Driving the Good Teachers Away

The Consequences of Bad Leadership and Legislative Undermining: Losing Teachers in Little Rock

Jeff Grimmett, Henderson Middle School, Little Rock, AR

This is the story of Jeff Grimmett, a teacher who recently resigned his position as the literacy specialist at Henderson Middle School (HMS) in Little Rock School District (LRSD.) Mr. Grimmett grew up in LRSD, and attended HMS as a student. His heart is with the HMS students, and with his colleagues in LRSD. Past principals have described him as “friendly, warm, caring, and respectful.”

Deputy Superintendent Marvin Burton, when he served as principal at HMS, described Jeff Grimmett by writing, “Teacher has well established rituals and routines and behavior is managed. The culture is one of learning for all students,” in Mr. Grimmett’s evaluation.

In addition to his teaching responsibilities, Jeff Grimmett has served as an executive board member of the teachers’ union (LREA,) an officer of the Parent/Teacher/Student Association, a club sponsor, and testing coordinator for HMS. He is experienced and well-respected. He worked above and beyond his contract, at a high-needs school, in a field (literacy) that is the district’s current highest priority. Why, then, is he leaving?

LRSD is currently operating under the direct control of Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson’s unqualified political appointee, Education Commissioner Johnny Key. These two orchestrated state takeover of LRSD in 2015 because six of its 42 schools were judged to be “failing” by the Arkansas Department of Education (ADE.) LRSD hasn’t improved under state control: LRSD is up to 22 failing schools, now, and a legislative effort to extend state control another four years recently failed, despite desperate, last-minute political machinations.

Last November, Commissioner Key instructed LRSD Superintendent Mike Poore to apply for a waiver from the Teacher Fair Dismissal Act (TFDA,) promising that it would only affect the teachers at LRSD’s failing schools. Key explained the waiver of due process “wouldn’t be used as a chainsaw — it’d be more like a scalpel” to fire bad teachers without allowing them a hearing or an appeal.

Despite Key’s false promises, on December 20, 2018, the State Board of Education waived the TFDA for the entirety of LRSD. Mr. Grimmett attended the meeting and spoke against the waiver, arguing that there was no consistency in applying “TESS” standards for evaluating teachers. He pointed out, “I’m on my fourth administrator now after 12 years,” and stated, “there needs to be a lot more accountability about how [TESS] is used going forward.”

Jeff Grimmett was speaking from experience. TESS requires a substantive evaluation of each teacher every four years, but nobody had bothered to evaluate Mr. Grimmett within the last five. Would he get fired based on an evaluation from five years ago? Probably not, because he’d always gotten good evaluations — but it’s inexcusable to give administrators the right to fire teachers without even evaluating them first.

It wasn’t only teachers objecting to the Fair Dismissal waiver. Retired Pine Bluff Police Chief Ivan Whitfield spoke against the waiver, too, echoing Mr. Grimmett’s sentiments on a broader scale: “You’re going to move the teachers out of the way for what the administrator didn’t do.”

Hindsight is 20/20. Now that the 2018–19 school year is over, we can look back and see that Mr. Grimmett and Mr. Whitfield were absolutely correct: Teachers are taking the fall for bad administrative practices, and students are being denied their right to an adequate education as a consequence.

For Jeff Grimmett, the scapegoating began immediately.