report card - arkansas school boards association2015/12/01 · the journal of the arkansas school...

The Journal of The arkansas school Boards associaTion

December 2015www.arsba.org

Report Card

Taking it person-allyAt Warren, where every school is a charter, learners like Jackson

Denton and Breize Fellows advance along pathways at their own pace based on mastery of particular skills, not seat time. They know what their goals are and control how fast they reach them, which is how one student finished two years in one without having to skip anything.

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ASBA News and Notes continued on page 5

ASBA News and notes

Six regional directors were elected at ASBA regional meetings in October.

In Region 1, Jerry Coyle of Prairie Grove was elected. Coyle has served six years on the Prairie Grove School Board, including one year as president,

Six elected as ASBA regional directors this fall

www.craftontull.com rogers | conway | russellville | little rock

focused onEDUCATION

Coyle Eastwold Margolis George Bennett Smithand has completed 31 hours of professional development. He replaces Bob Warren of Elkins.

In Region 2, Steve Eastwold of Flippin was elected. Eastwold has served on the Flippin School Board for the past 15 years, including three as president. An ASBA Master Board member, he has completed more than 90 hours of professional development. He replaces Neal Pendergrass of Mountain View.

In Region 3, Dr. Tad Margolis of Jonesboro was elected. Margolis has served on the Valley View School Board for two years and has attained 50 hours of professional development. She replaces Alan Oldman of Westside in Craighead County.

In Region 5, Allan George of Russell-ville was re-elected. George has served four years on the Russellville School Board. An ASBA Master Board member,

4 December 2015 Report Card

The Journal of The arkansas school Boards associaTion

R e p o r t C a r d

News and Features

DepartmentsASBA News and NotesLetter from the Executive DirectorAdvertisers IndexJay Bequette’s ColumnASBA CalendarMarketplaceCommercial AffiliatesPresident’s Column

3678

11363839

Executive Session with Arkadelphia’s Kenneth Harris

24

Regionals: School boards matter10At regional meetings, ASBA staff encouraged attendees with study results showing the difference a school board can make.

18

12

Cover / At Warren, it’s personal

At the New Board Member Institute, rookies learned what they can do in a meeting (a lot) and as individuals (little).

SUTTON NELSON, a level 7 learner, complet-ed her level 2 and 3 years (first and second grades) in one year because of Warren’s model, which allows students to learn at their own pace to meet clearly defined goals.

Engineering class a ‘game changer’28Waldron Middle School’s classes let students fly drones and apply engineering to fashion design.

Most voters say yes to millage hikes32Increases were approved in 8 of 12 districts as voters were receptive to school needs and campaign messages.

Powerless as one, powerful as many

18Every school in Warren is a conversion charter, grade levels are fluid, and students advance as soon as they’ve learned the material – but not before.

Immunity not granted for intentional acts35Arkansas school districts have broader immunity after a recent court of appeal’s opinion.

Report Card December 2015 5

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ASBA News and noteshe has completed 75.5 hours of professional development.

In Region 7, Gene Bennett of Joiner was elected. Bennett has served 15 years on the South Mississippi County School Board and is an ASBA Master Board Member. The position was open, but Bennett had previously served in it.

In Region 10, Deborah Smith of Malvern was re-elected. Smith has served 21 years on the Malvern School Board and has been board president four times. An ASBA Pinnacle Board Member, she has completed 247.25 hours of professional development.

These directors join or rejoin a board of directors that includes 14 regional directors as well as Brenda McKown of Beebe, president; Sandra Porter of Bryant, vice president; Debbie Ugbade of Hot Springs, secretary-treasurer, and Clint Hull of Pottsville, past president.

ASBA has launched a newly designed website that has the same address, arsba.org, and a fresh new look that’s easy to navigate and user friendly.

Eye catching icons and quick links are located in the middle of the home page to help readers quickly find in-formation on special events, training, advocacy and services. Use the “Share” button to post the “Latest News”on your district’s social media pages. Need to check your boardsmanship hours? Click on the eMembership logo located at the very top of the home page.

Readers also are invited to visit and like ASBA’s new Facebook page, www.facebook.com/ArkSchBdsAssn.

Anyone who experiences any prob-lems or has questions with the site can contact ASBA at [email protected].

ASBA launches newly designed website, arsba.org ASBA welcomes

three new premier partner affiliates

Three more affiliates have signed up for ASBA’s premier partnership program: Stephens Inc., The Learning Institute, and AETN.

A premier partnership includes, among many other benefits, a compli-mentary exhibit booth at ASBA’s Annual Conference, an opportunity to join the conference’s vendor networking lunch, and a chance to lead ASBA-approved breakout sessions at the Vendor Univer-sity.

ASBA News and Notes continued on page 7


P.O. Box 165460 / Little Rock, AR 72216Telephone: 501-372-1415 / 800-482-1212

Fax: 501-375-2454E-mail: [email protected] / www.arsba.org

R e p o r t C a r dThe Journal of The

arkansas school Boards associaTion

Board of DirectorsPresident: Brenda McKown, BeebeVice President: Sandra Porter, BryantSec.-Treasurer: Debbie Ugbade, Hot SpringsPast President: Clint Hull, PottsvilleRegion 1: Jerry Coyle, Prairie Grove Region 2: Steve Eastwold, FlippinRegion 3: Dr. Tad Margolis, Valley ViewRegion 4: Jamie Hammond, Van BurenRegion 5: Allan George, RussellvilleRegion 6: Keith Baker, RiverviewRegion 7: Gene Bennett, RivercrestRegion 8: Randy Goodnight, GreenbrierRegion 9: Rita Cress, StuttgartRegion 10: Deborah Smith, MalvernRegion 11:Jeff Lisenbey, SheridanRegion 12: Rosa Bowman, AshdownRegion 13: Mike Waters, MagnoliaRegion 14: Katie Daniel, McGehee

StaffExecutive Director: Dr. Tony ProthroCommunications Director: Jennifer GeorgeExecutive Assistant: Michelle BurgessBoard Development Director: Dr. Anne ButcherAdvocacy Director: Boyce WatkinsStaff Attorney: Kristen GarnerPolicy Director: Lucas HarderSpecial Projects - Advocacy: Mickey McFatridgeFinance: Deborah NewellAdministrative Assistant: Angela EllisBookkeeper: Kathy IvyRisk Management Program &Workers’ Comp. Program: Shannon Moore, Director Krista Glover Amanda Blair Dwayne McAnally Ashley Samuels Jennifer Shook Misty Thompson Melody Tipton Tiffany Malone LaVerne WitherspoonGeneral Counsel: Jay Bequette

TO CONTACT THE MAGAZINEPlease contact Steve Brawner, [email protected]

Report Card is published quarterly by the Arkansas School Boards Association. Copyright 2015 by the Arkansas School Boards Associa-tion and Steve Brawner Communications. All rights reserved.

Vol. 8, Number 4 December 2015

Letter from the Executive Director

Save starfish by academics focus

areas of interest ranging from legislative advocacy to funding for schools. This year the training focused on the school board’s role in academic achievement. The topic was met with varied responses from the participants. However, all participants realized the importance of a continued academic focus.

Districts have varying needs in rela-tion to the communities and students they serve. It is the responsibility of the school district to allocate resources to meet those student needs as they surface. All school districts want to provide the best possible education for their students. It is incumbent on board members to consider all students in the decisions they make.

Most of you may recall the story of the little boy who was on the beach fran-tically trying to save starfish by throw-ing them back into the ocean. When the little boy was informed that there were hundreds of starfish on the beach and he was not making a difference, the little boy smiled and said as he hurled a starfish back into the ocean, “It made a difference to this one!”

We must consider all children but also children as individuals in decisions that are made at the board table. One child that receives positive intervention, becomes academically successful, and grows into a productive member of soci-ety will ultimately affect future genera-tions. It is a domino effect that we must all keep uppermost in mind.

Many years ago my father was a member of our local school board. I can remember some of his interactions and conversations. The vast majority of them were focused on the school district’s finances and facilities – traditionally key responsibilities of oversight of the school board member.

However, times have changed much over the last 20 years, and so has the shift in focus of board members. Back then, board members mostly left the academic decision making to district ad-ministrators with little to no governance over those decisions. Today, because of changes in legislation and accountabil-ity, board members and superintendents are in jeopardy of losing their positions because of a state takeover.

This change has necessitated a change in the roles and responsibili-ties of school board members. Board members are now held accountable for student academic standings and must focus on the academic success of the school district. Administrators and teachers are still the most qualified to make recommendations pertaining to student academic growth; however, school board members should receive an adequate amount of instructional reports and readily available data to support those recommendations.

The Arkansas School Boards As-sociation recently completed regional trainings. In past years the topics of the trainings have varied according to

by Dr. Tony Prothro


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ASBA News and notes

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Not long after this school year start-ed, a Blytheville High School employee

Law-required panic button saves life in Blytheville

with diabetes fell unconscious. A school nurse activated the app, which sent her to 9-1-1. According to Blytheville Superintendent Richard Atwill, the nurse was assessing the patient and giving information over the phone while it was held by another staff member as the emergency medical technicians arrived.

“It was flawless. It was the first time in the state that it had been used, and it worked perfectly,” he said.

The law sponsored by Rep. Scott Baltz, R-Pocahontas, required school districts to install the system this year. At Blytheville, all adults in authority and with child supervisory responsibili-ties have the app installed on their cell phone. After pushing the button, the user can then specify the type of emergency involved – medical emergency, active shooter, fire, etc. – with the message relayed to the appropriate authorities. Meanwhile, appropriate school staff members are notified.

ASBA News and Notes continued on next page

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Teach, don’t preach religionReligion should be taught like other subject matters, not promoted nor inhibited

by Jay BequetteASBA General Counsel

Of all the difficult issues faced by school boards and school administrators, none are more challenging than religion. Faith is an integral part of American history and culture, and it is a defining quality for many American students and their families. So how should schools treat religion? Teach, don’t preach.

Programs that teach about religion are per-missible because they are part of a secular edu-cation program teaching students about the role of religion in the historical, cultural, literary and social development of the U.S. and other nations. Religion should be discussed in this context in a neutral, objective, balanced and factual manner.

On other hand, religious indoctrination violates the constitutional prohibition in the First Amendment against advancing reli-gion. A public school curriculum may not be devotional or doctrinal, nor may it promote or inhibit religion in any way. Teachers must not promote or denigrate any particular religion, religion in general, or lack of religious belief. A teacher must not interject personal views or espouse those of particular students.

That’s the general principle. What about more specific situations?

Religious holidays The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that public schools may

not sponsor religious practices. While it has made no defini-tive rulings on religious holidays in schools, the Supreme Court declined to review a decision in the Eighth Circuit which stated that recognition of holidays may be constitu-tional if the purpose is to provide secular instruction about re-ligious traditions rather than to promote the particular religion involved.

Religious symbols

Religious symbols can be used as teaching aids or re-sources only if they are portrayed as examples of cultural or religious heritage. Religious symbols may be displayed only on a temporary basis as part of an academic program.

