Education co-op specialist concerned for teachers after job is cut

NORTHWEST ARKANSAS, Ark. (KNWA/FOX24) — The school year is coming to an end in Northwest Arkansas which marks the last year dozens of content specialists across the state will have jobs.

The state is changing the number of education cooperative specialists that will receive grant funding.

“I believe every kid deserves to have a teacher that is happy to be there and excited about what they’re teaching,” said Carly McCollough, who is currently a science specialist with the Northwest Arkansas Education Services Cooperative .

It’s McCollough’s job to help science teachers of all grade levels throughout Northwest Arkansas.

“I work with middle school and secondary science teachers and one of the greatest parts of my job is getting to work with the teachers who are going to have an impact on kids,” she said.

During the school year, she said they are in the classrooms providing professional development and curriculum help for teachers.

“I’m working with teachers, maybe model teaching lessons or working in their PLC groups, working with individual teachers or groups we’ll present at schools,’ she explained.

The Northwest Arkansas Co-op has four literacy specialists, two math specialists and two science specialists.

This team serves every public school in Benton and Washington counties plus Huntsville School District in Madison County.

“We are the largest co-op by far in student enrollment,” said Bryan Law, director of the Northwest Arkansas Education Services Cooperative. “97,000 students are coming through this co-op, that’s roughly one in four to one in five of all the students in the state of Arkansas. We have 6,000 teachers in this co-op.”

Starting next year, the number of these specialists will be going down.

Law said while the co-ops aren’t state agencies, they do get their operational funds and the grants for the specialists through the state.

“As of March, the state has taken three of our literacy specialists away, one of our math positions and one of our science and STEM positions,” he said. “They’ve cut us in half.”

He said it was tough news to share with his team.

“I was sad for our people,” he said. “It was a hard conversation to have with them the next day.”

“We actually had no heads up or indication that that was happening,” said McCollough.

They got some answers about why in the pre-fiscal session Joint Budget Committee meeting on March 7 from Arkansas Education Secretary Jacob Oliva when a lawmaker asked him about the funding changes with the co-ops.

“Whether it’s co-ops, school districts or anyone in the state thinks we’re just going to do business as usual and fund positions because that’s what we’ve always funded, and we don’t have a return on that investment. They need to know we’re going to have a deeper conversation,” he told the committee. “That is not an entitlement appropriation.”

Kimberly Mundell is the spokesperson for the Arkansas Department of Education. She said the cooperatives will be getting the same $6.129 million in operational funds.

She said the ADE is not involved in co-op hiring decisions, so if the co-ops are not retaining employees, that isn’t a decision made by the state.

McCollough has been a science specialist for five years. She explained the evaluation process for her job.

“Our supervisors also evaluate us the same way that they’re evaluating teachers and schools, so we are marked highly effective or effective,” she said. “And if we were below that, then our jobs could be chosen not to be given the grant again. Every year we’ve been told that we are meeting our goals and being effective.”

In the committee meeting, Oliva alluded to low testing scores as a reason to re-evaluate the co-op’s funding.

“Literacy and numeracy data hasn’t been improving in the last decade and we’ve just been giving dollars out the window,” he said. “So we officially let them know we may not be giving you these dollars the way you’ve always received them.”

Mundell sent KNWA/FOX24 a press release from last summer saying ACT Aspire results for grades three through 10 in the 2022-23 school year showed “little to modest increases from 2022, with many grades and subject areas reflecting decreases.”

McCollough doesn’t feel student test scores for an entire school or school district are an accurate representation of the specialist’s success.

“For science, there were two of us for 170 schools. We’re not in every single building all the time,” she said. “If they really wanted to pull the data, then look at the teachers that we supported or the ones that have come to our trainings to determine effectiveness.”

“We didn’t think that with the limited number we had, we were completely able to meet the needs as they were,” said Law. “Now with the numbers reduced, it’s even going to become more of a challenge.”

During the committee meeting, the lawmaker asked a follow-up question about how the money being re-evaluated funding would be used to continue supporting these school subjects. He said they are “going to be supporting literacy, math and science initiatives, but we may be doing it in a different way.”

McCollough is stepping away from the education profession, which is something she never thought she would do.

“I thought I would be one of those lifers that got to brag about 45 or 50 years of experience,” she said. “It doesn’t feel good to be publicly told that you’re ineffective. That’s embarrassing. It just doesn’t feel good. Especially when no conversation has ever been had about that and every year you’re told you’re highly effective.”

The education cooperative provides other services to the public education community it serves, including special education services like occupational therapy, physical therapy and speech therapy for ages three to five.

It provides licensure support, higher education partnerships, and educator effectiveness training. It also provides health/nurse services, community health promotions and has partnerships with prominent organizations like the Walton Arts Center and local universities.

McCollough and Law both said the specialists being cut will be a big blow for rural school districts in Northwest Arkansas.

Tune in Friday to FOX24 News at 9 and KNWA News at 10 to hear what leaders at Lincoln High School have to say about the impact of these specialists and why they feel left out of this decision by the state.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KNWA FOX24.