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I'm going to ask our education panel to come on out in the spirit of time dr. Lawrence Alexander the Chancellor here at the university of arkansas pine bluff you know there is a special session of the legislature going home he's going to have to get to Little Rock in fact as I mentioned Simmons has been proudly headquartered here in Pine Bluff since 1903 and my first thought was I wanted the Chancellor of uapb to moderate our session but then I said no I want to hear his thoughts and I won't even actually on the panel so then I turned to an old friend who was kind enough to help me out and somebody whose name you all know who is the longtime president of Arkansas Baptist College in Little Rock fit seal fits his older brother and I went to school actually all the way from the fourth grade through high school and we're very close friend so Fitz's younger I've known him since he was a baby but when he came back to Arkansas he was head football coach at San Jose State University one of the few african-american had put ball coaches in Division one and has written a book but wanted to come back home and came to Arkansas Baptist College but one of the things that he focused on there was delta literacy and he has been a great force for the Delta region of our state so please welcome our moderator the president of Arkansas Baptist College dr. Fitzgerald Hill not your heel good morning honor to be here with you today and to move you through this panel discussion on education in the Delta I have a distinguished panel with me that I will give a brief introduction and I'll ask them to kind of really explain themselves to you all what they're actually doing in their organization in describing exactly what they do so I'll give a brief introduction and we'll move forward in the interest of time first we have dr. Richard epinasty who has a vector director of the Arkansas Association Arkansas Association of education administrators next we have dr. Lawrence be Alexander Rex just mentioned as a knife chance of university of arkansas pine bluff then we have dr. tmartn Goucher serves as Deputy Commissioner of the Arkansas Department of Education working with legislators and school district on educational related issues also joining today's miss tracee and Nelson who serves as exact directions or occasional sociation mr. scotch shirey is the founder and executive director of the kilt delta public schools and finally we have mr. Scott Smith currently serves as executive director of the Arkansas public school resource center and when Rex called and asked if I would be involved and when I talked to him I said Rex what what actually what you want me to as moderator of this panel discussion what points or deliverables would you like for me to have he said fit such I just want a really frank discussion with the panel on how we can improve educational issues in the Delta from grades K through 12 and and even afterwards as a post-secondary education leader so when I thought about when I came back here in 2005 after 20 years of coaching and I was really astounded by something I heard I was picked up the Arkansas business journal and I was going through and azhar dhon on TV in 2005 my true realization of the problems in the Delta really hit me head-on when I saw what the president of toyota said that they wanted to put a plant in marion arkansas and he said it was really came down really wanted to do it in the Delta but said that he could not do so because of economic reasons behind it because the literacy level was so low that it would cost him over 3 million dollars to go back and make manuals pictorial manuals because the people in the region couldn't read I said are you serious I've just come back from Silicon Valley and I just couldn't believe it but what I realized that literacy is it's not sexy and a lot of times people can function in those capacities and you don't even know that they're illiterate and I did as a coach I often time recruiting young student athletes who had coped their way to cut through high school and then they were put out and then they would drop out and so I really wanted to do something very different and that's why as Rex mentioned I you know from that deal i said you know man let's do something to make literacy sexy and that's when i went to you a TV at the time i went to Grambling at the time and you know i went to arkansas literacy council because i think if we're going to do this you can't do it in silos you have to do it together it has to be a collaborative effort you can't stand alone if you're going to really attract this problem and considers what I realize a dropout will drop in some work and the issue must be that often times when you can't read you will drop out and so the Delta classic for literacy was as such to start literacy centers in the Delta there were 19 counties in 2006 that didn't have centers and adults to learn to read if you decided you wanted help so that was why she make it sexy you won't get 40,000 people to a chemistry lecture but you'll get them to a football game so what we started doing was tricking taking a dollar of every ticket and we start funding literacy centers in the Delta so we were able to create 11 literacy centers as a result of a football game which everybody like the band everybody like the tailgating and everybody did that so that one's the initiative because for me if you create a literacy centers you help people get a GED and of course i would buy I say get a GED and enrolled in ABC it was that simple but we just want people to go school we want people to be engaged in higher education we won't don't want people are dropping out and we realize what happens when you test reading at the third grade reading