Religious music

Religious music may be played or sung as part of the academic study of music or in school concerts that present a variety of sections. Concerts dominated by religious music, such as when they occur in proximity to a religious holiday, should be avoided. The use of drama, art or literature with religious themes is permissible if it is educational in nature and consistent with the curriculum, but not if it is serves to advance or promote a particular religious belief.

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Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather; Robin Roberts, co-anchor of ABC’s Good Morning America; and Tony Wagner, expert in residence at Harvard University’s Innovation Lab, are the featured speakers at the upcom-ing National School Boards Association (NSBA) Annual Conference April 9-11 in Boston

Dan Rather, Robin Roberts to headline NSBA conference

More than 7,000 school board mem-bers, superintendents, and education leaders are expected to attend.

The conference will offer more than 200 programming sessions, workshops, speakers, site visits, and exhibitors. Returning features include the Health & Wellness Pavilion, Music & Arts Main Street, The Green Zone, and the Tech-nology Pavilion & Marketplace. Pre-conference workshops will cover topics such as achieving equity, learning with an iPad, and superintendent evaluations. Conference fees are $915 for those

The “Executive Session” in the Sep-tember Report Card mistakenly stated that Fort Smith School Board member Jeannie Cole was a national PTA presi-dent. She was a state president.

Correction

ASBA News and notesregistering by Jan. 15 and $965 for those registering afterwards, with additional costs for other offerings.

For more information, go to the NS-BA’s website, www.nsba.org, email [email protected], or call 800.950.6722.


Christmas and other holidays Public schools may not sponsor religious devotions or

celebrations; however, this does not mean that all seasonal activities must be banned from schools because it would prob-ably be unrealistic to do so. Holiday programs, while they can be held, should not make students feel excluded or identified with a religion not their own. The cultural aspects of the holi-days should be emphasized. In short, while it is permissible to recognize the holiday season, no school activities should have the purpose or effect of promoting or inhibiting religion.

Prayer at school board meetings

Prayer at school board meetings is a controversial issue that many times brings risk of litigation and dissent in the community.

Some courts have held that opening certain meetings of governmental bodies with a prayer is constitutional. The Supreme Court has upheld the practice of state legislatures opening sessions with a prayer. Other courts have used the Su-preme Court’s reasoning to hold that school boards may pray at the start of a meeting because those prayers are legislative prayers.

However, some courts have concluded that prayer before school board meetings should be analyzed like other issues involving religion in the school setting, because students often appear at board meetings to speak; school boards address student issues during meetings; some boards have student rep-resentatives that sit on the board; and boards sometimes invite students to their meetings to receive awards or make presenta-tions to the audience.

Last year, the Supreme Court narrowly upheld the offering of prayers at open government meetings even if the prayers were overwhelmingly Christian and citizens were encour-aged to participate. The case involved a city board meeting in a small New York town. The majority of the Court ruled that opening local government meetings with sectarian prayers did not violate the Establishment Clause as long as no particular

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religion is advanced or disparaged and no residents were co-erced to pray, concluding that the history of legislative prayer dating back to the Framers of the Constitution supported the decision.

Religious email footers and prayersThere is little persuasive jurisprudence regarding the con-

stitutionality of school staff members using religious prayers or sayings in email footers or signatures. A federal court held in 2001 in a private sector Title VII case that an employee did not have a constitutional right to include “Have a blessed day” on official correspondence. In 1999, a federal court upheld a directive that a teacher refrain from communicating religious beliefs in official communications with students’ parents. In 2002, a federal court held that a teacher did not have the right to wear a “Jesus 2000” t-shirt at school.

While the official motto of the U.S. of “In God We Trust” was adopted in 1956 and reaffirmed in 2006 and 2011 and has withstood several judicial challenges, claims of school staff members’ rights to freedom of speech and expression are ana-lyzed under two tests. First, the basic constitutional principle is that school employees are not required to shed their consti-tutional rights at the schoolhouse gate. Second, courts must determine whether the speech was about a matter of public concern or a private matter. Public concerns are protected under the Constitution; private matters are not.

Issues involving religion in the schools are controversial, and the law in this area is constantly evolving. The cases are typically decided on the specific facts presented, which means that it is difficult to predict with certainty how a court will rule in a particular case. With the large number of national and local groups promoting freedom from religion on the one hand, and those who espouse encouraging freedom of religion on the other, there is no shortage of issues presented to school administrators and board members in this area.


Student-focused school boards make a difference in student achievement, and effective boards have certain defining characteristics, board members were told at this year’s regional meetings.

ASBA’s executive director, Dr. Tony Prothro, said at the Region 11 meeting in Sheridan that three Lighthouse stud-ies, the first two conducted by the Iowa School Boards Association and the third involving multiple states, found that, when districts with similar socioeco-nomic situations are compared, school boards do make a difference in student achievement. That’s because while school boards aren’t involved in day-to-day teaching, they control the district’s teaching and learning conditions and make decisions that impact student learning. The first study went so far as to say that there was little evidence of a focus on school renewal anywhere in a district when it was not present at the board level.

Effective boards:• Commit to a vision of high expec-

tations for student achievement and quality instruction and define clear goals toward that vision;

• Have strong shared beliefs and val-ues about what is possible for students and their ability to learn, and of the sys-tem and its ability to teach all children at high levels;

• Are accountability driven and spend less time on operational issues and more

time focused on policies to improve student achievement;

• Have a collaborative relationship with staff and the community and estab-lish a strong communications structure to inform and engage internal and exter-nal stakeholders in setting and achieving district goals;

• Are data savvy; they embrace and monitor data, even when the information is negative, and use it to drive continu-ous improvement;

• Align and sustain resources such as professional development to meet their goals;

• Lead as a united team with the superintendent, each from their respec-tive roles, with strong collaboration and mutual trust;

• Take part in team development and training, sometimes with their super-intendents, to build shared knowledge, values and commitments for their im-provement efforts.

School boards should strive to have those characteristics because the rules have changed, Prothro said. Under the old rules, educators believed that some students would learn the material and some wouldn’t, and if they didn’t, it was the students’ fault. Under the new rules, all students are expected to learn the material, and if they don’t, policymakers and professionals are held responsible.

Less effective school boards in the study had their own defining character-istics. They:

• Were only vaguely aware of school improvement initiatives and seldom were able to describe actions being taken to improve student learning;

• Were focused on external pressures, including poverty, parental nonsupport, societal factors and a lack of motivation;

Region message: School boards matter At regional meetings, ASBA staff encouraged boards with study results showing the difference a school board can make

REGIONAL MEETING. Pine Bluff School Board members Harold Jackson, left, and Leon Jones participate in a discussion at the Region 11 meeting in Sheridan, top. Opposite page, ASBA executive director Dr. Tony Prothro leads the discussion.

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• Commented negatively about stu-dents, teachers, administrators, and/or other board members;

• Micromanaged day-to-day opera-tions;

• Disregarded the agenda process and the chain of command;

• Were left out of the information flow, with little communica-tion between the school board and superinten-dent;

• Were quick to de-scribe a lack of paren-tal interest in education and barriers to imple-menting community outreach;

• Looked at data from a perspective that blamed poor perfor-mance on others;

• Had little under-standing or coordina-tion regarding staff

development;• Were slow to define a vision;• Did not hire a superintendent who

agreed with their vision;• Had little professional development

together as a board.

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Alone, school board members have no more power than other citizens. As part of a board in a proper meeting, they play a vital role in fostering student achievement.

That was the message Oct. 13 at ASBA’s New Board Member Institute, its annual orientation/dose of reality for new school board members.

Dr. Anne Butcher, ASBA’s board development director, told attendees that their job is to provide oversight over their district, not overstep their bounds by performing school employees’ tasks. If a school employee is paid to do the

work, then it’s not the school board member’s job. Butcher asked how many school board members are needed to change a light bulb. The answer: none. The school board’s role is to say, “Let there be light.” The superintendent makes sure the light is changed. Then the school board determines if the light is bright enough.

As usual, ASBA staff members and school board members presented skits depicting mock meetings. One began with a Pledge of Allegiance, which can serve to calm the emotions of angry parents, but it also featured characters played by Bryant’s Sandra Porter, who checked her cell phone while roll was being called, and Mountain Home’s Neal Pendergrass, who noisily arrived late and unprepared.

Following the skit, ASBA’s executive director, Dr. Tony Prothro, told attendees

that they must be courteous and respect-ful, but they also must control what happens in a meeting. School board meetings occur in public, but they are not public meetings, meaning that the board is not required to let everyone in the audience speak. Prothro told board members that all votes are held in public and all board members vote, including the president. A school board member who wants to abstain from a vote must leave the room; otherwise, it’s counted as a no vote.

Another skit featured ASBA Staff Attorney Kristen Garner playing a superintendent discussing hiring a social studies teacher in executive session. She recommended one clearly superior candidate over another who had grown up in the town. Board members at first considered the second candidate but eventually backed the superintendent’s

Powerless as one, powerful as many

By Steve BrawnerEditor

At the New Board Member Institute, rookies learn what they can do in a meeting (a lot) and as individuals (little)

KRISTEN GARNER, left, ASBA staff attorney, plays a superintendent in a mock executive session with school board members played by, from left, Clint Hull, Pottsville; Jeff Lisenbey, Sheridan; Sandra Porter, Bryant; and Neal Pendergrass, Mountain Home.

New Board Member Institute


Continued on next page

decision. In fact, one board member who initially supported the second candidate made the recommendation to hire the superintendent’s choice. On the negative side, board members badly veered into discussing topics that didn’t belong in executive session, such as purchasing property and buying a tractor.

Prothro said the relationship between the superintendent is like a marriage with a 50-50 relationship. He warned board members not to usurp the superin-tendent’s responsibilities.

Meanwhile, he said school districts can become dysfunctional if they hire the wrong superintendent. That being the case, he said boards must do more than simply check the candidates’ listed references, who are likely friends and associates.

Butcher asked attendees difficult questions. Should a board member reject a superintendent’s request if he or she has information the superinten-dent lacks? That one’s a gray area. It’s

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better to communicate beforehand, but sometimes a board member might know something important. Should a school board member privately suggest a hire to a superintendent? Garner said no. What about meeting with a group of community members to listen to their complaints about a facilities master plan being presented to the community? While that might seem like something elected officials should do, it’s inap-propriate because it implies endorse-ment. The proper time to hear those complaints is in a school board meeting, where members have the power to act collectively.

How to stay out of troubleGarner crammed four hours of pro-

fessional development into a little more than an hour by describing some areas where school board members can get into legal and personal hot water: the Freedom of Information Act and conflict of interest laws. Concerning FOIA,

“There are no restrictions on someone’s ability to torment you with this law,” she said. Districts must comply with


New school board member not really newWhen Dr. Bob Maranto was asked to

run for the Fayetteville School Board, he made academics the central focus of his campaign and won a three-person race with 63 percent of the vote.

Maranto has spent his career studying schools as a professor of education policy and leadership at the University of Arkan-sas. For him, schools should compete as hard in academics as they do in athletics.

“I’m saying, ‘Look, if another district is beating us at football, we’re going to take them on, and our coach is going to do something about that, right?’” he said. “We need to have exactly that same attitude towards academics. There are school districts that do better than we do with poor kids. There are school districts that do better than we do with rich kids. I think that’s unacceptable. So that’s what I ran on. … It worked real well. I’m told I’m one of the few people who’s run talking about academics. I’m hoping more people in the future will.”

