When Arkansas Education Commissioner Tom W. Kimbrell announced recently he had appointed Frank Anthony of Pine Bluff to serve as superintendent of the Dollarway School District, school superintendents around the state took notice.
The state assumed control of the district after the Arkansas Board of Education voted unanimously one day earlier to remove the Dollarway School District superintendent and the school board and to reconstitute the district.
The state board noted Dollarway’s high school had violated the state’s standards of accreditation for two consecutive years and one school has been in trouble and on probation for eight of the past 10 years. Dollarway is on the state’s fiscal distress watch list and lost $1.8 million in federal school improvement funds earlier this year for failing to address problem areas.
Anthony, who will serve through the 2012-2013 school year, has worked in Arkansas as an education administrator at the school district and state levels and is known as an administrator who does not accept excuses.
Dollarway teachers and administers who do not obtain results will be looking for another job. It is that simple.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
Anthony can be cantankerous, stubborn, and resolute when focused when on a course of action. He is a no-nonsense administrator,
When he was named superintendent by the Pine Bluff School Board in January 1999, Pine Bluff schools were awash in red ink. He urged the board to adopt $2 million in budget cuts after less than four months on the job.
Pine Bluff schools were on the state’s academic distress list before he took over. He was aware of all the problems, having sent the formal notice to the district as assistant director of the state Education Department’s Office of Accountability. The budget cuts involved eliminating more than 30 certified teacher and administration positions, 45 classified jobs and the closing two elementary schools, earning him enemies in local education circles. However, the district was removed from the state’s academic and fiscal distress lists by the spring of 2000.
Like Dollarway, Pine Bluff’s enrollment was falling and even more cuts were required. A referendum on his proposal to close five more schools, restructure the district’s debt service by adding 2 mills for capital improvements and add 4.5 mills to the tax books to fund $29.4 million in capital projects was approved on Valentine’s Day 2006.
The proposal to build two new elementary schools, the Pine Bluff High School Academy and renovate or construct additions to the remaining district campuses was adopted. Anthony was named Superintendent of the Year for 2006-07 by the Arkansas Association of Education Administrators for turning the district around.
He worked with state education officials to obtain an additional $13 million in “partnership funds” for improvements. The once financially strapped district was able to pay cash for dozens of new school buses.
Despite the loss of more than 2,000 students over a decade, the district witnessed improved student achievement in a number of areas. The loss of those students cost the district millions in state revenue.
Even many of his detractors admit he was the right person at the right time to pull the Pine Bluff district back from the brink of insolvency.
“Any superintendent who does any good will catch hell,” is his answer to critics.
He is a superintendent who believes schools and teachers exist only to educate and inspire children, not just to provide jobs.