level and they're not doing well you have a tendency to better project the incarceration rate 10 to 15 years later so today we're going to talk about solutions and deliverables within our communities within the organizations that we serve and i'm going to ask dr. Abernathy if he would speak to his perspective of developing educational programs in the Delta that truly addresses the needs of those and things that we may can do so you may know him as a resource and his organization as a resource that you can reach out to for more information as we move forward we have a game plan for this for the next 40 minutes it could change and we have to check and the string may go differently but we're going to try to flow as quickly as we can so we'll have these outcomes and deliverables so at the end we'll take a few questions and then we can we can respond to that accordingly dr. Abernathy thank you dr. hill and it is an honor-based come down here and visit with you a little bit about some of the issues around the Delta and more importantly by where we think schools and are going and need to go so i'll be honest i'm excited right now but the future of Education state of Arkansas we as administrators and I represented school administrators superintendents principals specialist supervisors and cetera all across the state and we work with those groups around state but I'm excited about where education is going for several years we have requested and asked that that we change our emphasis and education and not not try to force everyone to go to a four-year college degree program we realize that is important in my coma state it is important we still need to have those kids with their elbow able to go into 10 but we're miss a large population out there that's not going to obtain a four-year college degree because I don't see the relevance and the jobs aren't available out there that obtained that but we've not gotten any traction the last Wilson governor Hutchinson is an office he's kind of changed that focus we have a new commissioner of education who understands the direction of governor would like to go and we have a new director of ace dr. Childers so I think you see those groups working together and pulling together and to where we're able to change the direction of some of our schools and summer programs I've heard several times dr. hill today talking about trying to develop regional solutions that is the answer what works here we're not working fine blood or we're not working married we're not working in Northwest Arkansas or other area of the state every region has to develop their own solution and that's exactly what a senator Jane English passed back in 2015 legislative session set up these regional advisory group and so I'm excited about some of the direction those are going Mike and I'm Mike merchants and I've had an opportunity to attend several these advisory meetings and the solutions that's coming from these groups I think's going to have a big impact on the state of Arkansas let me just talk to you a couple of things off also hurt but growing your own and some of the concerns about getting people to move to your community if you go back and look at from a regional solution or growing your own have those employees in those schools boring partnerships together along with institutions of higher end you have to have them involved in this game as well but that's where the real solution is going to be we have and you don't have to go out and replicate these systems because there's it samples all across the state of Arkansas in the Delta west memphis there did an outstanding job over there developing programs for their students in conjunction with their business and hire it over there where those kids were leaving high school certified in going to be a real contributor to economic development over there if you not looked at what West Memphis ADUN you did go look at that and contact them because they're done a phenomenal job for those kids and you if you want to wait until kids graduate from high school you've missed the boat that the kids and even I'll go back you need to be involving kids in middle school you know you can't be what you can't see how many kids in middle school know what career opportunities are available to them out there not very many they need to be going out and looking at some of these career off businesses need to be coming in those schools talk to those kids about the career opportunities and then as we go on through high school they need to involved in higher education informant current credit programs where when they leave high school they're not only having a high school diploma but I also have some provincial out there that enables them to be able to go to work and they was in bill go to hire it for your college program whatever their goals are but that's how you're going to solve the problem Kurt least help solve the problem in the Delta but partnerships businesses communities higher in k-12 working together and I would strongly encourage that process as we as we go forward as many areas you do thanks dr. Burnett I really appreciate talking about the partnerships I can remember and many of you part part of that collaboration with sunday school i remember that i can remember mr. LJ jackson my Sunday school teacher in arkadelphia his wife was actually my fourth grade teacher and it was amazing we had to read that when it came around and everybody had to read and sunday school and I can remember so vividly somebody who was challenged reading I said baby we want you to come in on wednesday night so we can help you with your reading skills those are the type of things that we must do because they said if you wait time for third or fourth grade we've probably missed it because those