Fewer education co-op specialists will impact small, rural schools

NORTHWEST ARKANSAS, Ark., (KNWA/FOX24) — Leaders at Lincoln High School say they aren’t happy that the number of content specialists at the Northwest Arkansas Education Services Cooperative is going down.

“I’m not a number,” said Emilianne Cox, Assistant Principal at Lincoln High School. “Everyone knows everyone here.”

This is Cox’s eleventh year working in public education.

“I was a math teacher and basketball coach for ten years,” she said. “I spent three years in the Delta and one year at Bentonville West.”

She said she found her home for the past seven years at Lincoln High School.

“What I appreciate most about a smaller school is everyone’s got your back,” she said.

As a smaller school, she said the content specialists from the NWA cooperative always had the backs of the teachers they serve as well.

“I would go every summer to every math training that they would provide for me,” she said. “They were just able to help dissect the new standards for the science department. In the math department, they were making sure that we provide high quality instructional material.”

The co-op has four literacy specialists, two math specialists and two science specialists.

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Bryan Law is the Director of the Northwest Arkansas Education Services Cooperative. He said they found out earlier this year from the state that the amount of grant funding available for the specialists for all co-ops in Arkansas is going down.

“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.”

This team of specialists serves every public school district in Benton, Washington and Madison Counties.

Law said they are the biggest cooperative in the state when you look at the number of people they serve.

“I worry that our smaller districts and our rural districts will lose that support,” said Carly McCollough. She is one of the science specialists with the NWA co-op who is losing her job. “I think that that’s the biggest fear there, that our teachers just won’t have an expert, content expert to reach out to just to understand the standards or have those supports.”

Arkansas Secretary of Education Jacob Oliva addressed this change at a pre-fiscal session Joint Budget Committee meeting on March 7th.

“We have let these co-ops know, don’t just guarantee and expect you’re going to get this funding, we’re going to re-evaluate how these districts are being supported,” he told lawmakers.

Secy. Oliva pointed to the latest ACT Aspire scores for grades 3 through 10 as a reason for why the co-op specialists aren’t being effective.

A spokesperson for the ADE 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.”

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“We’ve just been giving money to co-ops and those dollars are getting watered down and not being used in the way they were designed to be used,” Oliva said in the meeting.

In part one of this story, McCollough explained the evaluation process she has gone through over the past five years that she has worked in this position. She also shared why she feels test scores for an entire school or school district aren’t a proper representation of the effectiveness of her and her colleagues.

Cox said the specialists were a direct resource for her as a teacher.

“I could call them, I could email them, they could come observe me, they could give me direct feedback that maybe my principal couldn’t give me,” she said. “It was more content driven that was more helpful for me.”

“I consider them extremely effective,” said Stan Karber, Principal at Lincoln High School. “I would consider what they did to benefit our small school district at a high level.”

He said he felt left out of the conversation about how effective the co-op specialists have been in his school.

“My concern stems from the fact that they were told that they were not effective and I don’t know anyone, including myself, that was interviewed and asked about their effectiveness,” he said.

He said he has seen the positive impact the specialists have had on his staff.

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“They might call down the road and have a specialist come in and spend time with them to give them some information, that’s going to be directly affecting the students that we’re supposed to be serving,” he said. “I think we should have a vote in how effective they are.”

Karber said the co-op specialists are a crucial resource for them as a smaller, rural school district. The high school has roughly 350 students in it and serves the southwestern corner of Washington County near the Oklahoma state line.

“We are not Fayetteville, Bentonville, Springdale, Rogers,” he said. “Those guys have more money and more students than they know what to do with.”

Lincoln School District also started on the four-day school week this year to try and stay competitive in the teacher market and help give students and teachers more time to rest. Karber said the response to this move has been very positive with staff and students, and while that was a great step forward, losing the specialists feels like a step back.

“The smaller schools, and when you get down to the really small schools, it’s a challenge for them to meet the basic needs,” said Law.

June 30th is the day the specialists’ contracts end. Cox said their teachers will utilize them as much as they can while they are still here.

“We’re making sure they go to the co-op and get that professional development training before June 30th happens,” she said.

But after that day passes, and as the new school year will start in August, things will have to be done differently.

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“Maybe we’re as principals looking at a wider scope of how we can make sure that these teachers don’t feel like there’s pressure on them,” she said.

Karber said public school educators know how to be resilient.

“We will support them throughout everything that they need,” he said. “And when they hit the wall and when they’re stressed out and when they can’t figure out what they need to have in that classroom to help these kids find success, we will do that, we will be their resources.”

The Northwest Arkansas Education Services 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.

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