For that most important of lessons — that life is not fair — look no further than the plight of public schools.

This week was a rocky one for the Little Rock School District, an institution I’ve loved since I entrusted my babies to them at Rockefeller Early Childhood Center. I still love LRSD now that those boys have grown into strapping high schoolers, one at Central and the other at Parkview.

There’s always lots of noise from pearlclutchers about failing public schools and chaotic learning environments and yada yada. The background noise doesn’t shake my faith in the LRSD family that potty trained my babies, helped identify and manage learning challenges, saw my boys through the COVID-19 pandemic, taught them how to play football and saxophone, and generally helped raise up these delightful almost-adults who are smart and promising and good citizens.

But nobody’s perfect. Over the past five days, there’ve been a couple of gun scares and a flap about potential Title IX violations at Central.

At Parkview, it’s come to light that a young volleyball coach was disciplined for some brazen boundary crossings with students. That coach, Kendahl Davenport, is the daughter of LRSD Assistant Superintendent Shana Loring, who oversees high schools in the district.

On Thursday evening, the district released documentation of the investigation by trained security team members. They found no evidence of the alleged sexual impropriety some Parkview students had been gossiping about, but they did find some pretty ugly infractions that make the school and district administration look pretty bad. Being in a locked office with a male student is not a good idea for a female educator. Posting pictures of your favorite students to a private Instagram account is not a good idea. Writing passes to get kids out of class so they can come hang out with you in the gym? Very stupid.

The district released the investigation without a lot of huff, which is to their credit. You can read it here.

Davenport got a three-day suspension for her infractions, prompting some understandable questions about whether there was some special treatment here, both in Davenport’s hiring as a fresh-out-of-college newbie with no teacher certification in 2023, and in the seemingly slap-on-the-wrist consequences for wildly unprofessional behavior. Is it awkward for the Parkview principal to supervise the daughter of his boss? Of course it is. There’s no nepotism policy on the planet that’s strong enough to render this situation foolproof.

Davenport is pulling down more than $74K a year for a job that has her teaching one health class, overseeing a peer mentor program and otherwise filling her days with coaching stuff and planning periods. That may be common for high school coaches, but teachers with master’s degrees and decades of experience who are teaching six or seven courses are making less. The Parkview volleyball coach who preceded Davenport was making about $86,000, but had decades of classroom experience and was putting in a full day of geometry instruction before she clocked in for coaching duties.

None of this is a good look for a district that’s laying off staff and cutting programs, and that’s putting it mildly.

So, yeah. This week called for some tough love and a stiff spine as the Arkansas Times newsroom rifled through a police report, anonymous tips and FOI responses to try to answer questions about why the internet was losing its mind over the Parkview volleyball coach.

The heartbreaking thing about accountability is that it’s not a requirement for everybody. Had accusations like the ones surrounding Davenport been made at a private school, you and I would never know a thing about it. We function in a system that helps even private schools that accept millions in public money hide behind their tall gates, acting as if they’re beyond reproach, because who can prove otherwise?

It’s tough to feel good at the end of a work week spent nagging, pestering and generally terrorizing good people doing the lord’s work, all so that I could put together some news stories that I think we can all agree that we hate. I sure hate it!

I hate it so much that I couldn’t sleep last night. That actually worked out fine, because my high school senior musician is a member of Director Anthony Wyrick‘s unbeatable Parkview Nation and the school’s jazz ensemble. As such, he required a 1:15 a.m. pick-up when their school bus rolled back into town after a gig in Bentonville. Watching the rumpled teen musicians stumble out into the early morning with their horns and drums, after a quick trek to show Northwest Arkansas how it’s done, was among the innumerable proud moments for this public school mom who thinks our system of education for every child, all together, is the absolute best thing this country has to offer.

And that’s why we have to do it. As icky as it all is, the situation at Parkview forces some tough questions that we have to address head on. Let the sunshine in to disinfect anything that needs disinfecting, and then we can go forward.

Superintendent Jermall Wright sent district staff a message Friday morning that speaks well of his humanity and leadership under friendly fire. He acknowledged the bad press, urged teachers to stay focused during this season of testing and spring fever, and encouraged them to spread some positivity.

“The story of LRSD is not defined by a single week,” he wrote. Thank goodness for that. TGIF.