Maranto has written 13 books and is already serving on a school board – one for a Pennsylvania-based cyber-school focused on at-risk students. He’s done work in about 200

schools nationwide, so he was well aware of school board members’ limited power before he ran. But he also appreciates what a school board member can ac-complish: set goals, ask questions, and exercise influence.

“You can’t micromanage someone,” he said. “I’ve always known that. If you think you can micromanage admin, you’re a fool. They know more about this stuff than you do. … You can persuade other board members and see if there’s a consensus over time to move in a direc-tion, and then start moving there. And

that is entirely realistic, and elections are for that. Elections are to send signals.”

Maranto followed the advice of one of his fellow board members and met with members individually while he was still a candidate, which turned out to be a useful exercise. He said he more appreciates the challenges of being a local school board member now that he’s become one, and he approaches the job with humility.

“If you can’t convince the others you’re right, remember that maybe you’re wrong,” he said.

document requests and can only charge for the cost of reproduction, not for employees’ time. If the press was not properly notified before a meeting, then everything that happened there is in-valid, and if two or more board members are communicating about school board business anywhere or anyhow, that’s a meeting no matter where it occurred. She warned board members not even to “reply all” to an email sent by the district to all school board members.

Executive session do’s and don’tsThe exception to all that is the

executive session, which Garner said is a tool to be used only in the following situations: employment, appointment, promotion, demotion and resignation. Those are allowed because the Legisla-ture has made exceptions where “the in-dividual’s right to privacy is greater than the public’s right to know,” she said. Discussions about employment must be about specific people, not policies, and not money. Discussions about ap-pointments usually will involve a board member vacancy, and demotions must first go through a process that is not

initiated by a board. Only candidates for superintendent, and not other positions, can be interviewed in executive session. While supervisors of an employee being discussed can be present, neither pa-trons, parents, nor even the school board attorney can attend. As for staff termina-tions and student suspensions, school board members should act as a jury in a court case, meaning ideally they should arrive in a hearing knowing nothing. If a school employee wants to meet in executive session to discuss “some con-cerns,” don’t let them, she said.

Garner also discussed board mem-ber ethics and conflict of interest laws. Board members’ family members can’t be hired except in extraordinary circum-stances. But the law defines “family” in some unusual ways. Cousins are not family, but anyone living in the house of a spouse is. If a school board member is the low bidder on a project, it prob-ably can happen because it’s in the best interest of the school, but a process must be followed and consent granted by the Arkansas Department of Education.

Dr. Greg Murry, Conway superin-tendent, presented a session covering

New Board Member Institute

DR. GREG MURRY, Conway superinten-dent, leads a session in school finance.


fiscal oversight and audit training. He told board members that students must always be the focus of board members’ actions. However, the district’s finances must add up. Budgets are a financial plan, and plans inevitably change as circumstances change. However, a budget keeps an organization on track and satisfies government requirements. Just as important, it reflects a school district’s values and culture and shapes its philosophy for the coming year.

Because budgets are due Sept. 30, new board members can learn about the budgeting process before they must vote on one. Part of that process is under-standing what numbers are most impor-tant. An isolated number is meaningless, Murry said. What’s important are the trends. The most important number is the unrestricted legal ending balance, the money over which school districts have the most control. If it’s shrinking, the district could be headed to fiscal distress.

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Murry told board members Arkansas school districts had an $827 million un-restricted legal ending balance in 2014 – a large amount of which state legisla-tors have taken notice. However, 103 districts had declining balances.

School board basicsJeff Lisenbey, a Sheridan School

Board member and a Region 11 direc-tor, started the program by sharing “The basics of school board governance.” He presented an overview of board duties and offered tips for effective service, including publicly supporting a board’s decision even when disagreeing with it individually, being transparent, and engaging in professional development. He told attendees that board presidents have additional responsibilities such as setting agenda items, but no additional powers. He described common issues such as role confusion, a lack of trust and respect, and hidden agendas.

“Believe it or not, some people run for the board because they have some-thing that they want to see happen,” he said.

At the conclusion of the meeting, Prothro said attendees sometimes com-plain that the New Board Member In-stitute focuses too much on what school board members can’t do, and not enough on what they can do. Despite the office’s limitations, it still can effect change and serve students.

“You are once again at the top of the food chain when it comes to what takes place in your district,” he said. “Even though you’re not carrying it out, you as a collective member of a school board are pointing the direction your ship’s go-

BILLIE LANKFORD, Dollarway School Board president, makes a point while ASBA Communications Director Jennifer George holds the microphone at the New Board Member Institute.

ing. You’re hiring people to take it, but you are controlling the direction. You approve curriculum. You approve hires. You’re ultimately there to represent the needs of the children in your commu-nity.”

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Cover / Warren School District

Sutton Nelson is the type of high-achieving learner who in a traditional environment either might be unchal-lenged by the material or might skip a grade and miss a year’s worth of mate-rial.

But Warren School District is not a traditional environment. They don’t really give letter grades there, and grade levels are not so clearly defined. Instruc-tion is based on individual pathways and clearly defined goals rather than seat time. Young people are called “learners” – the idea being that “students” connotes sitting in rows and taking notes rather than engaging in a process of discovery.

In that environment, Nelson has taken ownership of her education, learned at her own pace, and is now a year ahead of schedule without skipping anything.

“It kind of like helped me,” she said. “‘Oh, I have more goals. I’m going to try to get this done and get good at this and know what I’m doing.’”

Warren uses a model known as standards-based education. Students – oops, learners – advance individually, so class time is often spent in small groups with teachers giving targeted attention. All the learners have a digital device, so they work side by side but often on dif-ferent skills. While there are scheduled whole group assessments, learners often tell the teacher when they are ready to assess and then move on to the next skill. Instead of receiving letter grades, they receive scores of 1-4, with “3” in-dicating mastery of a particular skill and “4” meant to represent performance that

is in the top 2 percent of the population. When they’ve reached a 3, they move on to the next skill – but not before then. Or, they might move on and then return to that skill later. For example, a stu-dent who is stuck on fractions might be allowed to proceed to decimals, which often helps him or her better understand fractions. Instead of grade levels based on seat time and chronological age, Warren has “learning levels” based on mastery of material.

“It’s truly individualized learning, personalized learning when you go in the classroom,” said high school prin-cipal Bryan Cornish. “Our teachers can tell you what skills every child is lack-ing, where they’re at.”

Warren educators say this type of differentiated learning gives learners an ownership over their education that they didn’t have before. Level 3 (sec-ond grade) teacher Elizabeth McKinney

HANDS-ON LEARNING. Katie Williams, a level 7 science teacher, teaches learners about volcanoes using baking soda, food coloring and vinegar.

At Warren, it’s personalBy Steve BrawnerEditor

Every school is a conversion charter, grade levels are fluid, and students advance as soon as they’ve learned the material



said her young learners know what their goals are and make their own choices about how they meet them and about how they show her they’ve met them. “Once they get into the groove, they know what to do, they know where to get their work, they know how to help each other, so they kind of take care of it themselves,” she said.

Learners are asking teachers if they can work on their goals during lunch-time, over summer vacations and during Thanksgiving break. When they finish a pathway, they can move forward, and if they finish all their pathways in a given year, they can advance to the next level. That’s how Nelson, now a level 7 learner, finished her level 2 and level 3 years in one year.

Nelson said that the standards-based model inspires her to master the material fully and quickly. Meanwhile, the model also allows learners to move more slowly if that’s what’s right for them. If a learner ends a year with pathways left

to complete, they don’t flunk. Instead they can take some extra time at the end of the school year, or start the next one at the next level except for that one skill, which they will have a chance to master.

“It gives us our own pace instead of just taking, ‘Oh, move on, move on, rushing, rushing, rushing.’ If we rush, then we wouldn’t know how to do it, and we wouldn’t know how to learn,” she said. “So I feel like it’s good be-cause it takes your own time instead of pushing you to work as fast as you can and not getting it finished.”

Regina Scroggins, principal at the elementary level Brunson New Vision Charter, likes the new model.

“We no longer just look at test scores because you know, if you give a student an F, that’s it?” she said. “Are they done forever? An F, they failed, they leave feeling stupid or like they’re never going to be successful. But this way with our personalized learning, they have another

SUTTON NELSON, a level 7 learner, com-pleted her level 2 and 3 years (first and second grades) in one year because the model offered clear goals and let her learn at her own pace.


Cover / Warren School Districtchance. It’s just like taking your driver’s test. You just don’t flunk it and never drive. I mean, what do you do? You study. You go back, try again.”

In Elizabeth McKinney’s level 3 classroom, advancement is represented graphically by learners writing their names beneath colored signs describing skills such as, “I can use addition and subtraction within 100 to solve one- and two-step word problems.” Far from that being a shaming tool, it helps every-one see where they are and serves as a catalyst for learners to help each other. Sometimes “average” learners help the smart kids.

“We talk about how you might be good at one skill, and you may be the helper on one skill, but on the next skill you may need help from someone else,” said McKinney. “So it’s not about being better at everything, but we all are better at certain things, and we can help each other out with that.”

The model has required the district to rethink the way schools are organized. Classrooms feature cloverleaf tables instead of individual desks to facilitate small group learning. At Brunson New Vision Charter, the buildings were rear-ranged to be organized by subject rather than learning level. That makes it easier for learners to move from one classroom to another – to work on a math skill, for example, without disrupting literacy classes. In high school, if a learner is on pace in one class and struggling in another, they have the freedom to leave with a hall pass for the classroom where they need to catch up. “We’re very transparent, and we’ll allow the learners to have a lot of ownership in what they do,” said Cornish.

The changes began in 2009, when the district’s administrative team read an article about the Adams County School District 50 in Denver, which was in its first year of incorporating a standards-based approach. That article struck a nerve. It wasn’t that Warren was badly underachieving. Educators just decided the district wasn’t as good as it could be.

“We’re from a small town, and it doesn’t take much to drive through town and see the kids sitting on the front porch after they graduated high school, and you know they graduated without

the skills to be able to hold a job,” said Kathy Cornish, principal at Warren Middle School. “And I think that really started to play with us more than test scores. Are we really preparing them for their future?”

A team of 16 people, including ad-ministrators, educators and parents, trav-eled to Denver and returned enthusiastic about the idea. The group formed a task force to study implementing a standards-based model. Faculty members were involved early in the process. The group strategically took to Denver some of the district’s more cautious teachers so they would have buy-in. Teachers were polled and showed a lot of interest.

There really wasn’t much of an established nationwide model, so staff members researched what individual districts had done. School personnel contacted consultant Beatrice McGar-vey, who traveled to Warren and helped the district write its strategic plan. The few schools nationwide that had tried the model started at the high school

level and worked their way down. War-ren instead would start in 2010 at East Side New Vision Charter, which served learners in grades K-3, and work its way up. In 2011, a delegation from Warren’s Brunson New Vision Charter visited the Lindsay Unified School District in California. Lindsey had received a Race to the Top grant to implement its vi-sion, and Warren took advantage of the lessons it had learned. By the time the process was over, Warren had become the first district in the state where very school is a conversion charter.

