front&center Gary Anderson

Superintendent fights for small-town school

By Amy Widner

LITTLE ROCK — Gary Anderson is not big on change.

He’s called the Batesville area home for 50 years. He has worked 40 years for Cushman School District and severed the last 22 as superintendent.

“Batesville is a great place to live,” Anderson said. “My family is here. It’s great. And of course, you can move anywhere these days if you want to, but every time I thought about moving, I just thought, ‘Now why would I want to do that? We’ve got it here as good as it gets.’”

Even so, until spring 2008, Anderson had planned to try something new: retirement. But then life threw him a curve ball. The state informed the school district in early 2008 that they had dipped below the 350 students required under state law for a school district to remain open. There was little the district could do to make the needed students materialize in the limited time left, and no miracles occurred.

Facing what had now become Cushman’s last school year, Anderson decided to stay.

“I had some other job opportunities ready, but I had to say no,” Anderson said. “It wouldn’t have been right.”

The thinking behind the Arkansas minimum enrollment standard is the kind of “progress” Anderson has a hard time understanding. However, Anderson has been able to recognize change - and work for it - when the cause was right.

He said in education, you have to be adaptable. And in all the areas Anderson could control - asidefrom the factory closures and stagnating economy in the area that caused residents and their schoolaged children to drift away - he has worked to help the district adapt to stay alive. Enrollment alone has caused Cushman’s closure, not fiscal distress, poor test scores or any of the other state and federal mandates many Arkansas schools struggle with. In fact, for 2007 Cushman Schools had some of the best standardized test scores in the sate.

Adaptation has been something Anderson has helped Cushman with since he first became superintendent, moving up from elementary principal. His promotion coincided with some state laws passed by then-Gov. Bill Clinton - laws that required smaller class sizes and upped the standards for student programming and teacher training, among other things.

Anderson was scared to death going into the position, knowing what he was going to have to help the district do, he said, but he did it anyway.

“We were facing the seemingly impossible,” Anderson said. “A lot of people had given up, but we always had a good, supportive school district. The school board, the community, the staff - we just stuck together while other districts just kind of imploded. We had lots of support and stuck together - otherwise we wouldn’t have made it this far.”

Anderson said a big part of that sticking together had to do with the fact that the grades are all on one campus. Campuses and individual programs didn’tcompete with each other for money because everyone was in it together. And as far as money was concerned, the community was always willing to give.

They never voted down a millage the school district asked them to approve, and the district had to ask them for a lot. Still, even with so much support, it was difficult, Anderson said.

“It was kind of like we were having to reinvent the wheel,” Anderson said. “Things that we take for granted now, like art classes, music classes, advanced programming. I didn’t sleep or eat for about three months.

“It was traumatic at the time. Other schools were consolidating all around us, and we were led to believe that we didn’t have much time. But we did it. We made it another 20 years. And this time a number, just an arbitrary number, is what finally got us.”

Cushman schools emerged with more programs than they had ever had before. Anderson, as a basketball player and Razorback fan - he coached Cushman’s basketball team for 12 years and played basketball himself until a year and a half ago - has been delighted with the arts and music programs that have emerged. He plays keyboard and collects sheet music and is proud to say that Cushman’s fine arts programs are top notch.

Anderson said that’s the kind of change that is good - fine arts programs, more sports, leadership groups like Future Business Leaders of America, advanced classes and vocational training.

He’s proud that Cushman schools have been able to keep their small-town feel and expand to offer students so much.

He said it’s easier for students to learn important leadership and life skills at smaller schools, where they are less likely to fall through the cracks.

“On 20 years, now we can’t imagine not having those programs,” Anderson said. “Now there’s something for all of them to do and a way for them to be somebody. That’s the important thing. They havea much bigger chance of success and more chances to be leaders, which leads to success later in life.

“That’s the biggest thing I have against consolidation. It dilutes their chances to participate,” Anderson said.

During the ’90s the district grew. All the things Cushman had done to improve became a draw for students and parents who used the free choice transfer option to come to Cushman.

