SPARKMAN — Residents of the tiny Dallas County town of Sparkman are trying to save their schools from dwindling enrollment and potential closure by promising to pay for college for their shrinking number of high school graduates.
The Sparkman School District was forced in 2004, when its enrollment dropped below 350 students, to consolidate with the Harmony Grove School District outside Camden.
The elementary and high schools in Sparkman remain open, but nearly a quarter of parents - who were concerned that the merger was the first step in closing them - moved their children to neighboring school districts.
In November, the Arkadelphia Promise - a scholarship program that will pay up to 100 percent of college tuition and fees for district graduates who meet academic and other requirements - was announced, reigniting fears for Sparkman’s schools. Arkadelphia is not far away.
“We felt like we needed to do something or we might lose even more students to Arkadelphia, and we might not be able to survive that,” said Brenda Garrett, a parent in Sparkman, whose population is just under 500. “We met at a basketball game the same night they announced the Arkadelphia scholarship, and we decided we were going to raise the money and make our own program.”
On March 11, organizers of the Sparkman Promise scholarship program say, they will announce that they have raised $27,000, enough to start the next three high school graduating classes in college.
What sets the Sparkman Promise apart from many other promise scholarship programs, including ones in Arkadelphia and El Dorado, is that the money funding it is being donated by local businesses and residents.
El Dorado Promise, which began in 2007, is funded by Murphy Oil Corp., and Arkadelphia Promise, announced in November, is funded by the Ross Foundation and Southern Bancorp.
Across the nation, there are about 22 programs similar to the promise programs.
The Sparkman program borrows a lot of its structure and requirements from the Arkadelphia Promise. Every student enrolled as of March 11 will be eligible to receive100 percent of tuition costs and fees minus money from the Arkansas Challenge lottery-funded scholarship and federal Pell Grants.
To be eligible, a student must have a 2.5 grade-point average or a score of at least 19 on his ACT college entrance exam.
After March 11, the amount of scholarship money a student will be eligible to receive will be based on what grade he is in when he enrolls at the Sparkman schools.
For example, if a student enrolls in kindergarten, he would be eligible for 100 percent of tuition and fees. But, a student enrolling in the ninth grade would be eligible for 65 percent of tuition and fees. After March 11, students enrolling after ninth grade would not be eligible for scholarships.
Only students at the Sparkman campus of the 1,022-student Harmony Grove district will be eligible for the scholarships.
On average, about 35 percent of Sparkman High School graduates go to college, and an even smaller percentage graduate with degrees, said Sparkman School Board member Jeremy Givens.
Seven of this year’s 14 graduating seniors have committed to attend college in August. Several more are still considering their options.
“I’m going to major in finance and accounting … at the University of Arkansas,” said senior Elizabeth Fite. “I think 75 percent of this year’s class probably will go to college.That’s not typical. Normally, not that many people go, but everyone’s really been talking about the scholarship.”
Givens said that since the scholarship idea began floating around in December, 11 students who had left for surrounding districts have returned to Sparkman.
Stephanie Harmon, a fourth-grade teacher at Sparkman Elementary and a graduate of Sparkman High School, said: “We fill our sawmills every year with kids who don’t have the money to go to college.”
“There are some good jobs at the sawmills, but we want to give our students the opportunity to go to college or trade school. We want to give them options, so if they decide they want to work in the sawmill, they can get the skills to start higher up.”
The Sparkman Promise organizers are forming a 501c3 charity and, in the meantime, are working under the W.P. Sturgis Foundation to collect donations.
“We’ve received checks ranging from $35 to $6,000,” said Garrett, a Sparkman Promise board member.
The group is pursuing a grant from the Roy and Christine Sturgis Foundation, which funds education-related projects in the South. The Sturgis family started the timber company around which Sparkman was built, and the foundation has been generous with various educational concerns for Sparkman and surrounding schools and colleges, officials said.
Garrett said she didn’t know how much the grant would be, if the group receives one, and the group would have to reapply every other year to receive additional funding. The group plans to continue raising funds regardless of whether it receives the grant.
Many alumni have been generous to the scholarship fund, including Donny White, whose family bought the Sturgis sawmill in the 1980s. White’s son, Joseph, is in the 11th grade at Sparkman High.
“Our whole community is coming together to keep our schools here,” White said. “We gave $6,000, and it started with [Riverside] Bank stepping up and giving $6,000. They really set the bar and showed the community that we could come together and make this happen.”
On Friday, people gathered in town to follow a bus of boys-basketball players to a regional tournament. Givens said one of the things the town has always been able to count on is support from the town and students’ relatives.
“It used to be Friday football games that would turn out the whole community,” he said. “You can count on packing as many people as we can fit into the gym for basketball these days. There are grandparents from Texas and Louisiana who come to see their grandbabies cheerleading or playing in the game. This is home.”
Also, the town puts a lot of value on its history, he said. Some of the students in Harmon’s fourth-grade class are fourth-generation students at Sparkman schools.
Every day, they walk past displays marking milestone moments in the school’s history and that of the town: mementos from its earlier sawmill days; pictures of the town’s former baseball team; and of the once nationally acclaimed Sparkman Sparklers, a female high school basketball team that played all over the country and won several international titles in the 1920s.
Sparkman Promise board members want the school’s 200 students to pay particular attention to a display case in a school hallways that features pictures of many graduates who over the decades have gone on to get college degrees.
Many of those students have returned to become teachers and School Board members. Others live in Sparkman or surrounding towns and commute to such jobs as lawyers, bankers and engineers in nearby cities like Arkadelphia.
Harmon said part of her reason for getting involved with Sparkman Promise is the hope that she and her husband will someday have children who will go to Sparkman schools, like she and two generations of her family have done.
Harmon said her brother, who is getting his doctorate in physical therapy, plans to return to Sparkman.
Sam Garrett and Kim Nix, both seniors with college plans, said they also plan to return to Sparkman.
“We really appreciate what the community is doing and the hard work they’re putting into this,” Sam Garrett said. “When I graduate, I’d like to come back to this community, even if I have to travel to get to my job.”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/19/2011