A standing-room-only crowd of Jacksonville residents turned out Monday to show support and ask a few questions regarding the proposal that will be on their Sept. 16 school election ballot to form a Jacksonville-area school district.
The Jacksonville/North Pulaski School District Education Corps hosted the evening event at the Jacksonville Community Center. At least 400 people attended the kick-off of the campaign for a 4,000-student public school district that would be carved out of the existing Pulaski County Special School District, if approved by voters.
"Sept. 16 is about choice," said Daniel Gray, chairman of the Education Corps, which formed in 2012 to take up the decades-old push for a local school system.
"We will have the choice to make our own decisions about our destiny," Gray told the audience as the applause escalated. "We want to control it. Keep our tax dollars here. Expand our curriculum. Build new facilities. Local control -- vote for it!"
The area proposed for a new district includes all territory in the Jacksonville city limits, plus areas north and southeast of the city.
The Arkansas Board of Education in March authorized the rare election on establishing a new public school district in response to a petition signed by 2,079 Jacksonville-area residents. The state Education Board action came after the federal judge presiding in the long-running Pulaski County school desegregation lawsuit in January agreed that a new district could be formed using the requirements set in state law to do so.
Only those voters living in the area proposed for detachment from the Pulaski County Special district are eligible to vote on the new district. People living elsewhere in the Pulaski County Special district -- which includes Sherwood, Maumelle and Wrightsville -- are not eligible to vote on the detachment, according to state law.
Ten schools, including North Pulaski and Jacksonville high schools, are within the boundaries of the proposed district.
The other schools are: Bayou Meto, Murrell Taylor, Pinewood, Tolleson, Arnold Drive and Warren Dupree elementary schools; Homer Adkins Pre-kindergarten Center; and Jacksonville Middle School. The former Jacksonville Elementary and Jacksonville Middle School-North are also in the proposed district but are currently not used as schools.
No organized opposition has yet presented itself.
Audience members Monday had questions about the governance of a new school district, how the schools would be staffed and the school campuses.
"Once we get our own district, will there be local people on the school board?" Jean Williams asked, adding that she didn't want politics and nepotism to play a role in the board membership. "It's important to have parents and grandparents on the board."
Gray responded that the Arkansas Board of Education will appoint an initial, interim board of Jacksonville-area residents if the majority of voters approve the formation of a new district. Residents of the new district would then select their own board members in the September 2015 school board election, he said.
Jamie Platt, a teacher in the Pulaski County Special district, asked about teachers for the proposed district.
"There is a rumor mill going (about teachers' job security)," she said.
Myeisha Haywood, principal at Murrell Taylor Elementary in Jacksonville, asked if the district planners have begun meeting with the human resources staff in the Pulaski County Special district to decide how to maintain the staff in the schools should the Jacksonville-area schools become part of a new district. She asked if there would be a "huge" reduction-in-force or layoffs in the Pulaski County Special district.
Layoffs in a school district are typically done on a seniority basis, with the people with the least seniority laid off first.
Gray responded that leaders of the effort to achieve a new school district have done five feasibility studies starting in the 1970s and, most recently, in 2013, and that each of the studies showed that the district will be able to support itself financially.
A new district could expect state aid to help with school building construction and federal aid payments in lieu of taxes as a result of Jacksonville serving as the home of the Little Rock Air Force Base.
"We can run our schools at the current rates. There will be no salary cuts," Gray said.
He also said that the district planners anticipate that there will be a transition period of one to two years before the Jacksonville area district would operate on its own. In that time, decisions will be made about the transfer of staff, school buildings and a possible share of outstanding construction debt from Pulaski County Special to the new district.
"We need our staff. We need our leadership, and we need our teachers. We don't want to lose them. We need to compete. That rumor is just scare tactics," Gray said.
The Rev. James Bolden, a former Pulaski County Special board member from Jacksonville, told teachers in the crowd: "I want to kill the rumor mill tonight. Don't worry about your jobs. We gotcha."
Metro on 08/12/2014