Through 20 superintendents and scores of school board members over the past 31 years, the one constant in the Little Rock School District has been an intervening attorney. No less than the Attorney General of the State of Arkansas has estimated that the attorney has been paid over $5 million in public dollars over three decades to be the unilateral voice of a faceless class known as the Joshua Intervenors, a euphemism for African-American students.

One must ask: Is the District (or the class) better off today than when the attorney began his intervention?

As a result of the recently approved Desegregation Settlement Agreement, the attorney no longer has legal standing to intervene in the District. However, his personal interfering continues. At last Thursday’s board meeting, he publicly chastised five veteran members of the board for even selecting Dr. Suggs as superintendent in the first place. Immediately following his scolding, as if on cue, the board voted 4-3 to go into executive session to consider demoting our six-month-on-the-job superintendent.

Even though the teachers’ union joined in the eleventh hour coalition of parental, business and community leaders which ensured Dr. Suggs’ selection over the attorney’s inevitable candidate, four months later, the union voted “no confidence” in the superintendent all because he had the temerity to reject their unacceptable contract proposals. The union which went toe-to-toe and 2-0 (Zones 6 and 7) against the attorney in the last school board election, is now his new best friend. In fact, as the audience awaited the results of the executive session, the union head was darn near giddy, telling anyone within earshot that the superintendent could be “demoted to a bus driver.”

When the board returned from executive session with no action taken or explanation given, the wind temporarily left their sails, and the attorney and his entourage left the union head at the meeting, which continued according to the agenda. Fall back, regroup, live to fight another day.In Dr. Suggs, Little Rock – not just the District, but the community – has finally found a leader willing to stand up to the forces which have long placed adult self interests over the best interests of students.

Zone 5’s Jody Carreiro fought for Dr. Suggs’ resume to be considered even though the Arkansas School Boards Association’s preferred search firm of McPherson & Jacobson didn’t include him as finalist. Parent Dr. Jim Ross’ exhaustive, fact-based background research and social media campaign put the attorney’s preferred candidate on the defensive and torpedoed his candidacy. Then-Zone 6’s Tommy Branch Jr.’s courageous vote swung two other members, ensuring Dr. Suggs’ selection with a 6-1 vote. However, such courage cost Mr. Branch his seat on the board in the next election.

Ultimately, parents put Dr. Suggs into the superintendency. Just like parents got the LRSD to finally purchase land in West Little Rock for a middle school, and parents defeated both LRSD and Pulaski County Special School District attorneys to provide public secondary education where none exists.

And now, parents alone are standing up to the attorney, the union and their minions who are desperately trying to take down yet another superintendent before he can demonstrate success and expose them as frauds when it comes to putting students first. You see, Dr. Suggs has the audacity to expect that every child, no matter his/her race, economic level, family circumstance, or Zip Code, can and must learn.

The Attorney General’s own chief of staff credited Dr. Suggs as the catalyst for the Desegregation Settlement Agreement. Perhaps that’s what’s really behind the attorney’s ire. Dr. Suggs, NLRSD Superintendent Kelly Rodgers, and General McDaniel put him out of business in Little Rock and North Little Rock, relegating his legal intervening to the friendly confines of the state-appointed superintendent of the state-controlled Pulaski County Special School District.

When Dr. Suggs recommended that the board “not support” the open enrollment charter application of Quest Middle School of West Little Rock, our parents didn’t vote “no confidence” or try to get him fired. We vehemently disagreed, vigorously fought, and resoundingly defeated the District’s attorneys, but never once wavered in our support of the superintendent.

So we ask: Will those business and civic leaders who flocked to Dr. Suggs AFTER his selection now stand with parents and up to the attorney and union in order to keep our superintendent on the job of putting children first in Little Rock? Will the same leaders who privately said they couldn’t support Quest because they didn’t want to do anything to hurt Dr. Suggs now publicly come to his defense.

Or will they, as they have so many times in the past, retreat from true leadership, and let the students fall where they may.

While parents persist, the individual, familial and community economic development of Little Rock will rise or fall with the actions or inactions of our elected, appointed and business leaders. There is no longer any middle ground. They’re either against students, or with them on…

#TeamSuggs