Board to weigh Lee County probation

The Arkansas Board of Education will meet at 10:30 a.m. Monday on whether to place the Marianna-based Lee County School District and Lee High School on probation with sanctions in regard to high school graduation records.

The special meeting — which will be at the Arch Ford Education Building, 4 Capitol Mall in Little Rock — also includes an agenda item on the impact that new legislation could have on waivers of state law and rules that were previously granted to charter and traditional school systems.

State Department of Education staff members have recommended probationary status for the Lee County district and high school for violating state education standards. But the district is appealing that classification to the Education Board, which has the authority to grant or deny the district’s appeal.

If the state board denies the appeal and places the district and/or school’s accreditation status on probation, the board may then choose to take one or more actions against the district as allowed by state law. Those actions include reorganizing the district’s administration, removing a particular school from the system or annexing the district or part of the district to another school system.

The Lee County district is accused of violating a standard that calls for districts to maintain accurate student records, including graduation requirements.

Lee High is cited for violating a requirement that students must have at least 22 units of credit to be eligible for graduation.

“Specifically, students expecting to graduate did not have appropriate guidance to schedule a minimum of 22 units of approved credit, and student transcripts did not reflect the appropriate courses aligned with Smart Core or Core,” documents prepared for the Education Board state.

Both Smart Core and Core are menus of courses and road maps to graduation.

The agenda for the meeting is available at https://bit. ly/28Lv8fE.

Live video streaming of the meeting will be available at https://bit.ly/1DMPinN.