Education Week - February 22, 2017 - 12

LESSONS FROM
A LEADER

Learning Is the
Purpose
Educators must constantly
be willing to reorganize
and adapt in order to
better connect each
student to learning.

Empower
Teachers
Assuring teachers a voice
and welcoming their
professional contributions
engages ownership of, and
advocacy for, the constant
pursuit of educational
excellence for all students.

Compete for
Every Student
Schools that innovate,
personalize, and
customize learning for
each student will foster
deep support and loyalty
from parents.

superintendent-a job he's had for more than three
decades.
A tall man with a thick Southern accent who lives on
a cattle farm, Rollins, 69, does not fit the image some
might have of an innovative and inclusive educational
leader. But teachers, civic leaders, and superintendents
throughout the state say his can-do attitude and efforts
to recruit and train talented teachers and school leaders
have inspired other school systems, even those facing
less dramatic change.
"He doesn't accept failure from himself or anyone
else," says Tom Kimbrell, a former Arkansas commissioner of education and current superintendent of the
Bryant, Ark., district. "If the wall is 12 feet of concrete,
and you know you can't knock it down with your shoulder, you either get the tools to do it, or you find a way
around it. I think he accepted the fact that those changes
were coming, and he could either find ways to lead as a
change agent or he was going to accept that he couldn't
be successful-and that just wasn't in his DNA."
Rollins didn't always plan to be an educator. After
graduating with a bachelor's degree in biology and
chemistry from Lyon College in Batesville, Ark., he did
cancer-research work at the University of Oklahoma with
the aim of becoming a doctor. Scrambling to find a job
after his lab's grant funding lapsed, Rollins called the
superintendent of North Little Rock schools and secured
a job as a science teacher.
"So I made that transition from the biology lab to the
classroom and I actually fell in love with teaching," he
says. "I never went back."
Prior to settling into work in Springdale, Rollins taught
at the junior high and high school levels before he became a principal in North Little Rock. As he advanced in
his career, he earned a master's and a doctorate from the
University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.

'Teach Them All'
Rollins' unusually long tenure at the helm has been a
time of great change for Springdale.
The district has built 22 schools since he arrived. At one
point, leaders planned at least one new school building a
year as the region was deemed one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the country.
Under Rollins, the district's leadership team has landed
grants to finance innovative projects. That includes a
2014 federal Race to the Top grant of $26 million that the
district is using to launch a high school that focuses on
personalized learning, its 31st school.
Amid that growth, the district had to conquer some
major challenges to embrace its changing student
population. More than 55 percent of Springdale's student
body are children who are not proficient in English and
71 percent qualify for free and reduced-price lunches.
As leaders saw the transformation on the horizon, they
avoided making excuses and sought ways to engage new
students and address their needs, Rollins says.
"For the first 10 years, it was just tremendous," he
says. "There were years when we would have hundreds
of immigrant children and their families come into the

Education Week Leaders To Learn From 2017

district. So you begin to think about initiatives that will
help you connect with families. You need the entire family engaged in the education of any child."
Some newly arrived immigrant families are reluctant
to trust institutions like public schools, and linguistic and
cultural barriers can be big hurdles for engagement. And
Springdale, at least early on, didn't have an established
immigrant community-or even bilingual staff members-who could help broker those connections.
To help, the district hired Al "Papa Rap" Lopez in 2001,
a bilingual radio host known in the immigrant community. He is now a family-school liaison who appears at
public events and builds connections with newly arrived
families who might be reluctant to trust school officials.
Teachers who most closely work with English-learner
students developed a family-literacy program that brings
parents into schools to learn English alongside their
children, strengthening their own literacy while also
building connections with teachers and engaging in their
children's education.
At Har-Ber High School, older immigrant students
with less experience with formal education work in a new
arrival center, where they get up-to-speed on academic
English and life skills. Administrators, including Rollins,
also met with community and ministry leaders to ensure
that families felt welcome and understood at school.

Rollins has been a champion for the district's new arrivals from the outset, local leaders say, and a source of
reassurance to the its established families who expressed
concerns about how the rapid growth and shifting student body would affect their children's education.
"I think he's really helped diffuse a lot of the potential fear of change that communities experience when
they are fast growing and see tremendous change in
demographics," says Springdale Mayor Doug Sprouse,
who is also a former school board member. "I think
the school district has led the way. The school district
is really the first contact for many of the families who
came in."
During the height of the district's growth, Springdale
school board meetings were one part celebration and
two parts intense planning. They usually ended with a
sermon-like speech, delivered by Rollins in his syrupy
Southern accent. "Teach them all," he'd say, reminding
staff and board members that schools are responsible for
engaging and educating all children, regardless of their
background. To deliver on that, though, Rollins and his
team knew they needed to get all of the district's teach-

Education Week - February 22, 2017

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