kids are not inspired you don't drop out what you're good at you quit what you're not good at because when you drop out if you couldn't ball you still play ball but you think school is not cool that's not it it's because you had been good in so we got to make sure that we engage our students in a way that as he said what just as the region what may work for one student might not work for another and it's so important as we stress these collaboration partnerships we all know students don't know don't care how much you know today know how much you care and that's so important at all organizations show love so what I brings me up to mr. Scott Smith who I've served on this board a few years ago with Arkansas public resource on what he's doing then I'm going to ask once he finished for mr. Scott shirey to go right in and tell about an application of the kilt program mr. Scott Smith dr. hill thank you appreciate this opportunity to be with you today I would just note that i'm one of the panel members who actually grew up in the Delta and so I've got this close to my heart and it's a very sincere issue to me let me just tell you a quick story and my previous life was chief counsel for the state board Department of Education for a good number of years and had the unfortunate duty of walking the state through a lot of consolidations and annexations you may remember that point in time in our history and was some distressed about that because I grew up in a small rural community I've got a lot of ants and family members who are teachers and stuff and while we were going through that I had a hard time going home because folks didn't quite understand that I had a job to do it wasn't my plan it was legislators plan and I was just trying to help carry it out but one day in particular when I was pretty down about it I called dr. Cochrane some of you may remember dr. Cochrane he was a very distinguished professor at the University of Arkansas in public education and was kind of lamenting what we were going through and he said I just want you to do something for me real quick go find a map that was at the Department of Education that was done in the 1930s by the VN US Department of Education and call me back I went and found it quickly reported to him what I saw and he said what this is as a map of where schools were located in 1930s and i pointed out dr. Cochrane there were a whole lot more schools in the 1930s then there are today and there are a whole lot more schools in East and South Arkansas then there are today certainly more there certainly more then than there are now than Northwest Arkansas he said you know why that is and i said no sir I do not he said because cotton was keying in the 1930s and we had an ovarian based economy he's no longer with us but he told me one thing I want you to always remember a great economy usually supports a great public education system a medium level economy usually supports a medium level public education system and a poor level economy usually to support poor level public education system he said that's not always true but we find that to be true more true more often than not I say that to say this he also said at that time he thought the state of Arkansas was evolving to certain major economic centers around the state and communities were going to Phi to be one of those centers and it was very important that public education tried to partner with economic partners ap SRC serves both traditional school districts and charter schools and we work very hard to leverage our relationships with gates Waltons other players around the country and the state to try and bring educational resources to bear to support schools to bring educational choice and opportunities where it's needed in many ways the one thing I would leave you right off the bat is that if we don't have a public education system that's relevant to jobs and economy then we're faintly and that's a major issue in the Delta and we've got to refocus and retool and we are the work that dr. Abernathy is talking about at West Memphis we help support that help create that we're very proud of that we've also helped bring organizations like Kip in and we're very proud of what they're doing and I'll let mr. schary speak about that promote good morning pleasure to be here and I'll try to be brief there's be M&M Scaccia an executive director of Kipp Delta currently we have six schools across eastern Arkansas serving 1,400 students and i'll start with sort of one point and give three stories to illustrate that we have to stop looking at the Delta as the place where challenges need to be addressed we need to start looking at the Delta as places where solutions can be I think that's a big paradigm shift at least in my 15 years here people alw ys want to address the challenges first and not the solutions that are already taken place I'll give three quick examples we first started in 2002 i went to the community people looked at me and said these kids aren't going to college what do you what are you trying to do sending these children to college and nationally we know ten percent of low-income kids end up graduating from college where if you're wealthy you have an eighty percent chance grab graduated from college alright so how do we change those numbers so six years after our founding class we have nearly eighty percent of our alumni are persisting in college and with our early founding class we're going to have close to fifty percent of them earn a four-year college degree which again is over four times the national average there are solutions there you think that the second piece where are you going to find talent in the Delta well you have to develop the talent we first started in with myself and three teachers it was the same question