EXECUTIVE SESSION with Buddy Puckett

By Steve Brawner Editor

When Carl “Buddy”Puckett was 15 years old and a student at Poyen, he went to work for an auto body repair shop in nearby Malvern. The job would start him on a lifelong career, first painting cars and then managing people. He married the boss’s daughter and, together, they would raise three children.

He was elected to the Poyen School Board in 2009 and currently is its president. He was serving as president when Jerry Newton announced he would be retiring as superintendent in 2018 after 39 years in that position. Puckett and the board began the difficult process of replacing him, finally choosing Ouachita Superintendent Ronnie Kissire.

Other highlights of Puckett’s time on the school board have included building a new gymnasium – without debt or asking for a millage increase – and moving to a four-day school week this year.

Report Card sat down with Puckett at Poyen High School, where he once played center for the Indians, to talk about those subjects, and also what it’s like when the State Board of Education chair is your former math teacher.

What do you do for a living?

“I manage a body shop now, grew up in a body shop, automotive repair business, started when I was 15 years old, still got a passion for it, fixing a car and fixing it right all the way around. It’s really all I’ve known.”

What do you enjoy about that?

“I enjoy the painting side of it, the craftsmanship that is involved in repair- ing a car and making it look like it’s never been touched. Just that aspect all the way around. I want somebody to look at a car and have to really pay attention to it to see if it’s been repaired.”

There’s been a big push the past few years to move away from “everybody’s got to go to college” to career and technical education. Do your experiences affect how you look at that?

“It has with me. I didn’t get a full college education, but I’ve done what I loved, and I made good money. You can make good money, you can make a really good living using your hands, using your technical skills, not necessarily have to sit behind a desk. I still like to see children that go and further their educations. Some of them can’t. Some of them because of what they’re coming out of, whether it’s economic or social or whatever, there’s always a niche in there. There’s always something that can be done, and it’s something you can be proud of because you’ve done it.”

You’re basically from this community and stayed in this community your whole life, right?

“Yes, sir, within 10 miles of here is pretty much where I grew up.”

Tell me about one of your favorite math teachers.

“My math teacher was Mrs. Ouida Newton, and she’s on the State Board of Education. Pushed you to do better, but did it in a way that made you feel comfortable doing it and learning it. Excellent teacher. She knew how to explain everything – the complicated maths. She was in our Beta Club at that time when I was in school, which has been a long time ago. She could multitask. She’s a great lady. … She taught my wife, Kim, who graduated here in ’92, and my oldest daughter, Samantha, who graduated in 2012. My youngest daughter, she graduated in ’16. Mrs. Ouida got to teach both of them. My son’s not going to get the chance to be taught under her, but Mrs. Ouida moved up and is helping the whole state on the education part.”

Arkansas education is about to be really transformed with the LEARNS Act being passed. Do you think y’all are going to use her as a resource, and also maybe lobby her a little bit?

“Yes, sir. As a small school, small schools are always on the defensive. We think that when they do some of this legislation, these big schools have the tax revenue. They have the money to spend on some of this stuff, and the smaller schools, you kind of fight for your money, and having someone there that comes from small schools, I think that’s a good thing. They understand what goes on, and yes, if we have to, yes, we could contact her and see what she could help out with. I mean, she’s going to do what’s right not necessarily for one school. She’s going to do what’s right for the whole state.”

We’re sitting in the Jerry and Ouida Newton Gymnasium. Tell me about Jerry Newton.

“He was a superintendent here at the Poyen school for a long time, fought for the small schools, graduated from a small school, worried about everybody here. You see people that focus on just their kids. He was not that person. He focused on every child, and that’s what he instilled in us is you’ve got to look at every child. You can’t focus on one person.”

You were school board president when he …

“When he resigned, it about broke my heart. One of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, when you’ve got somebody that’s so worried about the community, so worried about the school, to find someone who has that love for a small community, a small school, understanding that the school is the only thing this community has. So it’s a strong love and a passion for this school.”

What does a school need after it’s had the same person in charge for 30-something years who is a part of the community, beloved by the community? Do you need someone at that point who’s a little fresh, or do you need somebody who’s just like what you had?

“We looked for someone that was pretty close to what we had. Someone that understood about a small school and the parents that are going to be concerned. They’re going to come up and ask questions, making sure they’re going through the right chain of command when they have questions. Someone that doesn’t mind telling you what’s right and what’s wrong, and why we have to do something. Someone that’s not scared. Somebody fresh wouldn’t fully understand that, but they will when you start getting put in those situations.”

We’re sitting, like I said, in the Jerry and Ouida Newton Gymnasium. When was this built?

“About five years ago. … That was a fun year of surprising him and Mrs. Newton in the middle of a ball game and announcing that we were going to name the gym after them because he was still superintendent at the time. It was right before he retired. Mr. Newton had told us as a board not to surprise him.”

How did he respond to that?

“He was a little mad when we first called out his name but very grateful.”

How did you all do this?

“At halftime, we just walked out there on the floor, and I had the mic. We had it all planned out. Everybody knew that needed to know about it except for Mr. Newton. It was a big surprise to him.”

How did you pay for it?

“The state did fund us. I think they paid, like, 80%. We had to come up with the rest of it. We had saved for years for what we could use towards new facilities. We did not raise the millage up. We didn’t want it to be a burden on the community, and we ended up with a gymnasium. Just moving funds around that could be moved to be used for facilities.”

Saving for it rather than doing a millage increase or doing a bond issue, why was that so important?

“You don’t want to put a burden on the community. Small schools are about sports. I love sports. I was a competitor as a kid. My wife’s a competitor. My girls were competitors. But you’ve got to have education, so you need to focus most of your money on the buildings for education, and the last thing you want to do is put it in a bind or end up getting the school in fiscal distress over a gymnasium.”