But Anderson has had to keep a wary eye on numbers since the early 2000s when the state enacted the 350-enrollment minimum threshold.

When the jobs went, so did the students.

Anderson and the school board are working with neighboring school districts to try to work out an annexation deal that would keep an elementary school open at Cushman.

He said settling the school’s future is important for his staff and Cushman parents so that they can plan what to do next.

Plus there’s a little in it for himself. Like most educators - or anyone, for that matter - he wants to know that his work will live on.

“My great plan in life was to give the keys to somebody else,” Anderson said. “Then I’d be able to come back and visit, and say, ‘Y’all are working, and I’m retired.’ ... If we negotiate that elementary school, at least I’ll have some place to come back and visit. You’d just like to see something you work on continue on. Otherwise, it’s like a death.”

Even if that doesn’t work out, Anderson said he’s proud that Cushman has made it through all the challenges with pride and honor while so many districts around them have closed and smalltown Arkansas life is changing. They’ve been like the last of the Mohicans, he said.

“The main thing I’m proud of is we’re going to be able to go out without being in any type of trouble - not financial or score probation or anything,” Anderson said. “We’re taking the high road.”

Despite some of his own disappointment, Anderson has declared a this-is-not-a-funeral policy about this last year.

He’s told his remaining staff, the new teachers hiredto replace those who left and the 240 remaining students to have fun and make it a good year. Even so, he has a T-shirt in his office made by the students and staff that reads, “Cushman Schools, Forever in our Hearts, 1927-2009.”

As for Anderson’s own future, he’s having a tough time deciding between business or education - although he’s certain he wants to do something to keep himself busy and doesn’t think his reading and history hobbies will expand enough to fill the time.

He’s a charter member of the Faith-Hopewell Cumberland Presbyterian Church and has been treasurer/bookkeeper/general doer there since 1979, but that’s probably not going to cut it either.

He’s seen other educators retire, only to miss the school bells, the kids and the activity.

“I’m kind of the type that is going to have to be busy,” Anderson said. “I’m convinced that you have to keep busy, or you’re going to lose it.

“I’ve dabbled in business. I could have gotten out and done other things. But in business, the object is to make money. In the school business, it’s to make better people.

“This is what I do; this is what I know; this is what I think is important. I don’t know if you want to call it a calling. But it’s important enough. Helping people, that’s what it’s all about.”

Even as a college student and a 21-year-old in his first classroom, Anderson said he didn’t know much, but he already had an inkling about that calling.

“I always looked up to teachers,” Anderson said. “They were very respectable to me at the time - high school, college. Other people made more money, and I guess you could call that respectable, but I always admired teachers.

“When I first got my firstjob here at Cushman (as an elementary school teacher), and they gave me this room, I couldn’t have been happier.

I thought I was really somewhere. I thought I had made it. I didn’t make it rich, but I felt important to have a classroom given to me at Cushman,” Anderson said.

After all the years of helping Cushman adapt while at the same time fighting the change toward an Arkansas without small-town schools - did that initial feeling of privilege to be an educator ever change?

“No, it never did,” Anderson said.

- awidner@ arkansasonline.commatter of

fact Birth date: Dec.

25, 1946 Occupation: Cushman superintendent Family includes: Wife, Brenda; sons: Chris (married to Stephanie), Kyle (married to Rhonda) and Matt;

grandchildren: Jake, Caleb, Presley Kate, Brittni and Joey Hobbies: Razorback football, concerts, playing music (keyboard and trumpet), basketball, billiards and being with the grandkids I like to read: Any biography or historical publication My name comes from: the great actor, Gary Cooper (High Noon) Most people don’t know I’m: Not as serious as I appear. I really do enjoy a good time I cannot live without: Bread and to an extent Cokes (decaf), although I am attempting to do without When I was young I wanted: To be bigger. Now I want to be smaller What makes me mad: Drivers who do not use turn signals

Three Rivers, Pages 118, 119 on 10/12/2008