Rotten from the Head: Criminality in Little Rock School Administrators
Introduction
Little Rock School District (LRSD) has been directly under the control of the Arkansas Commissioner of Education since just before our current Education Commissioner, Johnny Key, took office in 2015. At that time, six of the district’s 48 schools were judged to be “failing” by the Arkansas Department of Education (ADE.) As a quick recap, here are some of the things that have happened since the state takeover of LRSD:
- Johnny Key installed Mike Poore as superintendent, with a $75,000 bump in salary from the previous superintendent.
- The number of “failing schools” rose from six to 22 (probably because the ADE changed the way it grades schools.)
- The SBoE classified LRSD as a district in need of “level 5 intensive support.”
- Johnny Key directed Mike Poore to request a waiver of the Teacher Fair Dismissal Act for the 22 failing Little Rock schools.
- The State Board of Education (SBoE) waived Teacher Fair Dismissal for all LRSD schools, even though Superintendent Poore argued against it: “But we did not talk about doing this across the body of all of our educators — and for that, I’m opposed.”
- After four and a half years under state control, with only a few months until the deadline when the SBoE would have to release or “annex, consolidate, or reconstitute” LRSD, the ADE finally told LRSD what criteria it would have to meet if it ever wanted to elect its own school board again. (Hint: It’s mostly based on how kids score on Pearson’s high-stakes “ACT-Aspire” test.) There was no explanation for the nearly five-year delay.
Meanwhile, in northwest Arkansas, I was teaching myself how to use the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to investigate the state of public education. The more I learned, the more I realized: It’s a setup.
Governor Asa Hutchinson, Commissioner Johnny Key, the State Board of Education, and the powerful Walton family are systematically dismantling LRSD so that they can privatize public education, statewide.
Yes, some of these power players may be true believers in “school choice,” but as @DCWard7teacher tweets, school choice only works if schools are reporting their data honestly, and if regulators are holding all schools equally accountable for the services they provide. Unfortunately for Arkansas, the data is bad, and the ADE doesn’t hold schools equally accountable.)
In December 2018, I took my first two steps toward writing this blog post. First, I FOIA’ed the per-pupil spending at each school, which Mike Poore had mentioned at the December 20 SBoE meeting. Next, I worked with two other ex-teachers to draft an informal survey for LRSD employees to use as a way of evaluating their administrators. (You can view the survey results here, if you like!)
Part One: The Disappearing Money
Surveys take time, so I focused on the money first. Most Little Rock schools spend between $7,000 and $10,000 per student. However, LRSD reports district per-pupil spending at $13,339.19. This seems like a classic case of administrative bloat. Where does that extra money go?
I couldn’t answer that right away (nor can I now) but I suspected LRSD was spending far more on district administrator salaries than necessary. I’ve since learned it’s worse than that: At least one administrator has been caught stealing money outright.
Dr. Karen James, who served as LRSD’s Director of Early Childhood Programs, was slated to earn $112,547 for the 2018–19 school year (including her stipend and her car allowance.) However, her high salary (compared with $99,202 for the same job in the wealthy Bentonville School District, where I live) was clearly not enough for Dr. James.
On November 7, 2018, Superintendent Poore issued a termination letter to Dr. James, stating that LRSD had caught her misusing the Early Childhood Education credit card. Superintendent Poore’s letter also warned Dr. James that her improper financial actions could lead to multiple agencies pursuing criminal charges against her.
This termination letter could not have been a surprise for Dr. James. She had been locked out of the system and put on paid administrative leave since August 14, while David Kizzia of the Arkansas Education Association (AEA) worked to gather documents and speak on her behalf.
Why did LRSD wait three months between discovering Karen James’ financial misdeeds and recommending her for termination? And why did it take another two months before Dr. James actually stopped getting paid for a job she wasn’t doing?
Dr. James appealed her termination to Johnny Key, who is LRSD’s de facto school board while LRSD is under state control. Key allowed Dr. James to “resign” instead of getting fired. Her resignation letter states that she was “leaving the area to assist with family matters.”
But what happened to the money? Should Dr. James still expect criminal charges? When is Johnny Key going to tell the public about all this?
Johnny Key, aside from being the one-man LRSD school board, is the Commissioner of Education and director of the ADE. We expect him to “protect the public trust by ensuring quality and accountability,” and we expect him to “communicate in an open, honest, and transparent manner,” even if his wearing of multiple hats raises concerns about conflicts of interest.
Accountability starts at the top. Johnny Key is failing LRSD and the Arkansas Department of Education. The buck (in both organizations) stops with him. Administrators must be held accountable by the students and stakeholders they serve. Otherwise, we’re stuck with a public education system that stinks.
Part Two: The Disappearing Data
At the school level, too, LRSD is struggling. The ADE awards funding (and freedom) based on self-reported data from each school. Thus, principals feel pressured to turn in good numbers. However, principals do not all begin the race at the same starting line. Student demographics vary widely across LRSD, as do school facilities.
I wanted an insider’s perspective, so I turned to the responses teachers were submitting to my survey. I expected to find a direct correlation between teacher approval of their principals and the “school grade” assigned to each school by the ADE. Instead, I found a school that was destroying public records in order to avoid being scrutinized.
Before we get to that drama, first I have to admit my original hypothesis was wrong: LRSD teachers’ evaluations of their school administrators range from 0–100%, but there are “failing” schools with happy teachers, and high-achieving schools whose teachers are miserable.
In my informal survey results, LRSD teachers’ job satisfaction isn’t strongly linked to how the ADE grades their schools.