Parental involvementAt first, learner report cards included

only numbers 1-4, but parents weren’t comfortable with that system, so the district converted the numbers to let-ter grades. The difference is that these report cards describe a learner’s prog-ress across each pathway rather than a single subject. It’s a long list, but it gives parents a better understanding of their children’s progress.

CLEAR GOALS. Tristan Weaver, a student in Level 3 teacher Elizabeth McKinney’s class at East Side New Vision Charter School, uses a tablet alongside a list of the learners’ goals. Learners sign their names beneath each goal when individual assessments indi-cate they have mastered the skill.


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And that’s led to more questions. Par-ents no longer are looking for a simple letter grade and being satisfied seeing an “A” or a “B.” Now they can understand if their children have completed their pathways and are asking questions if they haven’t.

“At the end of the year, I had a lot of parents coming to see me because their child had not finished their pathway,” said Sara Weaver, East Side New Vi-sion Charter principal. “In a traditional setting, these would have been kids that would have had B’s or C’s on their final report card, and normally you wouldn’t hear from those parents because they would have been fine with that, and then they’re moving to Brunson. But they were upset because they could now see that transparency was there that, oh, my child has not finished this pathway and they don’t have all their skills for the next grade.”

The model replaces the letter grade system, which is based on averages, with individual standards. That means learners can’t rely on areas where they are strong to make up for areas where they are weak. Now they don’t advance until they have mastered the material at hand.

“Parents know more about what their child can do,” Scroggins said. “Tradi-tionally, if a learner received an A in math, what does that mean? Does that mean they know multiplication facts? Maybe not? Maybe they’re just good

at one thing and not the other. But with the way we do it, as Miss Cornish said, it is very transparent. Parents know exactly what skill their learner is on. The students know. The teacher knows, and I think that helps with giving that owner-

ship. And the student can look at their pathway, and they’re like, ‘Oh, this is what I need to do, and this is what I’m going to do next.’ So the teacher doesn’t have to continually stand over them. I


WE KNOW THE ANSWER! East Side New Vision Charter School teacher Tina Cearley teaches while learners Natalie Hargrave and Ethan Black respond.


Cover / Warren School District

CAPER GROVES, front, Paisley West and Jayden Strong use tablets to work individu-ally on their skills in teacher Tina Cearley’s class.

mean, they know what they need to be doing.”

The high school has been the last to implement standards-based learning, and in many ways that school has been the most challenging. There learners must be given letter grades by subject in order to qualify for scholarships and denote class rankings. The school is still working out the kinks but has designed a conversion system.

One thing that hasn’t changed is the requirement that learners actually master the material. If a learner hasn’t com-pleted a required pathway by the end of May of their senior year, they’ll be given a chance to finish during extended high school over a three-week period. If they still don’t have it, they can come back in August and finish up. At that point, they’ll be handed a diploma and given the chance to walk the next spring.

Educators are learning as they go and aren’t sure what they’re going to do with learners like Sutton Nelson. Will she graduate a year ahead of schedule and move on to college or a career? Maybe. But another option is to let her move forward with her education while staying in Warren’s supportive environ-ment. The district’s Southeast Arkansas Community Based Education Center lets learners focus on programs of study such as information technology and health sciences. Nelson could complete extra courses as part of that program. The center offers concurrent credit with two universities. If she advances fast enough, she could earn an associate’s degree while still in high school.

“Rocky road”The changes made by Warren haven’t

always translated to success according to the state’s measuring tools. On the school report card, East Side scored an “F” while Warren Middle School scored a “D.” Brunson and Warren High both earned a “B.” An “F” means a large number of students did not score “pro-ficient” on statewide tests, that schools aren’t meeting performance goals, and that most groups of students aren’t meeting progress goals. Created by the Legislature in 2013, the report card was implemented for the first time at the end of the 2014-15 school year.

The “F” was concerning to the com-munity, but Weaver, the principal, said a campus shouldn’t be judged on one assessment and that the scores should be considered in context. She said she knows learners are more engaged under this system and can demonstrate what skills they have gained.

“It goes back to, we are outside the box and the test is not. … When your learners can take their data binders and walk you through that and talk to you about their learning, that’s rewarding,” she said. “I would put that up against any F on a state assessment.”

Still, rethinking school in so many ways has been “four years of rocky road,” said Carla Wardlaw, assistant superintendent. Among the challenges: East Side’s Weaver said the district’s initial emphasis on individualized learn-ing sent a signal to teachers that their classroom lecturing days were done. They aren’t, so instruction was rebal-anced to include a more appropriate mix of individual and group work.

Superintendent Bobby Acklin, who is in his first year at Warren, said the

model has required an adjustment on everybody’s part. Universities often don’t teach education majors this teach-ing model, and teachers coming from other districts don’t have any experience in it. That means the district has to grow its own teachers and administrators and create future evangelists who will leave the district and share what they have learned.

“One of the questions that I had is the same question that parents had, is how do you know where they are if there’s no letter grades?” Acklin said. “Because I’m traditional, 38 years of letter grades. He got an A. He’s got a B. But if a kid had a B, there’s some skills they didn’t learn. We just never were concerned about it, and parents were never really concerned about the skill that they didn’t learn.”

On the day of Report Card’s visit, Katie Williams, a level 7 science teach-er, taught about volcanoes using baking soda, food coloring and vinegar. This is her fourth year of teaching at Warren, so she has used both standards-based and traditional teaching. She was trained to


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LEVEL 9 math teacher Rebecca Owens works with student Alexis Temple at Warren Middle School. As elsewhere in Warren, level 9 students learn and advance largely at their own pace.

teach using traditional methods and had to adjust when she moved to Warren.

“I think this gives students more opportunities to learn, to learn in different ways than what I learned when I was going through school,” she said. “It allows them to do it at the time that they need and to really dig down deeper to focus on what they need to. … It shows them what they need to work on, but it also (allows) them to have strengths in all areas, so it gives them the self-confidence they need to feel good about what they’re learning.”

With learners directing so much of their own education, classrooms are more chaotic than in a traditional setting. In Rebecca Owens’ level 7 class, learners are moving every-where. One walks to a filing cabinet and files an assessment proving he has mastered a learning path. Another takes a test among the chaos. Owens says they don’t mind. “They like tests. They’re used to it. They beg me to play music all the time,” she said.

Williams said she sets guidelines of what’s to be expected during the first two or three weeks of the year and then doesn’t have too many discipline problems. “Because there is so much hands-on stuff, it’s OK to talk,” she said. “It’s OK to do group work. You know, I expect for them not to be of course shout-ing or hollering, but you know there’s times to be quiet and there’s time that you can talk, and as long as you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing, I’m OK with that.”

A standards-based approach undoubtedly is more work for teachers, particularly on the front end. Level 3 teacher McKin-ney must plan the entire year from the beginning so learners will be able to move at their own pace. Teachers must continu-ally monitor the performance of all their learners individually rather than managing one big group. She doesn’t mind.

“We started this because we felt like it was best for kids to learn at their own pace and in their own way, and so I’m all for it,” she said amidst her learners’ bustling activities. “And I’ve told Miss Sara that if we ever went back to doing it the other way, I would revolt.


E X E C U T I V E S E S S I O Nwith

Kenneth Harris

Arkadelphia School Board member Kenneth Harris has spent his life in education. He has served 32 years on the board and earned ASBA’s Platinum Award for accruing 400 hours of boardsmanship credit. The former elementary teacher became a college professor and eventually headed the Department of Curriculum and Instruc-tion at Henderson State University. Though “retired,” he still teaches classes. Meanwhile, he serves on the board of trustees for Arkansas Baptist College, a Little Rock school that historically has served African-Ameri-can students.

With two local universities, HSU and Ouachita Baptist University, education is Arkadelphia’s most important indus-try, but the district has not built a new school since 1972. That will change as a result of voters passing a 5.75-mill increase this September.

Report Card sat down with Harris at Arkansas Baptist College to talk about how school board service has changed, how his district passed a millage increase, and what he’s learned hiring nine superintendents in 32 years.

When did you first run for school board?

“1982, I believe it was, and I lost. (Laughs.) Then I ran again, and I was elected in 1983, so I’ve been on the board since then.”

So you weren’t discouraged by the one loss?

“No, no. At that time, when I lost, we had at-large voting in the district, and following that election where I lost, we had no minority representation on our school board. So it was kind of an effort to have minority representation on the board, and of course we filed a federal lawsuit to challenge the at-large voting, and we won that, and we had to go to zone voting. And then at that point I was elected as a result of that.”

How difficult was it to build bridges after that?

“It’s been good. I think everybody understood and could appreciate the fact that we’re a community where education is the largest industry, and I just believe that most of the people there were open-minded about it and were OK with it. So we really didn’t have any real bridges to build or rebuild because we had a community that supports educa-



tion and really wants the best for the community.”

You’ve been a school board mem-ber for 32 years. How has being a school board member changed?

“That’s an interesting question. I think our state and federal governments have gotten more involved in the educational process. There is less and less local autonomy. ... Even grading, the state has a grading system now that every school district has to follow, all of that. So a lot of the things that I think that we could say was under the aus-pices of local autonomy have sort of been taken away from us now, and the state is dictating more what schools have to do and all of that, and it’s become more of a bureaucracy now.”

Do school board members carve out ways to make sure school boards remain relevant, or do you just give up and say, “Well, we’ll just rubber stamp what we’re told to do”?

“No, I think there will always be a need for a local school board because there are those issues that I think need attention based on the community that it serves, like your buildings. Even though the state now, you have to submit a facilities study to the state, and they’ve got this system where you apply and the state will give you some money back to help you with your buildings, but you

still need your local input. Like the millage we just passed, I mean we had to have that money in order to get the state money, so I think there will always be those kinds of things. I think person-nel pretty much is still a local control issue.”

What can a school board member who’s been there for 32 years do to, despite all this control, still encourage an environment that’s pro-academics and keeps that as the focus?

“Well, Arkadelphia is unique, and so perhaps my response would be some-thing that’s more apropos for Arkadel-phia than more of a generic kind of response in that we have Southern Bancorp and the Ross Foundation now to say that any student who graduates from Arkadelphia High School, if they’ve been there from kindergarten on, that there’s money available for them to go to college. I think one of the things that a local school board member could do is to encourage our students to stay the course and help increase our gradua-tion rates, and of course encourage our students to seek post-high school education. I think that’s the wave of the future. Without having some kind of credential beyond high school, I think living in the 21st century, as global as we’ve become, as technological as we’ve become, I think that you can’t stop with a high school diploma.”

The scholarship, the Arkadelphia Promise, hasn’t gotten as much attention as the El Dorado Promise, but it’s still a pretty good deal for students, isn’t it?

“It’s an excellent deal for our stu-dents. I think we’ve seen an increase now. I don’t have the exact statistics, but I know we’ve seen an increase in the number of students in Arkadelphia going on to post-secondary. And so I think that’s a good thing for us and for our community and something that is localized for us. I encourage students to apply for everything and go to school and do well.”

Education is not just something that you do a few times a month, but it’s your life, right?