because how are you ever going to find teachers how are you ever going to find leaders well that's small school we started in Helena Arkansas has now spawned ten ten liters five of them are still running schools in Arkansas for us one's run in a school in Jackson Mississippi ones run into school and gas to North Carolina you know another one's a director curriculum for myself but when you look at it who would have thought that Helena could have been an exporter of school leadership running grade school not in Arkansas but in other places in the country so it's a it's a paradigm shift we have to think about the third example I'll throw out there and this one is the one that's most exciting to me you know when you look at all the little rock news and the competition between charters and public schools and all of the fights that if that happened there's actually a great example collaboration happening in Helena west-allen it's taken a long time to get there but this year we partnered the last two years we've partnered with the local the local school system between our school and their school there's 150 seniors graduating this year 140 of them have applied to college just think about that for a second and then 70 over seventy five percent from the local school have been accepted in over ninety percent from our school have been accepted to college we're talking about Helen Arkansas so when you think a hundred forty out of 150 kids over ninety percent of the students there are applying and trying to get to go to college that's transformational change that's happening before us we have to celebrate it and I think there's examples of collaboration that the rest of the state can look at and say hey we not we don't need to just look at the Delta as a place of challenge but as a place of opportunity in solution and the last thing I'll throw out there because i had the great opportunity of serving on the steering committee for the forward steering committee which was a group that put together a comprehensive plan for education in the state of arkansas if you haven't seen it go to ford arkansas org but a lot of the things that are in that book talk about what we can do to uplift education throughout our entire state and a lot of those things are starting to happen in Delta right now we need to embrace them and carry forward thank you so much i want to make mention that with mr. Smith actually we create a partnership and what they're mentioning the collaborations are so critical mr. Smith came to me some six seven years ago and said would we be interested at Arkansas Baptist colleges is having a charter school on our campus and I said well how would it fit and I said what does it fit our mission of our institution what population would have served and he started saying no this is one for at-risk high probability of dropout and that really struck a chord with me because that's the mission of our institution is so through partnerships with premier through Scott's organization we do have what we call it dropout prevention charter school because in my heart I said if you're at the bottom I think you need more than one choice it's amazing that with your top of the scale you have a lot of opportunities but sometimes just because you're down at the bottom don't mean you should be categorized to go one place and so now when students in Little Rock public schools looking for an alternative as they mentioned then we have that option for them which we guarantee automatic admission into Arkansas Baptist College as a way you know to keep students involved in education process and through that looking at the two-headed monster which dr. Alexander will dress later on through post-secondary education but also realizing in our community we have in particular young african-american males in stem for two percent dropout rate of young men in the area and so we as an organization went to the state and and requested a GED center within our community as a way to engage adult learners so to address that two-headed monster if you want to still have traditional education through the charter school you have that but if you're a non-traditional learner you have a way to go to school to get your GED as well so we have to find solutions as mr. schary mentioned rather than just identifying place a challenge because with every challenge there is an opportunity and so that's the way we have to be embraced our thinking and with that I'm going to as dr. gotcha to speak well how legislature the state government can contribute you know quickly you know not not not you know in making these turnarounds and and and and making things happen so we can we can help catch people up in a very quickly matter doctor gotcha you bet thank you dr. hill and thank you Simmons bank mr. Nelson for inviting us and and it's an honor to be a part of this pan and I love that word expeditiously that's online I actually use that word earlier with mr. Nelson how can we allow this process to go a little more expeditiously because I know we're close to lunchtime and so we're aware of that but when I think about the connections that I've made with many of this panel I'm very encouraged folks by by seeing the relationships that have already been built across the state the phrase that I've used often is we're seeing the blurring of the lines between higher end career ed and then public education because we're recognizing for our state to grow for our state to succeed we've got to work together and partner together so when I think about the question that dr. Hill presented to me and how can we address legislators and state government part of what I do is deputy commissioner I build relationships between our our districts in our state and also building relationships with our state