I decided to zoom in. I looked at LRSD schools with the lowest-rated school leadership on my survey: Mann Magnet Middle School, Dunbar Magnet Middle School, McClellan Magnet High School, and Henderson Middle School. Of these, Henderson had the highest number (22) of respondents. Having a good, representative sample improves the believability of survey results.
It was easy to see that the Henderson teachers don’t trust their school leadership. Nor do they believe their leadership is developing effective rules for students that facilitate their learning.
In response to an invitation to “share an incident that shaped your opinion of school leadership’s involvement and effectiveness in improving the quality of your classroom teaching,” Henderson teachers wrote stories of student discipline issues, violence, and lack of guidance.
One anonymous Henderson teacher wrote, “We enter student behavior data into eSchool and never receive feedback. We don’t know if the issues we entered were even read, much less acted upon. And teachers do not have the authority this year to assign students any sanctions due to unacceptable behavior.”
Why on Earth would any principal prevent teachers from exercising disciplinary authority in their own classrooms? Was Ms. Appiah-McNulty setting her teachers up to fail? I started digging deeper into student discipline at Henderson.
Henderson Middle School’s principal is Yaa Appiah-McNulty. Her husband is Dr. Charles McNulty, superintendent of Pulaski County Special School District. Together, the McNultys are contracted to earn $285,812 in public money for the 2018–19 school year. Although Yaa Appiah-McNulty has experience as a principal at a different school in another district, this is Ms. Appiah-NcNulty’s first year as principal of Henderson Middle School.
Henderson is one of LRSD’s “failing” schools, with 79% of its students classified as “low income.” 18% of its students require “special education” under the federal I.D.E.A. law, and 14% are classified as English language learners.
Last year (2017–18,) Henderson Middle School had one of the highest rates of student disciplinary actions of any LRSD middle school. Its Exclusionary Disciplinary Action (EDA) rate, last year, was 45/100. That’s 577 total out-of-school suspensions and expulsions in one school year, at a middle school.
Discipline has been a problem at Henderson Middle School since before Ms. Appiah-McNulty arrived. Still, whatever Ms. Appiah-McNulty has been doing to deal with discipline issues doesn’t sit well with the teachers.
On February 4, 2019, several Henderson teachers met to discuss the “dysfunctional” student discipline process at their school. Ms. Appiah-McNulty heard about the meeting, and called all the teachers together the next day to admonish them for gathering to discuss student discipline without her.
Henderson teachers — 24 of them — responded with a written grievance.
What, exactly, is the disciplinary process at Henderson Middle School, and why do the teachers think it’s dysfunctional?
According to the school’s Improvement Plan, Ms. Appiah-McNulty’s goal is to use Positive Behavior Intervention Systems (PBIS) for student discipline this year. Normally, PBIS means fewer exclusionary disciplinary actions for students, but Henderson’s discipline records show 302 suspensions so far this school year.
However, we can’t trust these numbers. Ms. Appiah-McNulty only released Henderson’s student discipline records after someone combed through them and deleted at least 25 incidents.
Henderson Middle School has deliberately destroyed records of student disciplinary actions this year.
I FOIA’ed Henderson Middle School’s internal records of disciplinary actions on March 5, 2019. LRSD sent me the school’s discipline reports on March 8, 2019, at 5:48 PM.
Suspiciously, a few hours before LRSD released Henderson’s disciplinary records to me on March 8, someone went into the school’s software and deleted several student disciplinary records dating back at least to October. I am not posting screenshots here because teachers are scared of retaliation for helping me. However, I am willing to share screenshots with law enforcement.
Yes, destroying public records before you release them is a crime. Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge has formed a Public Integrity Division of the Special Investigations Department at the Arkansas Attorney General’s Office. Hopefully, she will step in and insist on truthfulness and transparency. Johnny Key certainly hasn’t, so far.
No, the ADE doesn’t check whether schools are reporting their data honestly. Whoever has access to APSCN gets to manipulate student data however they choose. I’ve already written about two schools (Henderson in LRSD, and Haas Hall Academy) who have a history of altering student records without oversight. Who knows how many more, similar situations are out there?
When school administrators see more benefit — and less risk — in altering/destroying public records than in allowing Arkansans to scrutinize their work, there is no way we can identify and address the real problems in our schools. The Arkansas Department of Education, whose mission includes “protecting the public trust by ensuring quality and accountability,” can’t even begin to help.
Right now, ALL of the responsibility lies with Johnny Key. Because of the SBoE’s decision to remove LRSD from local control in 2015, Johnny Key has been Little Rock’s school board for four years. Johnny Key is responsible for ensuring that Little Rock school employees follow the law. Johnny Key is responsible for ensuring that Little Rock schools report their data accurately. And Johnny Key is responsible for making sure the ADE evaluates Johnny Key’s work in LRSD effectively.
Johnny Key is LRSD’s judge, jury, and executioner — and Johnny Key has no academic or professional experience in education. Governor Asa Hutchinson appointed Johnny Key, and Senator Alan Clark changed the law to allow an unqualified person like Key to accept the appointment. These three men and their financial backers put us in this position, but we are the ones who are going to fix it.
It’s time to follow the advice Diane Ravitch recently gave to the Little Rock pastor who asked her what we can do to fix public education in Arkansas:
“My advice: civil disobedience. Mass protests. Marches. Demonstrations. Chain yourselves to the schoolhouse doors. Nothing else will work. The greatest enemy is complacency, apathy, hopelessness. Faced with the unlimited power of a family [the Waltons] that owns the state government, it is easy to feel hopelessness. But resistance is the only path. The other way, the status quo, is servitude.”
