By John Lyon
Arkansas News Bureau

LITTLE ROCK — Arkansas schools will receive just over $5 million under a program created six years ago to reward schools that show significant academic gains, the state Board of Education heard Monday.

Also, the board rejected an appeal by the Little Rock District of the probationary status assigned to two high schools and permanently revoked the license of a former Brookland teacher who assaulted his superintendent.

Holding up an oversized check, Assistant Education Commissioner Charity Smith told the board $5.17 million will be distributed to schools in the coming days and weeks as part of the Arkansas School Recognition Program.

The program, created by Act 35 of the Second Extraordinary Session of 2003, calls for students’ scores on benchmark exams to be tracked from year to year to measure progress. Schools classified as Level 4 or 5, meaning they are exceeding improvement standards, are to receive $100 per student tested. This is the first year for the rewards.

“I am pleased to say today that we have kept our promise,” Smith said.

Smith said the rewards this year are based on progress in grades 3-8, but progress in grades 9-11 will also be taken into account starting next year.

Schools can use the money to award one-time bonuses to faculty or staff members, buy educational materials or hire temporary personnel.

The board’s chairman, Naccaman Williams of Springdale, said schools from all over the state, including both urban and rural areas, qualified for the rewards.

“Our compliments and congratulations really go to those schools and those teachers for doing the work to move those students,” he said.

In a 4-2 vote, the board denied the Little Rock School District’s appeal of probationary status for Hall High School and J.A. Fair High School. The schools are on probation for not teaching physics last year.

Dennis Glasgow, the Little Rock district’s interim associate superintendent for accountability, told the board the schools had teachers available to teach physics, but no students asked to take physics last year.

Glasgow also said the schools formerly taught physics in the ninth grade, so most of last year’s seniors had taken physics three years earlier.

“We had a greater percentage, I would guess, of students graduating with physics than probably the vast majority of other high schools in the state,” he said.

Arnette Barnes, coordinator of school improvement for the state Department of Education, said Hall and Fair did not meet state standards.

“They had students who were there who had not been there in the ninth grade, who did not have the opportunity to take physics, who did not know it. That’s the issue: Equal opportunity and access for all students,” she said.

If a school is on probation for two consecutive years it faces sanctions to be determined by the Education Board.

The board also voted unanimously to revoke permanently the teaching license of Stephen Vaughn, formerly a band teacher at Brookland High School in Craighead County.

In December 2007, Vaughn entered the home of Brookland Superintendent Kevin McGaughey while dressed as Santa Claus and carrying a box decorated like a Christmas gift. Vaughn then pointed a handgun at McGaughey and ordered him and his wife and son to get on the floor.

McGaughey struggled with Vaughn and got the gun away from him, but during the struggle McGaughey received severe facial lacerations when Vaughn hit him in the face with a vase. McGaughey also received two broken ribs and other injuries.

The box was later found to hold a container of gasoline and a cigarette lighter.

Vaughn is serving an 11-year prison sentence for first-degree battery and aggravated residential burglary.

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