legislatures and that's a delicate balance because sometimes the needs of demands of one group or not the desires and needs of the other group and so it's a delicate balance before it to work expeditiously and sometimes it can't be you've got to build the relationships dr. Lupo at the earlier panel mentioned that I thought that was encouraging because you hear that a lot when it talked when we talk about economic development across our state building relationships folks cannot be absent for that so number one we've got to build relationships and that is going to occur with our legislatures our business folks and of course the educators number two we've got to identify and remove the barriers I know that mr. Smith and dr. Abernathy and I've been on I've been a part of some other forums across the state talking about curry read and how we can break down those barriers and that's a phrase we use often because if we don't confront barriers how can we remove them so we've got to identify and we've got to remove these barriers and thirdly these initiatives folks these initiatives these regional initiatives have got to be inspired by you they can't be inspired by the educational trends that are occurring across the nation in the latest greatest article that comes out and ed weekly or something else these initiatives have got to be inspired by you and then the last thing I'll say and I'll hand it back I was interested by the word deliverables and it dawned on me that a deliverable can only be delivered by the community if the if the one who's receiving it wants it you can't receive I'm not going to receive a package at my door that I did not order nor do I want so those deliverables have got to be received by the ones that ordered that deliverable and that is inspired by you thank you thank you dr. gotcher does is so that's so true and then we're going to roll quickly with Miss tracee and Nelson and ask her to join in from an Arkansas Education Association's perspective and how her organization can work to improve those initiatives thank you and good afternoon we're there good afternoon everybody and thank you to Simmons bank mr. Nelson for this essential discussion I want to acknowledge in the room the president of the Arkansas Education Association Brenda Robinson who is a teacher in Pulaski County and serving as president the aea has always been involved in education in Arkansas and lifting up great public schools throughout the state for students and we continue to do that we continue to collaborate with all of the partners that recognize that students are the future of our state and we are committed to quality educators in every single classroom in our schools in Arkansas we advocate most of the time in collaboration in with many of my colleagues on the panel to fulfill that promise of public education and preparing every student in Arkansas for college and career and that our members who are educators in classrooms as I said our United as a voice to achieve that promise last month for example we collaborated with comcast and legislators to address literacy in our read across america program and we had a number of legislators across the state who participated in that effort to highlight the importance of literacy across Arkansas we have a professional development program and in november of last year we had over 1,300 educators from across Arkansas participate many of them and what is one of the sessions that we offered was to focus on schools that have academic challenges or distress and those are the ways we try and work not just on you know the shiny pretty things but the important things to help evolve and elevate the importance of students and their success across the state of Arkansas we also partner with teacher preparation program university of arkansas pine bluff is one of our partners to help ensure that the teacher preparation programs meet the needs of our students and help them matriculate into classrooms across the state and then we partner to support and mentor those teachers so that they stay relevant in school buildings so those are some of the things that we do there are some very difficult issues that we work on but we know that those solutions will not come without educators as partners in discussions with parents with administrators and I'm with legislators thank you thank you so much miss Nelson up i'm going to ask dr. alexander now as a postdoc leader of post-secondary education often times in dealing with students who may arrive at our doors sometimes under prepared for the rigors of higher education and but you can't close your doors you have to keep access open for those students and that can present challenges when you deal with better federal regulations tied around title for graduation rates default rates all those type of things i call it high risk high reward but as an institution serving this region he has a calling the passion to do that we'll ask dr. Alexander to go ahead and share alike but without with our people here today about how you addressing that thank you dr. hill good afternoon everyone and I'm delighted to be here as well on this program which is very important to all of us to be on this distinguished panel with a number of our partners and we do work in concert together on a number of things I'd like to begin by just making a couple of points one is that particularly since we have kept on the panel I did want to mention that for those who didn't know that a last year Kip put out a list of top 10 institutions and universities in the nation who are doing right by the kids and we are pleased and proud to have been listed on that list the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff they had some very prestigious institutions from across this nation on