Here are excerpts from recent editorials in Arkansas newspapers:
Southwest Times Record. Oct. 14, 2018.
When former Fort Smith Mayor Ray Baker died in 2011, he was mourned as both a leader of the community and a tireless champion for the city.
The following year, a downtown rose garden was renamed in Baker’s honor, where the Fort Smith Rose Society maintained the roses and the city maintained the park.
Although the Rose Society recently canceled its agreement to maintain the roses there, the Fort Smith Board of Directors recently voted unanimously to take up maintenance of the park. Regardless of the change, we’re happy the park will remain as a tribute to someone who was a leader for the city for many years.
Recent suggestions that the area be repurposed, possibly as a dog park, appear to have fallen flat, and we are glad they did. We believe the garden is a more appropriate way to honor Baker, who spent 20 years as Fort Smith’s mayor. The park makes for a lovely spot downtown, where residents and visitors to the city can stop by while learning about its namesake’s place in Fort Smith history.
Before he was sworn in as mayor in 1991, Baker served on the Fort Smith Board of Directors from 1981-90. Long before he entered city politics, Baker was a fixture in the Fort Smith Public School District. Baker began his teaching career at Ramsey Junior High in 1961 before he transferred to Southside High School two years later as a member of the school’s original faculty. He was the last remaining member of the original Southside staff when he retired in May 2007.
Many civic projects flourished during Baker’s years as a Fort Smith leader, including improvements at local parks like Lake Fort Smith, Carol Ann Cross and the Riverfront Park, another reason why the rose garden feels like an appropriate tribute to him.
The Mayor Ray Baker Rose, a hybrid tea rose, was developed after the former mayor’s death. Baker had a fondness for red roses, the city’s official flower, and was known to celebrate important events with Fort Smith residents by throwing rose petals in the air. Because of his connection to the rose, we believe the garden is an appropriate honor.
Baker’s namesake roses haven’t had an easy time of it lately. Rose Society officials report problems such as lack of watering and vandalism, as well as a fungus that has taken hold. The Ray Baker roses were moved because of this, but Rose Society President David Nichol reports the flowers are being nurtured back to health.
Despite the canceled agreement between the city and the Rose Society, Nichols said at a recent Board of Directors meeting that he was willing to help the city with this project moving forward.
The Parks and Recreation Department has proposed planting Ebb Tide and Black Pearl roses, along with various filler plants, including vinca, pentas and fireworks fountain grass, at the garden. It sounds beautiful. Maybe one day, the rose named after the city’s former mayor will return to its namesake garden. We certainly hope so, because Mayor Baker really worked hard to make sure “Life’s worth living in Fort Smith, Arkansas.” In the meantime, we are eager to see the space flourish again and appreciate the willingness of those involved to help it get there.
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Texarkana Gazette. Oct. 16, 2018.
History is important. But sometimes we don’t hear about all our history.
The book and film “Hidden Figures” put the spotlight on a story that went untold for years. It was about how African American female mathematicians made vital contributions to the U.S. space program while working at NASA in the 1960s. Their work went largely unrecognized amid all the attention focused on U.S. achievements in space.
The story, finally told, is inspiring. Unfortunately it’s not all that uncommon. Many women and minorities saw their achievements in all sorts of fields marginalized over the years. One of those people was Arkansas’ own Raye Montague.
Born during 1935 in Little Rock, Montague dreamed of becoming an engineer. She made that happen despite the difficulties that came with being a black woman in the segregated South.
By the late 1950s she was a clerk with the U.S. Navy, taking computer programming classes at night. Before long she was a computer systems analyst for the Naval Ship Engineering Center.
In 1970, Montague became the first person to successfully develop a computer-generated ship design system. Her work changed the way ships were planned and built.
It’s a story that few know, even back home in Arkansas.
Montague died last week in Little Rock. She was 83 years old. Raye Montague was one of those hidden figures in U.S. history who left their mark on our nation. May she rest in peace.
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Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Oct. 16, 2018.
The three worst schools in Arkansas are three of the five high schools in Little Rock - J.A. Fair, McClellan, and Hall. That’s not according to us; that’s according to the state of Arkansas, which just released the ratings for all 1,034 public schools in the state.
If this is not an educational crisis, what would a crisis look like? Certainly preventing black students from going to school with white students in 1957 created a crisis. But what about assigning low-income and minority students to failing schools - and doing nothing about improving those schools?
Unfortunately, far too many people don’t consider this situation to be a crisis. It’s simply the status quo—one they are willing to live with, both now and in the future.
Little Rock’s Cloverdale is 13th from the bottom, and Henderson is 41st from the bottom. Out of 1,034 schools. Both of these failing middle schools feed failing high schools.
Four of those schools have an F rating from the state - Henderson has a D. These are five of the six schools that put the Little Rock School District in academic distress and caused the state takeover of the school district.
The state has had supervision of the district for four years now. How would you rate its management of these schools? Would you give it an F? The state has a year left to improve the schools. How much would you wager that it will get the job done in 12 more months?
Now consider this: Taxpayers in Little Rock are spending $100 million to build one of the most expensive schools in Arkansas history to merge two failing schools, J.A. Fair and McClellan. If the leaders who made this decision think a new building is going to solve the education problems in the schools, they simply haven’t consulted the research. It shows that buildings, no matter how new and shiny, don’t improve education.
It’s quality teachers and principals that improve education.
Why are these kids getting such a poor education? Consider this: At Hall High, there are 10 classrooms devoted to teaching English as a second language. We’ve been told that only one of the 10 teachers speaks Spanish. If you were confronted with such a problem, wouldn’t you find the teachers who spoke Spanish, even if you had to pay them more, maybe $5,000 a year more?
Of course you would, but the principal at Hall High does not have the authority to do that. He is blocked by the teachers’ union contract that prevents such a common-sense approach.
Arkansas law permits waivers. So the state, which is responsible for the schools, does not have to abide by such nonsensical rules. To seek a waiver, it takes courage, and apparently there’s been a great lack of courage by Superintendent Michael Poore, Commissioner Johnny Key, and Governor Asa Hutchinson to do something about these struggling schools.
In 1957, it was the state of Arkansas that created the crisis in the Little Rock schools. Today it’s the state of Arkansas that has failed to address the crisis of these five failing schools—which are failing low-income minority students.
With only a little more than a year left, it’s time for the state to take action. Past time.
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