EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the sixth of eight articles about the termination hearing and ultimate firing of Jann Gibson, principal of Cutter Morning Star Elementary School. The Cutter Morning Star School District held the hearing from 5 p.m. Dec. 15 to almost 1:20 a.m. Dec. 16. Board members voted at the end of the hearing to fire Gibson.
The Cutter Morning Star School District accused former elementary school principal Jann Gibson of wrongful scheduling practices and included the matter in its presentation to terminate her contract of employment on Dec. 15.
At least one of seven reasons listed by the district alleged Gibson's schedule did not provide teachers with 30-minute, duty-free lunches. Another scheduling matter dealt with inadequate time for art and music for two grade levels at the elementary schools.
The full descriptions and details of the seven reasons have not been made public. The newspaper submitted a request under Arkansas' Freedom of Information Act at 2:16 a.m. Dec. 16 for the packet developed by the administration for the hearing.
The motions were provided to The Sentinel-Record on Tuesday. The motions do not include any language or details about the district's specific accusations. The request was sent to Cutter Morning Star Superintendent Nancy Anderson and Cody Kees, an attorney for the district with the Bequette and Billingsley law firm in Little Rock.
"As for the other documents requested, we are alerting the subject of the request, as required by Ark. Code Ann. § 25-19-105(3)(B)(i), and will allow her reasonable time to seek an opinion on the release of these records from the Attorney General's office," Kees wrote to the newspaper in an email on Tuesday.
"Following receipt of this opinion, or if no opinion is requested within the time period allowable for the submission of said request, the district will make its final decision regarding release of the requested information and you will be notified."
The newspaper had not received further details about the packet by presstime on Thursday.
Terry Lawler, a retired administrator who began in October as the interim principal for Cutter Morning Star Elementary School, was questioned the evening of Dec. 15 for more than an hour. She said she immediately saw inadequacies and inefficiencies in the school's schedule.
Lawler observed the school's 15-minute recess in the morning, staggered lunches and planning periods of almost 60 minutes. She said the schedule included teachers eating with their students, depriving of them of their mandated duty-free lunch time of at least 30 minutes.
"I knew this wasn't right for lots of reasons," Lawler said. "Not only was it not legal, it was not treating the staff right."
Kees asked Lawler her opinion on the importance of the duty-free lunches because teachers are with their students the rest of the day. Gibson's attorney, Robert Newcomb, of Little Rock, objected to the question, claiming it did not pertain to one of the district's exact reasons for terminations.
"I am trying to make the foundation that the duty-free lunches required by Arkansas law and setting that foundation," Kees said.
"So you are leading to that?" asked Sharon Street, who represented the school board at the meeting and was charged with moderating the hearing as a neutral party.
"Yes ma'am," Kees said.
"I think that is a single question," Newcomb said.
"Well, I am going to let him have a little leeway here," Street said. "You're headed toward what we need to be headed toward."
Gibson later explained the practice of the teachers eating with their students began in the fall semester of the 2016-17 school year. Staff at the elementary school sought for ways to develop relationships with their students outside of a teacher-student dynamic in a classroom.
"Building relationships with kids is the single most important thing we can do," Gibson said. "So, we started trying to figure out ways that we can spend more time that is non-instructionally connected with our kids and one of the things that we wanted to try was having a day or two that we would take the kids to lunch. And, so, that's what we did and it was to best serve the needs of the kids at Cutter.
"There were a couple of teachers that were kind of resistant. So, they were given the option to run a more traditional schedule, but those folks in the elementary are pretty phenomenal. They wanted to try something different and that was a conversation. I even told Dr. Anderson some of the things that we were reading and things we talked about, things that I wanted to make sure we had, an opportunity to thrive. And folks were willing to do that because that best met the needs of our kids."
Lawler said one of her first actions as principal was to request teachers provide her with their full schedules and lesson plans. She said Anderson indicated she did not know teachers were not receiving their full lunch allotments.
"She told me she had seen them eating with their students, but she thought they were given their 30-minute duty free lunch at a different time," Lawler said.
Anderson said Gibson informed her some volunteers helped watch students at times to allow teachers to enjoy their full lunch periods. Anderson said she met with teachers to figure out their schedules because some third- and fourth-grade classes were mixed together despite the grades having different class size requirements.
"We were really, very close on some of those numbers," Anderson said. "So, I was trying to make sure we were staying in compliance with student-teacher ratios."
Gibson said Anderson knew the full details of the schedule. She said she previously spoke with Anderson about breaking up the schedule differently and including a recess break in the morning of about 15-20 minutes to include in teacher's required duty-free time.
Anderson said the schedules are 100 percent the responsibility of each campus principal with no oversight by the administration. Lawler said she submitted her revised master schedule to allow Anderson to ensure no problems persisted.
Newcomb later called Nathan Sullivan, principal of the high school, who said Anderson requested he submit his schedules to her in each of his two years with the district. The high school switched to a flexible modular scheduling format at the start of the 2016-17 school year.
Teacher Beth McKinney, now in her fifth year with Cutter Morning Star, said staff members were excited a year ago about new things happening at the school. She was previously a classroom teacher and is now a technology specialist.
Heather Hughes, library media specialist, explained how staff members rotated throughout the week to eat with students. She said Anderson was included in the list of school personnel to receive the email notices.
McKinney said non-classroom teachers often took more days than their classroom counterparts because the specialists spend less time with the students. Kees asked Hughes if the lunch and planning periods were grouped in the same block of the schedule.
"I think it has already been mentioned earlier that they have the 20 minutes in the morning for the recess plus the 55," Hughes said. "If you add those together, you get (at least) 40 minutes of a planning period and 30 minutes of lunch."
Hughes said she personally heard one teacher say she needed time to breathe away from her students and eat on her own, but the rest of the staff approved of the arrangement. She said staff members would often eat on their own in a specific area of the library, where she said she later found a recording device. Hughes said the employees were not informed of the device beforehand and a staff member told her that Anderson directed him to install it.
McKinney said details of the arrangement were included in a presentation developed by students for meetings with area administrators. A presentation about teachers eating with students, as well as the Eagles On Air project and the Spanish Club, was presented for a meeting hosted by Cutter Morning Star for the superintendents of Garland County.
The students led the presentation again on Feb. 9 this year for principals at the Dawson Education Service Cooperative in Arkadelphia. Dawson includes 22 member school districts in the region.
Non-classroom teachers signed up for more days on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Classroom teachers ate with their students on some Mondays and Thursdays.
Hughes, McKinney and first-grade teacher Haley Thornton said the schedule worked on a week-by-week basis with teachers often covering for others. Many of the staff members enjoyed the practice enough to continue it this school year even after Lawler's adjustments.
"This current year, I still opt to eat lunch with my kids on certain days, because they enjoy it and I enjoyed it," Thornton said.
"I do not know that they are permitting or unpermitting," Thornton added. "I do it because it is something I enjoy. I went and ate a Christmas feast with them today."
Gibson said the Arkansas Department of Education is now piloting periodic recesses for their benefits to students. Hughes said the schedule was adjusted at the start of the current year to ensure teachers received their required lunch and prep times.
Newcomb claimed in his closing argument "there is more than enough evidence Dr. Anderson" knew of the schedule details. Newcomb described the scheduling claims as a "gotcha moment" for the administration, which he alleged planned to fire her anyway.
"If Ms. Gibson deserves to be canned for that, so be it, but I ask you to be totally fair and can Dr. Anderson, because she acquiesced it being done," Newcomb said.
Local on 12/22/2017