that list and we are proud of the partnership that we have with Kip and the kids that that come from that that area in Helena and we feel like we are certainly contributed significantly in that way as a leader in in higher education I we have to higher education institutions and pine bluff see our College and the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff I just want to mention something that ties this together in terms of the theme of the conference because when i think of the Delta i think of economic development and i would like to speak about just for a couple of minutes about higher education institutions as engines economic development I think so often we think of colleges is just places where students go and they go through classes and they get a degree and move on or they get some credential and move on that is true in some cases but universities provide so much more in terms of the economic development of course they provide this kind of of credentialing and in doing so they are a part of workforce development and I sometimes hear Workforce Development talked about not in terms of four-year institutions or colleges but it is certainly a part of it and i know that you mentioned earlier the initiative that was started with Senator English and that we're very proud with CR to be a part of that initiative to receive the initial grants and will be going forward in partnership with the local schools and businesses in the community as part of that area so we really are breaking down the walls and barriers and putting together program a program that's really focused on stem that is that wolf that is preparing students who are in school right now in this area for jobs that will be there in the future secondly in terms of economic development I'd like to mention that at the university of arkansas pine bluff we do have an economic research development center that is actively engaged and helping to start new businesses helping to expand business and helping community economic development in the larger area we have a new director there by the name of Jeff pulliam please if you have the opportunity connect with him contact him and reach out to him third universities contribute to communities in significant ways and they have the opportunity at a university like uapb to obtain research grants even beyond that so we have begun to expand our reach through reach through a reach through research through the research enterprise through faculty staff extension workers and researchers who are engaged in areas just that span the spectrum from biotechnology to nanotechnology and nanoscience a--'s and these are not just pie in the sky things these are things that are real that cut our cutting edge when it comes to advancements in agriculture in this region for the Delta so we are and we want to have our partners in with us as we approach the federal government as we approach corporations as we approach these opportunities in with it with a united front for bringing resources into this area that can effectively impact this area for the long term and last but not least I've been engaged at uapb and a strategic and forward thinking process for our University and our bottom line is growth we want to grow the university of arkansas pine bluff because growing the university means growing economic development we're going to grow it in size we're going to grow it in stature and I know at the beginning of this show of the our moderator a Rex Nelson said that bigger is a bigger isn't always better or something like that and that's that's so often true but we don't want to just be bigger we want to be bigger and better and I think that that's that's important that we focus as well and we zero in on the quality of he things that we do at the University the quality of the instruction and that will impact the quality of our graduates that will then come back and pay big dividends surely we have students from inside the state of Arkansas and outside the state of Arkansas sick more than sixty percent of our students come from the state of Arkansas many of them from this region of Arkansas Central Arkansas and south where many or most of our students and architects I'll come from and those students come and those are the students that we know we can develop them and there will likely remain in Arkansas and and go on to develop businesses and work as professionals and others in Arkansas then there are students of almost 40% of them that we get from out of state and you know some people like to turn up their nose at the out-of-state student but let me tell you at the out-of-state student does it increases and helps us to grow as a community out-of-state students surely they come in they pay some of them pay a larger premium because they have to pay the out-of-state rate so they help the university but when their parent when they come so do their parents and their family and others and they bring dollars and they spend their dollars in our communities and you know their dollars from out-of-state spend the same way as the dollars that spend instead and they enhance and develop the quality of our community so to sum up and round up I think what we need bottom line in a community such as this is a good old swap what did he saying squat he said we need a good old swap you know a SWOT analysis we've all we're all engaged in SWOT analysis in our businesses and we do our strengths weaknesses are opportunity these and threats we've heard a couple of speakers say earlier today what we need is we need to build on our strengths that's exactly right we need to build on our strengths but we need to identify our strains but we need to identify them as partners and identify the common strength for the Delta and for the region have agreement on