LITTLE ROCK SCHOOL DISTRICT TOPS STATE IN STAFF ASSAULTS

• Arkansas educators will insist they already have a report card. They do-for only each district, not school by school. But for Arkansas’ parents and the public to draw any real conclusions about performance from thjs collection of raw data would be almost impossible without a great deal of digging and some analytical sk,11s. Moreover, fts availability is not widely promoted and it has been used internally by school officials for the most part. School by school report cards should tell the whole story clearly, concisely, and in a style that is easily understandable. They should be issued broadly. Othe,wise, they are useless.0   (Murphy Commission Education WorkQroup, 1998)

(August 2007) The Little Rock Schoof District, the state’s largest, also reported the highest number of assaults on stafft according to records obtained by the Policy Foundation under the Freedom of Information Ad. There were 106 reported assaults on Little Rock staff in.the 2005-06 school year, Department of Education records (District Discipline Infractions) show. Data for the 2006-07 school year was unavailable.

Another Pulaski County district, North Little Rock, recorded 104 staff assaults, the second highest number in the state. Eighteen public school districts reported seven or more staff assaults:

Altheimer, Arkansas School for the Deaf, Bearden, Hamburg, Osceofa, Pottsville 7

The data is not posted on the department’s site.  A department official said schoof districts self-report discipline infractions, which are not audited by other levels of government. The records show there were no reported staff assaults in ‘152 of Arkansas’ 259 districts.