The Little Rock School District board approved changes Thursday night to how the district makes student schedules at the middle school level. And, in what amounts to a significant change in personnel policy, district officials told the board that they must vote on a list of all employees who will be renewed for the upcoming school year in order to comply with Arkansas LEARNS.
Big changes are coming for our middle school students next year. The district and the board have worked hard to balance two issues. The first is how our district can save money, and the second is how to make sure we are providing students with great learning opportunities and the opportunity to take creative and innovative electives.
Currently, our middle school students have what is called an A/B schedule that alternates between an “A” week and a “B” week. On the “A” week, students have a schedule in which certain 90-minute classes meet three times and another set of 90-minute classes meet twice. On the “B” week, those switch. This allows for each class to have an equal number of meetings each year.
The Little Rock School District is not in financial distress. It still has a solid budget and offers more programs and services than any private, charter or public school in the region. But as many parents have moved their children to charter and private schools over the past decade, enrollment has declined significantly (though this is stabilizing now).
Many of the charter and private schools now filling our city make big promises to kids and then fail them. That being said, because of the loss of students, the Little Rock School District has to spend less money to make sure we are staying financially solvent and providing world-class services to kids. The district recently laid off 17 district-level employees in a first round of cuts.
As a part of the budget reduction plan, Superintendent Jermall Wright and his team have come up with a number of cuts, including changing our middle school schedule from the classic A/B block format to a six-period A/B hybrid model. Under the new plan, English language, math and science classes will be taught daily. All other courses will be on an A/B schedule.
Students will have a total of 10 classes for the year, except for classes that are only for a single semester or nine-week period. Lunch will be 30 minutes, and students will have five minutes per pass period.
District officials made the case that this scheduling system will help students by providing core math, English and science instruction every day. To stay on pace, students in the current A/B block scheduling need to receive the equivalent of two lessons each day they meet. This is not occurring in many cases, which results in students missing large sections of their coursework each year.
The plan will allow the district to reduce the budget by $1 million by cutting 11 teaching positions. Since we already have a teacher shortage in middle school, we will cut most of these positions by changing the number of teachers we need for each building. The plan passed unanimously with no debate.
A sample schedule for this plan might look like this:
Sample hybrid schedule
Next, the chief financial officer for the district, Kelsey Bailey, made his monthly report on district financials. Things still look good for this year. Property tax collection is up $1.5 million dollars. The district is still on track to realize approximately $3.5 million of operational savings in its salary and benefit accounts due to the elimination of vacant positions, and they are still working to identify and cut additional vacant positions.
Finally, district officials asked the board to change its March meeting from the 14th to the 28th because of a new requirement in the LEARNS Act. There was confusion and disagreement among board members about exactly what is required under law.
In the past, employee contracts would automatically roll over into the next school year unless an employee was recommended for non-renewal. Now, however, school districts must recommend all employees for board approval for the upcoming 2024-25 school year. According to the district’s reading of LEARNS, any employee who has not been recommended for renewal by April 1 must receive a non-renewal letter.
The administration requested that the board move its next regular meeting date forward to March 28 to provide it with more time to prepare employee recommendations to the LRSD board and keep from issuing non-renewal notices to staff unnecessarily. We can hate the LEARNS Act, but our school board can not disobey state law. If they do, we will lose our district.
The board then went into executive session to discuss changes in personnel in schools for next school year. The board did not make any additional decisions when they returned.