“I started out as an elementary teacher in the small town of Fordyce, Arkansas. I’m a native of Fordyce, so I started teaching there, and I taught public school in Las Vegas, Nevada, and then ended up in Hot Springs as an elementary teacher, which is kind of rare back in that day because men didn’t go into elementary education. And then after that, I completed my master’s degree, and I started at Henderson with a master’s degree teaching. In fact, the month that I got my master’s degree, my advisor took me out to dinner or some-thing and said, ‘We’ve got a position



As a school board member, I’m not there to micromanage� I’m there to set policy and to have some oversight in terms of the operation of the school and sort of serve as the liaison between the community and the school district, but having knowledge about education has been very helpful to almost every superintendent�

“

”

Executive Session

open at Henderson and your name has come up. Would you be interested?’ I was teaching a course in Hot Springs at the time. I said, ‘Well, I don’t know.’ He said, ‘Well, go home and talk it over with your wife.’ And I said, ‘OK.’ So instead of talking it over with her, when I got home, I went in the house and said, ‘Guess what?’ I got a job at Henderson.’

“But anyway, I started there and then I taught at Henderson 35 years full time, started off as an instructor and went through the rank of assistant professor, associate and then full-tenured profes-sor, completed my doctorate while still working at Henderson. The last, I think, 15 years I was there, or 14 years, I was department head for the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. Upon retiring, I’ve continued to teach both undergraduate and graduate classes – fall, spring and summer if I’m needed. So far I’ve been needed. Last summer I did not teach. That was the first time I think I had off summer since I retired.

“So my life is education. I come from a family of educators. I have a first cousin who is a retired educator here in Little Rock, and she’s the oldest one living there. She just turned 89. So even generations prior to her, all the way down to my daughter, who is an educa-tor, we’re a family of educators.”

And also your wife is a public school teacher in Arkadelphia?

“She is. She taught in Hot Springs the first part of her career, and then when I got ready to go work on my doctorate, she resigned her job in Hot Springs the first part of her career. Then when I got ready to work on my doctorate, she resigned her job in Hot Springs to go to Texas with me. After I finished my residency there, we came back to

Arkadelphia, and they just happened to have an opening in her area. She started teaching in Arkadelphia in the fall of 1980, and she’s been there ever since. … She’s a music specialist.”

As a director of curriculum and instruction, it must have been a balancing act for you to know as much in some areas as the administra-tors and yet not try to do their job for them, right?

“Yes, but also it’s been quite reinforc-ing for the administration to have somebody on the board who understands education and understands curriculum and classroom management and just everything that encompasses education. So it’s been reinforcing for most of the superintendents because I have always respected the fact that if you have an administrator, their job is to implement policy and to do the day-to-day opera-tion of schools, and as a school board member, I’m not there to micromanage. I’m there to set policy and to have some oversight in terms of the operation of the school and sort of serve as the liaison between the community and the school district, but having knowledge about education has been very helpful to almost every superintendent.”

Speaking of superintendents, do you know how many you’ve hired?

“I think the last count I had was about nine.”

One of those is our executive director, Dr. Tony Prothro. You got any stories to tell on him?

“Oh (laughs). Well, he was always very energetic. He stayed on top of things and knew what was going on in our schools, and I appreciated him for that. Kept us out of trouble with not complying with laws and that kind of thing and overall had great rapport with our entire staff and the community.”

Nine is a lot to go through in 32 years. How important is maintaining stability in the superintendent’s role?

“I think it’s extremely important. I think the last time I read, the average tenure of a superintendent is probably three to five years, somewhere in there. I just know it takes any leader time to get into a community and learn the commu-nity, the needs of the community. They inherit people that somebody else hired, and you don’t always know if they are going to buy into your philosophy and your administrative style and all of that. Sometimes that can be a deterrent on superintendents, and I realize that probably had something to do with why we had to go through so many. Commu-nities don’t change fast. (New superin-tendents) come in. They want to change some things. They get in trouble when they start messing with the wrong group. …

“But this time, this is the first time that we hired a superintendent that came through the ranks in Arkadelphia from a teacher to a principal to a central office personnel and then superintendent, and I think everybody knows him, and he knows them, and I think that’s helped. I think it just kind of gives credence to my statement that new people come in and they don’t know the community and they want to make changes, and they can’t make them, and they sort of get themselves backed up against the wall, and then their only way is to leave. They’ll just get out of it, and then you start that cycle all over again.”


What have you learned about hiring superintendents through all of these years?

“Well, I’m going to borrow the phrase of a former school board colleague who is now deceased who spent probably close to 30 years on the school board before he passed away, and that was the late Dr. Mickey O’Quinn, who also worked at Henderson with me. His statement was, and I still use it, was that your best evaluation of any employee is on the front end. Evaluate them before you hire them. And that means you’ve got to do a good job of checking their references and the interview process. We even expanded our hiring process for superintendent that they have to meet with not just the board, but meet with the faculty, community, and even students, and we solicited feedback from all of those groups in terms of the various candidates. So we tried to do a very thorough process on the front end of selecting the right person for our district.”

You’re in higher education. Lt. Governor Win Rock-efeller used to say that the state’s education system was like water pipes laid end to end but not attached. Do you feel like that’s an accurate statement, or do you feel like the flow goes OK from high school into post-secondary education?

“Well, I think there is some validity to his statement. But I think where they might have been disjointed, I think that they might now be – how do I say this – connected but not tight-ened. Does that analogy make sense? I think that we might have too much replication of some things and gaps in others, and I think that if we were to do a complete academic audit of education from preschool through college, that we would probably be able to identify where a lot of our gaps are, and where we have a lot of replication or overlap and could do a better job of articulating and aligning education to the extent that we can better make it work to serve the masses.”

Arkadelphia just passed a millage increase. How did you do that?

“Well, we started off by trying to get input from the community. We kind of did a survey from our community to get a feel, would they support it, and when we got those results we were encouraged that we had a number of people who felt that our buildings were so old, and it’s hard to have the infrastructure and all that you need for the technology and all that. And I think they looked at surrounding schools like Malvern and Gurdon, their facilities and thought, ‘Well, you know, we’re Arkadelphia and we’re still trying to educate our kids in these antiquated buildings.’

“So I just think that we sold it to our community that we were just in great need of not just continuing to improve and maintain the facilities that we had, particularly for the elemen-tary and middle school, but there were some health and safety issues as well there. … All of that wasn’t always said when we went out, but we made the pitch that our buildings are old and we just need to update them, and the majority of the commu-nity said, ‘We support you.’’

There has to be a little city pride in that we’re an education city and our schools are the oldest around. Did that help in the sales pitch?

“Well, I think it was pretty much implied in our message. We were kind of sensitive that, ‘Well, what if it doesn’t pass?’ and you’ve still got to contend with the buildings that you have, more likely. So we didn’t go as far as to do a lot of comparison in that regard.

“I think another big part of the sale was that we were able to commit to improving our teacher salaries so that we could reward those teachers who have been with us, and it gives us a little more, I think, ability to recruit and attract new teachers and keep them in Arkadelphia.”

By including teacher salaries, you put a human face on the millage request. Did that communicate something to the community that, ‘We’re going to get a new HVAC system’ would not?

“Yes. In fact, just this past Tuesday night, we had a citizen to come and address the board and talk about the fact that he was excited that we had gotten a millage passed and excited about the new facilities but more excited that we were going to be able to recruit and hopefully retain our teachers instead of them going to surrounding districts that actually pay more money than we do.”

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When Lauren Hart was a Waldron Middle School student, she was inter-ested in fashion design, not engineering. Now, because of the school’s Robotics, Engineering and Technology classes, she’s interested in both.

Teacher Tracie Adams has built the program these past seven years into one that serves a variety of interests and attracts many of the school’s top stu-dents, regardless of their interests. Hart enrolled in the class her seventh grade year because it was an honors course despite having little interest in engineer-

ing or robotics. The next year, in an effort to attract more girls, Adams based one of the school day’s six classes on fashion and design. Students combined their fashion sense with engineering principles to design clothing, including firefighter equipment. (“It’s all about the look,” Hart said with a laugh.) They learned how fabrics are made and then made their own outfits. They used the lessons they had learned to design a Christmas show and engineer a stage.

Now a sophomore, Hart is still inter-ested in fashion design. Because of that class, she also has a technical side to her that makes her more effectively creative and innovative.

“It’s all about changing things up and being different and creating new things, and that’s what the engineering does,

Engineering class a ‘game changer’


Waldron Middle School’s classes let students fly drones, apply engineering to fashion design

DRONING ON AND ON IN CLASS. Current and former Robotics, Engineering and Technology students watch as Kansas State Univer-sity students fly a drone in the Waldron Middle School gym.

like huge,” she said. “It’s new and it’s different, and you change the way things already are. … It’s like you see things in a different light.”

Teacher Adams’ background isn’t in technology. She was a college women’s basketball coach who came home to Waldron to raise a daughter and take care of her dad, who had Alzheimer’s disease. She was teaching math and health with her education degree when administrators wanted her to take charge of a technology class. Using a grant, she started with LEGO MINDSTORMS equipment and a few iMacs. There were seven students in the class.

The breakthrough came four years ago when her middle school team of seventh and eighth graders was ranked 11th in the country by BEST, a nation-

Waldron Middle School


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wide robotics competition. Each year, the class got bigger and bigger, and so did the offerings.

“This is a game changer,” Adams said. “When you put something in a kid’s hand, when you engage them with hands-on activities, they’re going to remember that because it’s something that they have taught themselves. It’s not somebody going up there giving them rhetoric. This is actually some-thing that the kids have learned. And if you’ll notice, these kids are in groups together, and they’re visiting and they’re talking, and they’re always bouncing ideas off of each other. That’s how you learn.”

Now, six classes with about 10 students each are offered throughout the day. It’s an honors class and students have to be recommended, so students want to be a part of it even if they aren’t drawn to engineering and technology. A variety of classes are offered, with students plugged in according to their interests and schedule. Student Clayvin Lunsford has been researching a phone app that would let chicken house owners remote-monitor their operations by video as well as control the climate. The class has learned computer coding basics and built fully functioning robots. Lunsford and fellow student

Garron Deramus demonstrated for Report Card one such robot that can be controlled via a smartphone.

“If a kid really, really is into computers, then I’m really go-ing to push them that way,” Adams said. “You want to try an app? Go for it. You’re really into planes, then we’re going to work with this. So they kind of have some options.”

The school district has been supportive both in terms of finances and scheduling. The class recently bought a $600 3-D

WE BUILT THIS OURSELVES. Middle school students Clayvin Lunsford and Garron Deramus display a robot constructed by the class that can be controlled by a smartphone, above left. Above right, teacher Tracie Adams, second from left, and super-intendent Gary Wayman, left, laugh along with the students after a minor drone accident in the gym.



printer, which it used to print a model of a hand. Meanwhile, the students have been supportive of the school, too. The class flew unmanned aircraft, otherwise known as drones, over the bus pickup zone to try to determine the most ef-ficient loading process – resulting in minor changes.

