-minute closed session, then announced in public that it had taken no action. Unless the board comes back and votes to extend Watson’s contract, the contract now stands to expire June 30, 2011.

Board President Dianne Curry was measured in her comments afterward, saying little more than that the board and the superintendent were looking forward to working together to set measurable goals, maybe by when school starts.

School starts soon.


This is the first in a series of articles about the Little Rock School District.