Did you play?

“Yes, sir.”

Were you pretty good?

“I was OK.” (Editor’s note: He was good.)

What position did you play?

“I was a center.”

You’re ‘small school tall,’ right?

“Yeah, I was small school tall.” (Laughs.)

Six-four? “Six-four.”

Were y’all pretty good those years?

“We had a pretty good team. For what we had in the small schools, which with small schools you had a lot of competition. Back then when I was playing, you still had Prattsville playing, you had Carthage playing. Paron still had a team. A lot of schools that were in our district. Only ones left now are Ouachita, Poyen, and really that’s about it. Leola, Grapevine, Carthage, Paron, all of them are out now. They shut the schools down.”

You think athletics are still important?

“In a small school, I think athletics are important, but, as competitive as I am, it’s got to be education. Most of the time, even the best athletes won’t make it in college and won’t make it professionally, so the education has to be there.”

You went to four-day weeks this year. What led to that?

Once I got on here, it wasn’t about my kids. It’s about all the kids. I can’t focus on one kid. If I focused on just my kid, you lose focus on all the other ones that truly need help.

“ ”

“We had thought about it for a while. Kirby had done it for a little bit, and we had asked them questions. It turned out really successful for a small area. We sent out a survey to the teachers. I think it was 95 or 97% of them were positive for it. They were ready for it. Once we found out about that, we sent out another survey to the community. About 80% of the community was for a four-day school week. Ten percent were ‘maybe,’ and maybe 10% were against. Once the ‘maybes’ got called back and questions answered about the four-day week, you know, just not knowing, they changed their mind. So we’ve had really positive results with what’s going on.”

Ultimately in the lead up, you had almost 100% support, then.

“We did. We did. You’re going to have your people that are against it no matter what, just because it’s a change, but it’s done really well. Like I said, one of the negative drawbacks of them being against it was child care. You’ve got to find somebody to watch your child, but since COVID when people had to stay home, they had to find child care. It has not been as much of a problem as what it could have been if we just all of a sudden had jumped on there and we wouldn’t have had COVID.”

Why did you want to go to four days?

“To help a little bit financially. To give the teachers and the staff in the school a day that they could take their kid to go to a dentist appointment or go to a doctor’s appointment, to where you weren’t having to steadily find teachers, substitute teachers, which are hard to find now. You save a little bit of money on not having to have the school completely turned on.

“Some of the stuff that was a negative was, I guess, some of these kids that may not have a meal on that fifth day, and we’ve done changes on that making sure that fifth day is covered where the kids aren’t going to miss a meal. I mean, it is about the children in these schools, small districts. All in all, it’s turned out to be a really good thing. We had some parents that were upset because they said we picked a Monday instead of a Friday. You’ve got parents who are going to automatically gripe about that because they’re saying, ‘Well, you’re not doing it because of football.’ … We chose Mondays because most holidays fall on a Monday, so you’re not taking away from your school week, or that day off that would have normally been off during school week. You’re still getting that off. You’re still getting that holiday off, and it doesn’t count against the school, so we’ve got a chance to add extra days, I guess, if needed for snow or inclement weather days. It’s turned out to be a good thing.”

In this area, you’re one of the first.

“Yeah, Ouachita was the first in our area. Kirby was one of the first ones we looked at. Elkins. There are other schools now. I think some of the closer schools are looking at a fourday school week next year. We found positives out of it.”

What does your school day look like now?

“7:40 a.m. till 4 p.m. For the elementary kids, you can now double block for the English and math and some of the extra ones. We were worried about some of the younger kids being there and it being a little bit longer day. Not a whole lot longer, but a little bit longer. Kids are very resilient. They bounce back and just accept it and go on. Now in high school you’ve got longer periods to focus on some of the potential problems, I guess, the math, English, the science, for the upper kids to spend more time in there with the teacher and learn more.”

And then you all get that extra day off.

“And the extra day off, we had tried to set it up so that teachers who wanted to come in would be there to help if some of the kids wanted to be tutored. We do have it set up to where it’s all about the kids.”

Can you tell a difference in how it’s affected academic performance?

“Everywhere, every school, the academics have gone down a little bit because of COVID. Ours have held pretty evenly. I don’t think that we have gone down one bit this year. We’ll know more about it come next year. We had kind of set this up on a two- or three-year, let’s see what happens. Within two or three years, if our test scores start falling, then we may look at going back to a five-day, but as the way it’s looking right now, we’re going to stay on a four-day.”

Do teachers and the parents and the students feel like they’re still getting as good of an education?

“We haven’t had any negative feedback from anybody that I know of.”

I never did ask, why did you run for school board in the first place?

“My kids. And then once I got on here, it wasn’t about my kids. It’s about all the kids. I can’t focus on one kid. If I focused on just my kid, you lose focus on all the other ones that truly need help.”

Your name is Carl “Buddy” Puckett.

“My name is Carl Edwin Puckett III, but I’ve been called ‘Buddy’ all of my life. So it’s just, ‘Buddy’s’ stuck with me.”

Where did “Buddy” come from?

“My grandpa’s nickname was ‘Buddy,’ my daddy’s nickname was ‘Buddy,’ and they called me ‘Buddy.’ I’m the third, so I just kept ‘Buddy’ ever since.”

It’s a very friendly nickname. Does that affect you having a name that everybody kind of associates with something very positive?

“No, it doesn’t bother me one way or the other. I try to treat people like I want to be treated.”

Like a buddy?

“Like a buddy. Like a friend.”

Note: Executive Session is edited for length, style and clarity.

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