The Little Rock School Board debated a major school closure at a meeting Thursday night.
Superintendent Jermall Wright is calling the plan Optimizing LRSD 2.0. It's designed to accommodate large cuts in the district budget. The plan would close Carver STEAM Magnet Elementary School and relocate the students to Washington Elementary.
The board decided to put off voting until they allowed time for public comment. Board member Anna Strong suggested waiting on the decision.
“I do not like the idea of closing schools,” she said. “And I like the idea of transparency and communities.”
Strong also said it would be hard to maintain the budget without closing the school.
“Looking at the spreadsheet that is in the board documents, I don't see a lot of other options that are going to save us the money we need,” she said.
The LRSD has been forced to close down a number of schools to accommodate budget cuts. Wright has been forced to cut $12 million in the over two years he has been on the job. He blames this in part on losses in state aid caused by more kids leaving public schools and attending charter and private schools.
Community members spoke against closing the school during public comment. Anisha Brooks has two children at Carver and said they’ve already been moved to too many schools in a few years because of closures.
“She was attending Rockefeller, well Rockefeller closed to be repurposed,” she said. We went to Booker Arts. Booker Arts then closed and merged with Carver. So, this is now the third school that she has had to attend before her elementary career is over.”
Brooks said, if Carver were to merge with Washington, it would be the fourth elementary school her daughter has attended. She compared this to a “game of musical chairs.”
“We're not moving her, the district is moving her.”
The district had made this consequential announcement over email, which bothered many people at the meeting.
“Don’t break up with me over text,” Brooks said
State Rep. Denise Ennett, D-Little Rock, was also upset over this email. She spoke against it, calling it “disrespectful to the community.”
Another Carver parent, Rachel Conner, said her daughter was having emotional issues while attending the school. She was impressed to see students and staff at Carver rally around her with “more love than I had ever seen before.”
“I don't see a plan to get out of this pattern of consolidations,” Conner said.
Latoya Morgan, the librarian at Carver, had been moved around throughout her career as schools continued to close.
“This is my third time applying for my job for the last six years,” she said. “I'm thinking about all those babies that struggle with transition, but are you thinking about it?”
School Board member Evelyn Callaway blamed the tough decision on the education law known as Arkansas LEARNS, which gives tax money to private schools.
“I would like to address the elephants in the room, and the elephant in the room is the LEARNS Act,” she said. “None of us are happy with it.”
The board voted to hold off making the decision until December 19.
The district is also considering splitting up students at Brady Elementary School to different schools across the district, and growing elementary services in some classrooms at Hall High School.