“We want them to be thinkers,” Adams said. “We need them to be able

TAKING FLIGHT. Students learned about flight dynamics Nov. 20 with help from Kansas State students by flying gliders in the gym. Top photo, Karisa Johnson prepares to toss a plane. Above, top row are Bayleigh Lipham, Johnson, Lauren Hart and Alejandra Flores. Bottom row is Madison Arrington and Jenny Diaz. Right photo, Arrington tosses a glider across the gym. Bottom, Hayden Chronister loads a glider with Play-Doh to achieve the proper weight distribution. With him are, front from left, Garron Deramus, Shawn Higginbotham, and Saige Carnley. In back are, from left, Joey Cardenas, Clayvin Lunsford and Mason Ford.

Waldron Middle School


to tear something apart, think about it, what’s their ideas on it. Like I said, I just want to open every opportunity for them to learn, be engaged, something that can come back to our community and help.”

Partnerships a keyCommunity partnerships have been

another key to the program’s success. The class has worked with the local Farm Bureau chapter and has flown drones over farm fields taking pictures. Students practiced a hostage situation with the police department where they used a drone to find the hostage and to identify the hostage-taker’s license plate in the parking lot. WeighTech, a global scale manufacturer, is always ready to lend engineers’ time and technical sup-port to students working with engineer-ing software such as AutoCAD. Parents are interested and involved. This fall, the school had a Friday after-school robotics engineering camp that attracted 230 stu-dents in grades 3-7. Others in the com-munity support the program financially. If an opportunity arises, Adams said, “We’ve got people here that it’ll take me 10 minutes to get the money to go.”

Adams hasn’t limited her partner-ships to the local community. When

drones became more common, some of her students expressed an interest, so she started researching the best programs across the country. Her research led her to Kansas State University, where she has made three trips to work with students and professors.

The relationship led to a recent ses-sion where K-State students spent two days in Waldron working with current and former students whom Adams pulled out of their regular classes. Stu-dents worked on building a drone and practiced throwing foam aircraft in the gym to learn about flight mechanics. In that exercise, two groups of boys and one group of girls filled their aircraft cargo holds with Play-Doh to try to balance the weight distribution. Student Hayden Chronister had the best toss when he sailed one across the gym that hit mid-wall on the other side, prompt-ing a celebration from him and the other boys with him. The girls? Let’s just say they did not appear impressed. “If the guys are doing something, then we want to do that, too,” said Hart, the student interested in fashion design who has a pretty good throwing arm herself.

Asked what lessons she has learned building the class from scratch, Adams

said students need access to the latest technology and need support from the adults, but the adults don’t have to be experts in the activity.

“I think a big mistake that I made was thinking that this is too hard for them to do. … I gave those kids the very first kits that we got, and they had robots built in two days with me having no idea how this is built or what it is,” she said. “I just gave it to them, kids put it together, and loved it. Programmed it and everything.”

For Adams, the ex-basketball coach, the class is a new kind of game – one that is training her students to be design-ers, innovators and engineers.

“I have the best job that could ever be,” she said. “I’m like, I have the best job. You know, they say you find a job you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. I come to work every day, and I’m excited. I mean, what’s going to happen? It’s like we get new toys in ev-ery day, and these toys, they’re going to make a living for these kids some day.”

WORKING TOGETHER. Kansas State University students (in purple shirts)Tim Bruner and Andrew Danner work on constructing a drone with Waldron students, from left, Alejandra Flores, Bayleigh Lipham, Clayvin Lunsford and Hayden Chronister.

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Eight of 12 Arkansas school districts holding elections in September to increase millage rates succeeded in their efforts.

Voters in Parkers Chapel, Arkadel-phia, South Conway County, Guy Perkins, Ozark, Manila, Kirby, and Augusta approved millage increases.

Also, voters in Charleston voted to issue $9.17 million in bonds for im-provements to district buildings and property.

Meanwhile, voters in Dollarway, Clarksville, Harrisburg, and Harmony Grove in Ouachita County said no to millage increases. Also, voters in Hackett approved, 135-49, a uniform millage rate of 38 mills – lowering the amount paid by Hackett residents from 39.3 mills to match that paid by Hartford School District patrons after Hackett annexed Hartford this past July.

The largest increase occurred in Parkers Chapel, where voters by a count of 144-37 approved a 7-mill increase from 32.8 to 39.8 mills to create classroom space, renovate the cafetorium, and make other small improvements such as air-conditioning the gym.

The district’s superintendent, Michael White, said the district near El Dorado had grown to the point that its youngest students were starting lunch at 10:20 a.m. and then being fed a snack in the afternoon so they wouldn’t go home

Most voters say yes to millage hikes


Increases passed in 8 of 12 districts as voters receptive to school needs, campaign messages

x Parkers Chapel

x Arkadelphia

x South Conway County

x Guy Perkins

x Ozarkx Manilax Kirbyx Augusta

Millage elections


hungry. He said the 7-mill increase hopefully will meet the district’s needs “for the next 20 years.”

He said the district did not mount much of a campaign.

“The community has always been very much behind the school system,” he said. “It didn’t take a lot. We just put it out for them and gave them the information, and we explained why we thought we needed it, and without a whole lot of noise, it passed at a very high rate.”

Arkadelphia raises salariesIn Arkadelphia, voters by a count of

1,102-834 approved increasing the millage rate from 38.9 to 44.65 mills, a 5.75-mill increase, to construct new elementary and middle schools, close three schools, and increase faculty and staff salaries. The district had $3.7 million in state partnership funds already committed for the $10 million middle school and expected a similar match to be provided in January for the elementary school. The school district’s newest building, Arkadelphia High School, is 43 years old, while the oldest is 71 years old. To prepare for the campaign, the community was asked to complete a survey, with a majority saying they wanted new facilities and higher salaries.

Dr. Jeff Root, the school board president, said the board emphasized the state partnership money as well as the fact that teachers and staff members would receive raises. A town hall meeting was held where school board members answered questions. There was opposition, but if anything, it motivated supporters to vote, he said.

“The key for us is that Arkadelphia is a place that understands the value of education, and we don’t go back to the well too often,” he said. “We try to make sure we’ve got a really good explanation for why it’s necessary to raise your taxes every now and then and just how much good it would do to have new schools in a district where all the schools were, well, quite old.”

Third try a charm in ManilaVoters in Manila by a count of

459-229 approved a 4.7-mill increase

from 37 to 41.7 mills to build a new high school and replace the current school that was built in the 1950s, when “Harry Truman was president,” said the district’s superintendent, Pam Castor. State partnership money will pay for $14 million of the $20 million project. The measure passed, 435-198, a high turnout that is par for the course for Manila, Castor said.

This was Manila’s third attempt to pass a millage increase. This one was different because it was the first time partnership money had been approved. Also, the district decided to build the facility at its current site rather than a new location, which was a contentious idea in the past two elections.

“You have to listen to your commu-nity, and you have to be responsive to what they want,” she said. “It is their money. And then you have to be careful to understand what people’s concerns are, and you have to be responsive to those.”

Castor said school supporters did use social media to help pass the request, but they also remembered that voters get their information from other sources.

South Conway County: Safety firstIn South Conway County, voters by

a count of 1,109-374 approved a

3.9-mill increase from 35.4 to 39.3 mills to remodel its five schools. At the prima-ry school, a new cafetorium, physical education/safe room facility, and art, music and special education classrooms will be built. The elementary school will see a physical education/safe room facility and technology labs added to the old P.E. facility. The intermediate school and junior high will have new secured entrances, the junior high will have a new technology lab, and a new arena/safe room will be built between the high school and junior high. A well-produced video on the district’s website told of the millage increase’s benefits and pointed out that, prior to the vote, the district had the lowest millage rate on the I-40 corridor between Conway and Russell-ville. Property taxes will increase $39 per year for every $50,000 of property owned, and taxes will not be raised for senior citizens and people with disabili-ties.

John Gibson, school board president, said millage supporters made safety the election’s theme. Prior to the project, there was only one safe room among the district’s five campuses. Now there will be a safe room on each campus that is open to the public after school hours, which was an important selling point for


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a community that’s not far from Vilonia and Mayflower, two communities that have been struck recently by tornadoes. The effort will ensure that entrances to all campuses will be secured.

Gibson said early in the process the superintendent and school board members visited faculty members on all the campuses to gain their support. That effort was worth a lot of votes. “We approached it that way intentionally because we felt like we really needed to have the faculty and staff on board,” he said.

Augusta School District voters approved by a count of 220-67 a 3.2-mill increase from 32.5 to 35.7 mills to make improvements to a campus that Terry Shadwick, school board president, said was in danger of going into facili-ties distress. Shadwick said the high school’s ceiling tiles and lighting have not been replaced since 1971, its air-conditioning units need to be replaced, and the bus garage is too small for the district’s needs. The state has given the district time to make improve-ments, but the district has never had the money to make those happen, and with average daily membership shrinking, money was needed. Shadwick said the effort was helped by local supporters who informally spoke up for the school. Another advantage was the small size of the millage request, which involved improvements rather than an expensive new building. “Our community rallied behind us, and they passed it with a pretty overwhelming vote. They want to keep their school,” he said.

Guy Perkins voters approved 197-71 a 2.5-mill increase from 39.5 to 42 mills to help pull the district out of fiscal distress. Board member James Rooney said the district had declining revenue the last two years because of a fall in natural gas-related property taxes. Board members went door to door asking for votes from largely receptive voters who didn’t want to be consolidated with nearby districts. “Some people were real receptive to it, and then some of them didn’t like it so much, but the small schools, if you go door to door and talk to people, most likely they’re going to respect you and are going to give you what you want,” he said.

Elsewhere, in Ozark, voters by a count of 621-481 approved a 5.5-mill increase from 33 to 38.5 mills to replace an elementary school and junior high, convert the current junior high into an elementary school for grades 4-5, and build a new auditorium at the junior high shared by all the schools

School board president Mike Gibbons said the building program was needed because of space needs and because the aging lower elementary school, which was built in the mid-1960s, was becom-ing a maintenance headache with many classrooms exposed to the exterior. A local group of citizens ran a “Say Yes” campaign. School board members helped educate the public but were not actively involved in the committee.

Also, voters in Kirby approved a 1-mill increase from 35 mills to 36 mills, 64-27, to buy school buses. According to the Southwest Arkansas News website, the increase will generate

a little more than $30,000 per year, enough to buy a new school bus every two-and-a-half to three years. At the district’s annual report to the public, Superintendent Jeff Alexander said the increase would cost the owner of $50,000 worth of property 85 cents per month to give students safer transportation both for school and for extracurricular activities, the website said.

Harmony Grove: Try again

Voters in the Harmony Grove School District in Ouachita County by a count of 274-299 voted down a 5.7-mill increase that would have raised the millage from 40.2 to 45.9 mills for various facilities improvements. That

district has called for a special election Feb. 9 to present the request again. Joe Rogers, president of that school board, said the district is looking to take advantage of $1.8 million in state partnership funding to build six new classrooms and a multipurpose facility for P.E. and basketball at the Harmony Grove campus and upgrade the Spark-man campus for distance learning capabilities.

Rogers said the effort was hurt by the U.S. military’s announcement shortly before the election that the Lockheed Martin plant in the Camden area would not be building the military’s new Joint Light Tactical Vehicle. That announce-ment removed some of the urgency in the community about adding capacity to the school.