them and lock arms and walk together with that SWOT analysis the strange weakness and opportunities and I want to commend the work of Simmons first for bringing this conference together and commend the work of George mattress and mr. Tommy may who are through the go forward Pine Bluff program is really bringing together people in terms of the SWOT analysis that I'm talking about but I think it ought not stopping in there and some people like to say well we analyzed that 10 years ago we did it 20 years ago it needs to be a constantly renewing process every two to three years we need to go back and look at our strengths and weaknesses and identify our progress thank you dr. Alexander economic development so critical to the sustainability of higher education public education community development from in many many many ways we have a few minutes to take a couple questions on my help my my homie Rex get back on schedule and so what we'll do we'll want to know if there are any questions from the audience from this distinguished Palance you have in front of you right now if you would like to take any question we have a question right here and you can direct your question to the panel of your choice good afternoon this is for anybody the answer I heard you guys discussed earlier we talked about the dropout rates and are young men not finished in school and I also understand that there has to be ordering rules in place at the schools i work for juvenile court and my question is to start out even though there are the dropper Edwards we have many of our young men that are facing expulsion or an hour expelled because of zero tolerance policy because of fights and having drugs at school and nowadays it seems like many traders are so quick to pull the trigger instead of taking more time out to work with a student so my question is what advice can you are give about other alternatives to keep our young men at school let me take a quick stab at that if I may as dr. Abernathy alluded to earlier we've we've done some very interesting work here lately with some different models around conversion charters in school districts and thanks to his help also we got some legislation passed with regards to waivers which allows school folks flexibilities to create innovative ideas and to work with partnerships out there let me go to the model that he referenced at West Memphis and actually we've done about 30 of these around the state since then we we went in and created conversion charters at the school district they're part of the district the focus was in West Memphis is that look we know we're about the top five or ten percent of our population are going to go and unfortunately we know we're about the bottom five percent of our population may end up but we really don't have a good strategy for everybody in between and how can we make sure that these students are tax producers rather than tax consumers at the end of the day once they graduate we we went and put in several levels of flexibility around these models and we brought in key partners such as FedEx allied health the casino gaming industry not on the gambling part but on the hospitality side and some other areas out there that's a big industry if you don't know that already and a lot of opportunities and West Memphis saw a drastic turn around and change with their alternative learning environments and programs and so much so they had done a lot of work in light of dr. Hills story about Toyota mid-south community college over there had done a lot of work the trucking industry is really huge over there as an exchange with Memphis and all of that area and just created really great opportunities and turned that thing around in a lot of ways I went over and did a follow-up visit they were showing us around and there was one student that they had referenced had really been a problem student for them and created a lot of issues but was now their star student and had about five trucking companies competing much like a college or university would compete over an athlete to try and get that student to go to work for them and so when we took a break I just went over there and kind of asked him you know what was the difference for him in a lot of ways and he kind of looked at me and I thought flippantly at first said what's the difference for you and I thought well he hadn't changed that much you know but after I began to visit with him he said look the way we were doing it it wasn't relevant to me and I couldn't see a future for me or my family and you know I needed to be able to help my family right now not five years down the road not so many years down the road and I was I was driving back to Little Rock that afternoon I kind of thought you know I think that young man probably has it figured out for most of us we need to be able to show these students a path it's going to have direct impact for them right now and be able to show them opportunities and a reason why an education is relevant to them and he was doing algebraic equations around Pistons that go in an engine but he supposedly couldn't do algebra in the classroom okay so i think there's ways that we can go about doing this stuff and bring it back to the basics of why we really have an education in a lot of ways and that's to provide opportunity and hope for students going forward and i'm gonna let dr. god should speak to that too but i think the critical point that we must we must recognize in in this transition from this population it just that you were speaking of is mentorship it's so important particularly you know when we're looking at the fatherless generation that we're dealing with and often time mom is the primary breadwinner and out working and so you you have people raising themselves and so as a community