The Arkansas Department of Education is calling for the state-controlled Dollarway School District in Jefferson County to be returned to the management of a locally elected school board.
The state Board of Education is expected to vote on releasing the 1,296-student district from the state's direct oversight at its June meeting, a spokesman for the Education Department said Monday.
In June 2012, the Education Board voted to take over the system because of the district's violation of state standards for school district accreditation in two consecutive years.
Those violations included the employment of one or more people for teaching positions without having state teaching licenses and the improper assignment of students to courses that left them with inadequate graduation credits. That jeopardized their ability to graduate on time.
After the vote, the Dollarway School Board was dissolved immediately, and the superintendent was replaced with a state-appointed superintendent.
"The Dollarway School District has been notified that it has not had any standards violations for two years," Kimberly Friedman, a spokesman for the state agency, said Monday, adding that only the Education Board can release the district from the state's direct management.
Bobby Acklin, who is completing his first year as the Dollarway superintendent, said he received a phone call and letter last week informing him that a recommendation for release of the district would be forwarded to the nine-member Education Board.
"That was good news," Acklin said about the notices from the deputy education commissioner and an assistant commissioner. "We want to be released from state takeover. We want to give the community their school district back. And I think we have learned a lesson and ... the lesson is that we have to take care of business."
If the state Education Board approves the release next month, new board members would be elected during the regular school board election in September, John Hoy, the state's assistant commissioner for public school accountability, wrote to Acklin.
The actual transition from state to local control would occur after the election.
Dollarway is positioned to become the second district among five state-controlled districts to be returned to local control this year.
The state Education Board voted last week to return Mineral Springs School District in Howard County to local policy-makers effective Oct. 1, after new board members are elected and trained in September.
Besides Dollarway and Mineral Springs, others operated by the state are Pulaski County Special, Helena-West Helena and Lee County districts.
The Education Board voted in March to keep Pulaski County Special and Helena-West Helena districts under state direction at least one more year. The districts originally were cited for being in fiscal distress. Lee County, taken over by the state last month for academic distress, has since also been classified as being in fiscal distress.
Dollarway was the only one of the five districts to be taken over for violating state-accreditation standards.
State board members said in 2012 that standards violations in Dollarway were a reflection of bigger problems in the district.
Arkansas Education Commissioner Tom Kimbrell initially appointed Frank Anthony, a retired superintendent from the Pine Bluff School District, to manage the Dollarway district under Kimbrell's direction.
Anthony left the position after one year, and Kimbrell appointed Acklin in 2013-14.
Kimbrell notified Acklin by letter last week that he was renewing Acklin's contract for the 2014-15 school year.
"In conducting this review, I consulted various reports pertaining to the accreditation status of the Dollarway School District," Kimbrell wrote to Acklin. "According to the Arkansas Department of Education's Standards Assurance Unit, the Dollarway School District and its individual schools have been free from any violations of the Standards for Accreditation for two consecutive years. That positive outcome is a credit to strong leadership.
"While much work remains to improve the academic and fiscal condition of the Dollarway School District, I am pleased with your efforts."
Acklin, who gave credit to Anthony for initiating the corrections to the standards deficiencies and reducing budget expenditures, said Monday that he is interested in staying on as Dollarway superintendent after the election of a new school board, if that board extends his contract.
He said the district is moving in the right direction, and he wants to build on that.
Although Dollarway High School was identified last week as a school in academic distress -- fewer than 49.5 percent of its students achieved at a proficient or advanced rate on state exams in 2011 to 2013 -- the district just received improved test results.
This year's 11th-grade literacy test showed that 38 percent of test-takers scored at proficient and 6 percent scored at advanced levels, Acklin said. That combined rate of 44 percent achieving at desired levels compares with 26 percent proficient and advanced in the preceding year.
"You have to look at individual students to help the whole group to go up," Acklin said about improving achievement. "You aren't going to help them if you are just shooting at the whole pack."
Rep. James Word, D-Pine Bluff, said Monday he was elated at the prospect of Dollarway's release from state control.
"I'm very proud that they accomplished what the state expected of them," said Word, who doesn't live in the school district but whose work as housing director for the Area Agency on Aging of Southeast Arkansas Inc. provides services in the Dollarway community.
"I feel local control is best," he said. "The patrons in that particular district know the students and know their needs, and they also know and have a closer relationship with the faculty. The best thing to happen is for them to take back control and run a type of district for which the state can be proud."
Metro on 05/13/2014