Fleecing the Kids: Financial Habits of a Little Rock School Administrator
Little Rock School District (LRSD,) a large, capital-city school district, has always been Arkansas’ flagship for public education. From the Little Rock Nine in 1957 to state takeover in 2015 and the current threat of “reconstitution,” LRSD sets the course that the rest of us follow.
Thus, when a local civil rights attorney writes an academic paper on “Dismantling the School-to-Prison Pipeline” with a focus on the responsibility borne by LRSD administrators, we should all read it carefully.
Amelia Lafont notes, in her paper: “Despite the January 2015 state takeover as a district in academic distress, there have been minimal changes in senior administrative leadership at LRSD from 2014 to 2018.” Ms. Lafont adamantly holds LRSD’s administrators responsible for the district’s failure to educate many of its students:
“There is an apparent complete lack of personal and financial accountability for senior administrators of the Little Rock School District to the stakeholder community, especially students, for the chronic failures of these administrators to effectively execute their professional responsibilities. In fact, while innumerable LRSD students are “waiting to learn to read,” and their discipline experiences cannot be quantified because they are not reported, the same ~50 adults remain in senior administrative leadership, year after year, with regular raises and increasing authority, despite a state takeover due to the same parties’ failures several years ago.”
Who are these 50 adults? Ms. Lafont includes helpful charts of LRSD administrators, their titles, and their total compensation over the last four years. One of the richest of the rich is Dr. Frederick “Freddie” Fields, who took home $625,084 during the time of Lafont’s study.
Freddie Fields earns almost as much as Kelsey Bailey, LRSD’s Chief Financial Officer, who is supposed to be keeping track of the district’s money. In this oversight role, Bailey has recently reported one LRSD administrator, Karen James, to the police for improper use of the Early Childhood Education credit card.
Why did Kelsey Bailey stop with Karen James? Are we supposed to believe that all the other LRSD administrators are spending taxpayer money appropriately? I don’t buy it.
Freddie Fields has three LRSD credit cards (7766, 5677, and 9906) on which he has spent a total of $76,819.61 since state takeover. Most of that has gone to stores like Walmart, Goddess Office Products, Office Depot, Sam’s Club, and Staples.
Already, this raises some red flags. Why does the Student Services Director spend so much money at Walmart and Office Depot? Is he buying school supplies for some students, individually? If so, then how is he choosing which students get these district-funded supplies, and which students are left with only what their classroom teachers can afford to buy?
Zoom in closer. There’s a category I call “everything else.” It’s where I put the tickets to the Little Rock Zoo, vehicle tags, and massage therapy that Freddie Fields has charged to LRSD. It’s also where I’ve categorized the $10,248 that Freddie Fields has spent on flowers and tablecloths since state takeover.
A little background:
Dr. Freddie Fields has been the Republican Party’s “inside man” in LRSD since at least 2014, when he used his student-placement authority in an attempt to sway an election in favor of Stacy Hurst. Despite Fields’ efforts, Hurst lost her race to Clarke Tucker. Still, Governor Asa Hutchinson gave her a consolation prize: the directorship of his Department of Arkansas Heritage.
In addition to her political life, Stacy Hurst co-owns (with her husband, Howard Hurst) a flower/event design business called Tipton & Hurst. Tipton & Hurst is where the Arkansas Republican Party spent $45,299 for Asa Hutchinson’s recent re-inauguration.
Freddie Fields’ LRSD credit card spending links him to at least one purchase at Tipton & Hurst since state takeover. Additionally, he has spent a lot of LRSD money ($10,069) at wholesale florist shops like “Silky Silk” in Texas, and party suppliers like linentablecloth.com and lacraftsws.com.
Even more extravagantly, Freddie Fields spent $1,647 at Lucky Imports — which distributes bridal accessories — just before Spring Break, last year.
Now: Is the LRSD Director of Student Services designing lavish parties and weddings for public school students with the blessing of Superintendent Mike Poore? Or is he, perhaps, operating some sort of side business with his flowery friend, Stacy Hurst?
Speaking of state-subsidized side businesses, Freddie Fields owns 15 rent houses (and one 6,470-square-foot McMansion) in Little Rock, as part of his real estate business called “Wellington Woods Realty, Inc.”
LRSD has their own facilities/maintenance staff, so you wouldn’t think they’d send their Director of Student Services to run errands. Why, then, has Freddie Fields paid for 31 visits to Home Depot & Lowe’s with his LRSD credit cards since state takeover? Is Freddie Fields personally handling some of LRSD’s maintenance needs? No, I think he’s spending taxpayer money to maintain his own 16 properties.
In her paper on dismantling the Arkansas school-to-prison pipeline, attorney Amelia Lafont recommends three things:
1. Holding school administrators accountable in their transparency requirements, compensation amounts, and retention systems based on their professional effectiveness;
2. Holding state education board members accountable for the academic performance school districts while under its control; and
3. Holding adults in the judicial branch accountable for reporting their operational statistics to the public . . . to increase the quality of justice in Arkansas.
These strategies make perfect sense. So why is Asa Hutchinson’s administration stubbornly refusing to implement any of these improvements? Why is Hutchinson’s government leaving it up to me to look at credit card statements like this? What would they keep hiding if it weren’t for activist moms like me?