Meanwhile, voters in Clarksville by a count of 705-1,179 said no to the largest request on the ballot, a 7.9-mill increase from 34.5 to 42.4 mills to spend

Millage elections

ARKADELPHIA’S DR. JEFF ROOT, school board president, said the board emphasized the availability of state partnership money as well as the fact that teachers and staff members would receive raises.


A general principle regarding immu-nity from civil litigation every district must know is this: Districts have qualified immunity for negligent acts, but not for intentional ones.

Generally, negligent acts by a district (certified and classified staff along with the school board) are not grounds for a lawsuit.1 A negligent act occurs when the district did not act with reasonable care in preventing an accident, or the district did not use the ordinary pru-dence expected by the community. An example would be a student injured on the monkey bars at recess because the equipment was aging and some bolts had come loose. If the district had been “prudent,” it may have noticed the unsafe monkey bars, but the district did not intentionally cause the unsafe condition with the intent to harm the child.

A clear exception to this rule arises when the district has liability insurance. In that case, it can still be sued for the limits of any insurance policy providing coverage for such claims. However, when the district does not have such coverage, Arkansas’ courts have consis-tently ruled that a district has qualified immunity. Qualified immunity protects the district from litigation arising out of negligent acts. It does not apply to intentional acts.

But districts are NOT immune from intentional acts (a purposeful act that is malicious, such as criminal acts or harassment).2 District immunity exists

Immunity not granted for intentional acts

By Cody KeesSpecial to Report Card

Arkansas school districts have broader immunity after recent Court of Appeal’s opinion

for public policy reasons: The Legisla-ture does not want districts walking on egg shells. However, public policy does not side with the district when an intentional act harms the injured party.

One good example of the difference between a negligent and intentional act is discussed in a recent Arkansas Court of Appeals decision. In Williams v. Pate, 2015 Ark. App. 327 (Ark. Ct. App. 2015), the Court delivered a favorable opinion for Arkansas districts on the issue of qualified immunity.

The case arose after the Pangburn School District acquired some property in 2008 adjacent to the plaintiff’s property and then cut trees there in 2009. It was not until 2010 that a survey was conducted and revealed the trees were actually on the plaintiff’s property. She sued the district claiming the removal of the trees was done know-ingly, willfully, maliciously, and deliber-ately. She argued the district was not immune as its actions were all inten-tional and, therefore, the district was liable for the monetary damages she claimed.

The White County trial court dis-missed the action, and the Arkansas Court of Appeals upheld the ruling. The appeals court noted that the district’s acts appeared intentional on their face, but testimony showed the district had a “reasonable belief” the trees were on its property. As such, the district’s actions were not intentional, but purely negli-gent because a survey should have first been conducted. The court ruled the district was immune from suit, and the case was dismissed.

Conclusion: If your district acquires property, have a survey conducted before performing any alterations.

Furthermore, a reasonable belief as to the appropriateness of the district’s action or even inaction can serve as a defense to allegations that a district acted intentionally in certain circum-stances.

Cody Kees is an attorney with Munson, Rowlett, Moore and Boone, P.A. He routinely counsels and repre-sents schools in employment and personnel matters.

1 See Ark. Code. Ann. 21-9-301 Tort Liability, Immunity Declared.

2 City of Fayetteville v. Romine, 373 Ark. 318 (Ark.

2008).

Marshall Elementary Classroom Addition | Approach

Marshall High School | Fine Arts Addition

Marshall Elementary Classroom Addition | Main Entry

$28.48 million to construct a new high school and gym and two storm shelters, and to renovate the football stadium. Earlier in the month, voters had ap-proved a 1-mill county library tax. According to KFSM’s website, 5news-online.com, the district made the request because of a lack of space. The district’s superintendent, Dr. David Hopkins, said he had not been aware of much opposi-

tion to the proposal, but attendance at public meetings was sparse. Hopkins said the school board would consider a different proposal that would be limited to asking for a high school and safe rooms.

Also, voters in the Dollarway School District by a count of 298-344 said no to a 6.7-mill increase, from 40.8 to 47.5 mills, to build classrooms and a new

high school auditorium and make other improvements, as well as increase teacher salaries.

Harrisburg voters rejected, 89-268, a 4.4-mill rate that would have equalized rates to the 39.9 mills collected in what was the Weiner School District, which was annexed into Harrisburg in 2010. As a result of that vote, rates will continue to be unequal in that district.


The latest news from Report Card’s advertisersMarketplace

Southern Tire Mart, LLC is now a TIPS vendor servicing Arkansas with competitive tire pricing.

With eight locations throughout Arkansas, Southern Tire Mart provides customer service in commercial and government sales in the transportation industry. In the past 12 years, the com-pany has expanded its business to oper-ate 15 Bandag manufacturing facilities, have 63 commercial service locations, and employ more than 2,000 employees in nine states with annual sales exceed-ing $700 million.

Two education projects completed by Hight Jackson Associates have received recognition recently.

Fayetteville High School, designed in collaboration with Marlon Blackwell and DLR Group, received the Com-munity Impact Award at the Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce Construction & Developers 2015 Appreciation Awards Banquet. The project had previously received the 2014 American Institute of Architects Arkansas Design Awards Merit Award.

Elkins High School was chosen as a finalist for the 2015 AIA Arkansas Design Awards at the annual state con-vention. Elkins High School was also featured as an Outstanding Project in the 2015 Learning By Design Architectural Showcase.

The project had previously been awarded the “Transformational Award” at the Fayetteville Chamber of Com-merce Construction & Developers 2013 Appreciation Awards Banquet.

Hight Jackson earns recognition for education projects

Crafton Tull, in collaboration with the Great American Conference, presented Elite Scholar awards to student-athletes with the highest cumulative grade point averages who participated in conference postseason championship tournaments. Recipients were announced the week of November 2.

In addition, GAC student-athletes with a 3.7 GPA and a minimum of 70 completed hours were recognized as Crafton Tull Distinguished Scholar-Ath-letes. Overall, 15 students from across the conference were awarded for their achievements.

For more information, visit crafton-tull.com or greatamericanconference.com.

Crafton Tull teams with GAC to honor student-athletes

Just a few years ago, foot-ball was played on grass, and

the scoreboard was paid for with soft drink money, but now many schools have installed artificial turf and ad-vanced video scoreboards. Looking for ways to pay for these increased costs, districts have turned to selling private ads on the turf and scoreboards.

However, the Internal Revenue Code has specific rules pertaining to tax-ex-empt debt, so schools may have issues if they put advertisements on the turf and scoreboards paid for with tax-exempt bond funds.

First Security Beardsley Public Finance can help districts with questions about this topic. For more information, call 800.965.4644.

First Security: Take care when selling scoreboard ads

Southern Tire Mart now a TIPS vendor

As the end of the year ap-

proaches, Stephens can assist school board members with obtaining their re-quired professional development hours.

Arkansas law generally requires that school board members obtain up to six hours of certified professional development on topics related to school operations. The Arkansas School Boards Association has deemed Stephens’ financial advisors as certified ASBA trainers who are able to provide up to three hours of school finance training annually toward ASBA’s Boardsman-ship Awards Program. Normally held in the evening or on a weekend, this free training workshop will address topics ranging from state and local funding revenue sources to debt financing of capital projects. Stephens says this type of workshop can be particularly useful for boards considering how to finance future capital projects.

Districts interested in scheduling a board workshop can contact their Ste-phens’ financial advisor directly or call Michele Casavechia at 800.643.9691.

Stephens offersfinance workshops

Students and faculty this year began classes at the newly renovated Fayette-ville High School West Campus, where Milestone Construction of Springdale was the construction manager and Craf-ton Tull of Rogers was the designer.

The renovation focused on upgrad-ing existing, outdated interior finishes to the main building and the cafeteria. The goal was to create a welcoming, fun learning environment for students and teachers, and to encourage school pride matching that of other campuses within the district.

The scope of work also included construction of an accessible exterior ramp, extending corridor walls to ensure a one-hour fire rating, and reworking existing plumbing fixtures for Ameri-cans with Disabilities Act compliance.

Milestone manages Fayetteville construction

New louvered metal awnings were also fabricated for the street-facing facade of the main building.

Van Horn completes work on Russellville gym

Van Horn Construction recently completed the new $13 million Russell-ville High School gymnasium.

“Cyclone Arena finished two months early and under budget,”said Chad Weisler, Van Horn Construction vice president. “And there will be cost


The following Arkansas schools began using trained, professional sub-stitute teachers through SubTeachUSA during the fall of 2015: Lakeside (Chicot), Maynard, Omaha, Rockbridge Montessori, Scranton, Valley Springs, and West Side (Cleburne).

With the addition of these schools, SubTeachUSA now serves 160 public school districts in Arkansas, 12 in Mis-sissippi and three in Missouri.

For more information, call 800.641.0140.

SubTeachUSA announces new schools

Entegrity Partners was awarded com-prehensive LED lighting projects with Magnolia, Mountain View, and Harrison School Districts in the fall of 2015.

Combined, these projects are expect-ed to generate nearly $400,000 in annual energy and operational savings for the three districts. Entergy, Inc. will provide an additional $300,000 in estimated co-funding to reduce the costs of the projects. The districts will use a paid-from-savings approach to finance the upgrades without upfront capital.

For more information, go to www.EntegrityPartners.com.

Arkansas A+ Schools is piloting a peer coaching project at Murrell Taylor Elementary in Jacksonville starting in January 2016. Two Arkansas A+ Fel-lows will partner with six teachers in grades K-5 to develop their skills.

Arkansas A+ Schools piloting coaching project in Jacksonville

Entegrity Partners saving three districts $400K through lighting

WD&D is designing the latest career technical education environments in K-12 schools and two-year colleges.

Coming off of its first semester since opening, the Ozarka College Student Services Center in Melbourne is help-ing teach students career skills in an industrial kitchen while also serving as a dining service for the campus.

Meanwhile, WD&D’s most recent project is the School of Innovation in Springdale, which will provide an al-ternative learning environment for high school students to learn technical skills for career opportunities.

For more information, go to www.wddarchitects.com or call 501.376.6681 or 479.442.6681.

WDD designing new spaces for new learning opportunities

Modus Studio, an architectural firm, and CR Crawford Construction are con-structing a new kindergarten wing and connector corridor for the grades 1-3 classrooms on the Melbourne Elemen-tary School campus as part of a larger 68,000-square-foot K-6 facility for the district.

Construction has been tracking ahead of schedule thanks in part to the mild autumn weather. As of early November, all the slabs had been poured, and the walls were starting to take shape as the interior fit-out moved closer.

For more information about this project or about how Modus Studio can serve your district, email [email protected] or call 479.455.5577.

Modus Studio designs school for Melbourne

EBi can help school districts with questions about the Affordable Care Act and about how they can save money on employee benefits. For more infor-mation about accident, vision, dental, hospital care and other benefits, call EBi at 800.824.5022.

EBi answers Affordable Care Act questions

For sports lighting applications, the two typical light source options are metal halide and light-emitting diode (LED). When deciding about lighting, districts should balance capital costs with operating and maintenance expens-es, as well as a facility’s needs.

