AAEA Legacy Leader

Lee Vent

Leading up to the 50th anniversary of the AAEA Summer Conference, which will take place on July 28-30, 2025, at the Statehouse Convention Center and Marriott Hotel, we are interviewing some of the greatest Arkansas education leaders over the past several decades. Our fifth interview features Lee Vent, the oldest continuously serving superintendent in Arkansas.

Mr. Lee Vent has been in education for 56 years and has served as a superintendent continuously for the past 43 years. He loves serving in what he calls “the pure Delta.” He was born in 1944 and lived on a farm all of his childhood. He jokingly says that he and Methuselah went to first grade together. Mr. Vent grew up near Carlisle, Arkansas, in the community of Snake Island. He went to school in a three-room schoolhouse, which had no indoor plumbing, and a wood-burning stove was used for heat. Promotion to the next grade level in grades one through three meant you moved over two rows in the same room. His family highly valued education, which caused him to love learning. The small community schools were consolidated in 1953, and Lee started fourth grade in Carlisle. One day during his fourth-grade year, the principal, who also served as one of the third-grade teachers, asked Lee and a few other boys to help load old, dilapidated textbooks into her car. When he asked where they would be taken, Ms. Martin said they were going to “the colored school.” Mr. Lee could not understand why his school was getting new readers, and the children at the other school were getting old and outdated books. Brown v. The Board of Education took place the following year, and “separate but equal” became unconstitutional.

After graduating from high school, Lee went to visit his brother at the Air Force base in Clovis, New Mexico. While there, he joined the Army and said it was one of the best moves he made because it allowed him to see parts of the world he would never have seen otherwise. The GI Bill of Rights was passed following the Vietnam era, which allowed him to start college at ASU Beebe. Mr. Vent married his wife, Carolyn, attended college, and graduated after his third year. He finished his Master’s degree in his fourth year and had his superintendent credentials by the end of his fifth year. After student teaching in Jonesboro, he was hired at the New Madrid R4 Reorganized School District in Missouri to teach social studies because their teacher had been drafted. This was the first year of total integration there, which led to an interesting year for everyone.

Mr. Vent has spent most of his educational career in schools along the Mississippi Delta. He was hired to oversee the cooperative education program in the Clarendon School District, which led to working at the Phillips County Community College in Helena. At that time, the Delta had great political and financial strength. He states that the pendulum began to swing with the onset of the modernization of agriculture. For example, a modern-day cotton picker picks 6 rows of cotton at one time, replacing 255 workers picking 200 pounds of cotton a day. Mr. Lee remembers the devastation to Helena when they padlocked Mohawk Tire and Rubber one night, and 2,500 people lost their jobs.

After a few years, he returned to Clarendon as the middle school principal and then became the superintendent. One day, Keller Noggle called and asked him to consider helping the Northeast AR School District institute a consolidation plan. He soon became the superintendent there, the largest consolidation of larger schools in Arkansas, excluding Pulaski County. Mr. Vent has served as superintendent of Paragould, Forrest City, and Barton School Districts as well. Through his extensive tenure in this role, he has experienced huge district growth as well as great loss in school districts as industry moved from the Delta to northwest Arkansas. He stated, “Everywhere I’ve been, regardless of the size of the district, I’ve tried to operate it in a sense that we’re family and we care for each other. When one part hurts, the entire family hurts.” Mr. Vent currently serves as the Superintendent of the Clarendon School District, where he was hired to serve on a “temporary basis” 15 years ago.

In 1992, Mr. Vent learned of a new infant to early childhood program, “Parents as First Teachers.” He brought this concept to his district, and it changed his community for the better. He states, “Kids were coming to school kindergarten-ready.” He presented this concept at a national conference twelve years in a row and was recognized as a Senior Associate in the School of the Twenty-first Century. He was presented the Pioneering Award for his efforts.

Mr. Vent feels the greatest change in education was caused by the Lake View lawsuit because it involved every school, every student, and every taxpayer in Arkansas. In 2002, the State Supreme Court declared the entire operational side, including the academic and facility sides, unconstitutional. This caused an extensive Special Session in 2003. Mr. Vent remembers testifying on the day Katrina hit New Orleans. He describes it as “a day I will never forget. The clouds were flying backward, and I was on the witness stand for six hours.” He continued, “It was a great experience upon reflection, but it was challenging at the time. We lost some political capital, but it was worth it for our kids. Adequacy was finally addressed.”

When asked about advice to new leaders, Mr. Vent said, “You must learn to delegate authority or it will eat you alive. You cannot micro-manage.” Mr. Vent said he is comfortable with delegating authority, but he knows that at the end of the day, he is the one who is responsible. He said it is like a light switch. “The day you become a superintendent, the switch turns on, and it never turns off. In any other position, you can go home at night and turn the switch off. But, I can be on a south sea island, and if something happens in the district, I am ultimately responsible. I have to be able to accept that.” He wants young superintendents to understand this: “You are the CEO of the biggest organization in your community in many instances.” In his situation, he asks what Clarendon, their city council, and quorum court would have to bring in to have an industry bigger than what they already have in the school? Mr. Vent continued, “I can think of no other institution in the history of our great country that we could credit any more in our economic growth, being the number one nation in the world and number one economy in the world, than public education…But, we have become ‘the great proving ground’ for all of society’s experiments…We (public education) are the number one target for all the blame. But we can’t give in to that. We have to continue striving to improve and to do the great work we were put here to do.”

In college, Mr. Vent’s political science professor gave him some of the best advice he’s been given. He stated, “When you move to a new town, the best thing to do to learn who is in charge is to drive through the graveyard. Whoever has the biggest tombstone, you better learn their name because that’s what you are going to be dealing with.”

Mr. Vent lives with his daughter, Jennifer. She and his son, Jeff, live beside each other in Holly Grove. He has six grandchildren. He lost his son, Tim, and his wife of 54 years, Carolyn, in the same year. Mr. Vent said his job as superintendent is the therapy that keeps him going. He lives on East Lake and loves to ease down to the lake when it isn’t hunting season, and he loves to garden. He and his staff are working to get their students more involved in the outdoors, especially those who do not have anyone to take them fishing, hunting, or canoeing. Mr. Vent has had eleven children go through the Clarendon school system, some were his own, and others were family members he helped raise. He said he will continue working until he either rides off into the sunset or is carried off into the sunset. Thank you for the many years of leadership, Mr. Vent!

Click here to watch Mr. Lee Vent’s interview and learn more about this Legacy Leader.