you know we can't look at that student and said you know what problems are bringing we have to sense of community how we can get involved with that students life from other organizations from mentoring programs to because oftentimes when kids can see what they can be they will engage that process and so I think that's important that that we engage those from a community from from churches from other organizations to get involved with those youth and let them see we do love you we do care about you I'm gonna let you speak to that doctor chillin in Scott Smith did a great job of showing the opportunities that are available for kids and but something that struck me on your question because it's a question that is a that's rested on the desk of Commissioner key and myself several times and some of our takeover districts where he serves as the board of directors we get recommendations for expulsion for for many students and one that broke my heart sir was a young lady obviously she made a grave mistake but she was in her senior year with over a 3 point something grade point average and we denied that expulsion request because we knew that expelling a senior for the remainder of the year it was likely we were sending that young lady down a road that could be very unsuccessful so we've got to change the shift into thinking of the way our administrators think but folks many times are our school boards are bound by their policies and we have got to help school board's understand that policies can be changed because if our goal is to educate these students then let's educate them and when we send them home when we send them home in folks I'm telling you as a former superintendent sometimes we do have to send them home there are still ways through digital learning opportunities that we can send them home and still provide them in education so we've got a shift the way we think with our administrators and with our school boards so I want to just mention piggyback on dr. cultures point of view and that is we have to change our thinking from a punitive stance to one that says we must invest in our children they must have a chance to make mistakes and still be mentored supported and educated we're going to take one last question then we're going to break for lunch Libby good afternoon Ryan Watley here have a question or more so thought piggybacking on mentor and the behavioral issues in the school in inner cities in inner-city schools particularly more they have a lot of segregation of gender we have your all boys and our girls school how we thought about that approach in Arkansas does that exist we have our boys all school our girls school in the state of Arkansas when it was mentioned earlier that you know what works for one area doesn't work for another but when we are approaching poverty in a lot of these areas in education kind of synonymous with poverty and behavior issues do you guys think that approach will work or is that something in the state of Arkansas that we have evidence of being working we do have some evidence of it there there has been a charter school that was an all-boys residential school that was created in in Little Rock at one point time the school was wildly successful unfortunately the person who was involved in it was not and the school suffered as a result of that there is a proposal on the table as I understand it now for a girls school that's being proposed by someone in the next application cycle of innovation innovative schools and so yes we we do know that there's been some success with those models and there are approaches around the country that you can look in there there have been research on that kind of mixed results but it's a solution that a community or local school wants to try I think that they should have the right to try that I'm gonna go back on the discipline issue just a little bit because it's real easy to say we won't keep all kids in school we're going to keep all kids learning and we absolutely do but by the same token there has to be certain standard out there certain rules out there that that common conduct has to come in and blow Scott mentioned about the alternative learning programs that may be a way to get a kid in education the biggest thing that hope you picked up on Scott said it has to be relevant in flirting is relevant to kid they're probably not going to misbehave dr. hill and in several I'm several of you have protocol in athletics you probably wanted to behave in school because you were there was something relevant to your education makes you wanna be there we need to find out what's relevant to each one of these kids out there and hopefully that would be the way of changing behavior one other thing I want to bring out schools are under-resourced when it comes to dealing with behavioral issues we need behavioral specialists involved these problems we need to work on the whole child social workers need to be involved in school we have issues that our counselors are not able to deal with we need those outside experts bill come in and help us and help with those kids and help those families in order to so their behavior can't change and conform to what society usually suspects where they can stay in school and learn that's absolutely with those points we're going to conclude this confidence give our panel around of applause I'm grateful to RIT to mr. X Nelson for allowing me to moderate this this panel discussion it to be a part of this conference thank you to Simmons banks for for making this happen and we're so grateful and hopefully you house and deliverables out of here today or you have contact information that you can reach out to these organizations so you can find what's relative for your community thank you and God bless each and every one you