Musco’s lighting experts will work with districts to evaluate their facilities’ needs. With nearly 40 years of design and application expertise, Musco’s Light-Structure Green™ systems can be equipped with a metal halide or an LED light source that reduces energy consumption, cuts spill light and glare, and provides long-term parts and labor warranty programs that eliminate main-tenance. For more information, go to www.musco.com.

Musco helps districts choose light options

Crossland Construction Company has completed projects for Siloam Springs High School. The industrial arts facility will include two classrooms, a multi-purpose lab, and an industrial technol-ogy machine shop. The new 4,000-seat football stadium design features a press box, locker facilities, concession stands, and a turf field.

For more information, go to www.crosslandconstruction.com.

savings that will be given back to the school.”

Van Horn strives to provide quality projects ahead of schedule and under budget and has a long history of work-ing with schools towards academic and athletic success. For more information, go to www.vanhornconstruction.com.

The project is being planned as part of a consortium formed in the fall of 2014 involving 10 Arkansas colleges and universities. Professors from UCA and UALR are helping plan and analyze the peer coaching project.

Arkansas A+ incorporates arts and hands-on projects in all subjects. For more information, go to www.arkansa-saplus.org.

Crossland completes Siloam Springs projects

Commercial Affiliates Contact Phone Email WebsiteA.D.E.M./Federal Surplus Property Kathryn Mahan-Hooten 501.835.3111 [email protected] www.adem.arkansas.govACE Sign Company Mark Bridges 501.909.9173 [email protected] www.acesigncompany.comAdvancED Arkansas Kenny Pennington 888.413.3369 [email protected] www.advanc-ed.orgAll-Clean USA Hayden Finley-Berry 870.972.1922 [email protected] www.allcleanusa.comAmerican Bus Sales Pam Lewis 918.205.5000 [email protected] www.americanbussales.netApptegy Jeston George 501.553.1941 [email protected] www.apptegy.comASBA Workers’ Comp & Risk Management Shannon Moore 501.372.1415 [email protected] www.arsba.orgBaldwin & Shell Construction Company Bobby Gosser, Jr. 501.374.8677 [email protected] www.baldwinshell.comCapital Business Machines, Inc. Byron Rogers 501.375.1111 [email protected] www.capbiz.comCentral States Bus Sales, Inc. Mike Wingerter 501.955.2577 [email protected] www.centralstatesbus.comChartwells School Dining Verdelle Bowie 615.374.8464 [email protected] www.chartwellsk12.comCobb and Suskie, LTD Michael Cobb 501.225.2133 [email protected] www.cobbandsuskie.comCromwell Architects Engineers, Inc. Jennifer Southerland 501.372.2900 [email protected] www.cromwell.comCrossland Construction Company, Inc. Joi Knight 479.464.7077 [email protected] www.crosslandconstruction.comCrow-Burlingame Co. Thomas Martin 501.375.1215 [email protected] www.btbautoparts.comCurtis Stout Paul James 501.372.2555 [email protected] www.chstout.comDatek, Inc. Michael Sills 501.945.0907 [email protected] www.datekcorp.comDavid H. Frieze and Associates, Inc. Paul Frieze 501.922.9704 [email protected] Imaging Darriell Mathis 479.424.1616 [email protected] www.techassuranceit.comDLR Group Troy Wade 913.897.7811 [email protected] www.dlrgroup.comEast-Harding Construction Christina Murphy Lusk 501.661.1646 [email protected] www.eastharding.comEntegrity Energy Partners Rob Guthrie 501.414.0058 [email protected] www.entegritypartners.comFisher Tracks, Inc. Victor Quiroga 515.432.3191 [email protected] www.fishertracks.comFreedom Roofing Solutions, Inc. Brian Kirk 501.796.2061 [email protected] www.freedomroofingsolutions.comFriday, Eldredge & Clark, Attorneys Christopher Heller 501.370.1506 [email protected] www.fridayfirm.comGCA Education Services, Inc. Jim Heatherly 888.736.0863 [email protected] www.gcaservices.com/k-12Government Supply Services Cynthia Means 855.477.5528 [email protected] www.governmentsupplyservices.comGym Masters Basketball Courts Dean Stanley 501.279.3799 [email protected] www.basketballcourts.netHarrison Energy Partners Morgan Adams 501-661-0621 [email protected] www.harrisonenergy.comHight-Jackson Associates Liz Cox 479.464.4965 [email protected] www.hjarch.comJackson Brown Palculict Architects Misty Snell 501.664.8700 [email protected] www.jbparchitects.comKLC Video Security Bill King 903.792.7262 [email protected] www.klcvideosecurity.comLifetouch National School Studios, Inc. Patrick Hand 501.664.5550 [email protected] www.lifetouch.comLifeTrack Services, Inc. Cassie Dunn 800.738.6466 [email protected] www.graduate-surveys.comMid-America Sports Construction Brock Wilson 816.524.0010 [email protected] www.mid-americasportsconstruction.comMidwest Bus Sales Tim Toolen 479.474.2433 [email protected] www.midwestbussales.comMilestone Construction Company Kelli Gemmell 479.751.3560 [email protected] www.mstonecc.comNabholz Construction Corporation James McBryde 501.217.5546 [email protected] www.nabholz.comNational Playground Compliance Group Janna Sharp 515.989.0829 [email protected] www.playgroundcompliance.comNE-ARK Adjustment Company Mike Brigance 870.838.0097 [email protected] www.nearkadjustment.comPowers of Arkansas Ron McCarty 501.350.5420 [email protected] www.powersar.comPreferred Meal Systems, Inc. Tom Romano 717.321.4141 [email protected] www.preferredmeals.comPro A/V Solutions, LLC Mark Taylor 870.275.7797 [email protected] www.proavsolutionsjonesboro.comPro Benefits Group, Inc Gary Kandlbinder 501.321.0457 [email protected] www.pbfsi.comRaymond James David Fortenberry 501.671.1238 [email protected] www.raymondjames.comSouthern Bleacher Company David Norman 800.433.0912 [email protected] www.southernbleacher.comState Systems Inc. Sandi Scott 501.374.2251 [email protected] www.statesystemsinc.comSubteachUSA Tammy Winn 870.239.6608 [email protected] www.subteachusa.comTrammell Piazza Law Firm, PLLC Chad Trammell 501.371.9903 [email protected] www.trammellpiazza.comU. S. Biz Solutions Stacey McPherson 870.239.8328 [email protected] www.usbizsolutions.netVan Horn Construction, Inc. Chad Weisler 479.968.2514 [email protected] www.vanhornconstruction.comVirco, Inc. Bruce Joyner 501.908.9461 [email protected] www.virco.comWitsell Evans Rasco Kate Dimitrova 501.374.5300 [email protected] www.werarch.comWittenberg, Delony & Davidson, Inc. Glen Woodruff 501.376.6681 [email protected] www.wddarchitects.com

Premier Partners Contact Phone Email WebsiteAETN Jessica Keener 501.682.4193 [email protected] www.ideas.aetn.orgBancorpSouth Insurance Services Bill Birch 501.614.1170 [email protected] www.bancorpsouthinsurance.comEducational Benefits, Inc. Lisa Boone 501.212.8926 [email protected] www.ebi-ar.comFirst Security Beardsley Public Finance Scott Beardsley 501.978.6392 [email protected] www.fsbeardsley.comStephens Inc. Jason Holsclaw 800.643.9691 [email protected] www.stephens.com/public-financeThe Interlocal Purchasing System Mickey McFatridge 870.926.9250 [email protected] www.tips-usa.comThe Learning Institute Lisa Moore 501.760.5525 [email protected] www.tli.net

ASBA thanks its premier partners and other commercial affiliates for their supportCommercial Affiliates



I’m certain you are familiar with the Walt Disney film “Snow White,” in which the Queen asks the question, “Magic mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?” The mirror always assures her she is the fairest – until, one day, she’s not. Snow White, the Queen’s stepdaughter, is.

As a board member, I wonder what type of response we would receive if we asked ourselves that same ques-tion. Are we the fairest – not “of all,” but “to all”?

At this year’s regional meetings, school board members discussed what makes an effective school board – quali-ties that ensure our school districts are “fair to all.”

Effective school boards:– Commit to a vision of high ex-

pectations for student achievement and quality instruction, and they define clear goals toward that vision. They seek to improve for students’ sake, refuse to make excuses, and refuse to accept the status quo.

– Have strong shared beliefs and val-ues about what is possible for students and their ability to learn, and of the sys-tem and its ability to serve all children.

The district’s goals remain their top priority, and they expect to see results.

– Are accountability-driven, spend-ing less time on operational issues and more time focused on improving student achievement.

– Have a collaborative relationship with staff and the community. They establish a strong communications structure to engage internal and external stakeholders in setting and achieving district goals. They develop and main-tain a culture of transparency.

– Are data savvy. They embrace and monitor data, even when the information is negative, and use it to drive continu-ous improvement.

– Align and sustain resources to meet district goals. They commit to reforms over the long haul, knowing that change

takes time. They then support extensive, research-based professional develop-ment for teachers, even in tight budget times. They also limit improvement ini-tiatives to those that can be adequately supported – and say no to initiatives that would distract from their other efforts.

– Lead as a united team with the superintendent, with strong collabora-tion and mutual trust. They eliminate surprises and respect each other’s roles.

– Engage in team development and training to build shared knowledge, val-ues and commitments for their improve-ment efforts.

That’s a lot, but it’s achievable if we have humble attitudes and keep our focus on students and teachers – not our-selves. The Queen never changed – and ultimately met her doom – because she used the mirror to fuel her own vanity. She was looking for affirmation, not information, and when given data she didn’t like, she tried to use it to destroy the fairest instead of making herself fairer.

As school board members, we don’t have a magic mirror to tell us how we’re doing. We do have the ability to be hon-est with ourselves. Are we focused on students? Do we respect our limited but important roles? Are we fair to all? We won’t have the right answers unless we ask ourselves those tough questions.

Are we the fairest to all?

by Brenda McKownASBA President

Let’s look in the mirror and ask if we’re doing all we can for our students

Disasters come in all shapes and sizes, but one common thread connects them all: afterward, you want to get your life back on track as fast as possible. At ALL-CLEAN USA, we understand that when we’re restoring your property, we’re restoring your life. That’s why we’re available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year – working quickly and stopping at nothing short of making everything like new. See how at AllCleanUSA.com or by calling 866-360-3473.

LITTLE ROCK CONWAY HOT SPRINGS NW ARKANSAS JONESBORO MEMPHIS

WE TURN MAJOR DISASTERS INTO MINOR SETBACKS.

F I N D I N G S M A R T S O L U T I O N S F O R A R K A N S A S S C H O O L D I S T R I C T S .

It’s all about accountability. When you partner with First Security Beardsley Public Finance, you can be confident in the attention and consideration we offer, as well as the follow-through in meeting the needs of Arkansas school districts. You can also expect decisions to be made quickly, by experienced and hard-working professionals who care about serving you – the right way. It’s how we do business, and it’s why you can always count on us to provide the very best financial advisory services to public school districts here in our home state.

Ray Beardsley | Vice President501.978.6393 | [email protected] Member • Division of Crews & Associates, Inc.

800.965.4644 • fsbeardsley.com

report card - arkansas school boards association2015/12/01 · the journal of the arkansas school...

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