LR district on track to sell Woodruff
The Little Rock School District is back on track to sell its vacant Woodruff School building at 3010 W. Seventh St.
The building was identified earlier this year by the state as unused or under-used and, as such, available to open-enrollment charter schools for use upon their payment of fair market value.
The Little Rock district, which already had a buyer for Woodruff, petitioned the state Division of Public School Academic Facilities and Transpiration to be exempt from reserving the property for charter school use.
"We have no reason to believe that a public charter school would be interested in leasing or purchasing this ... public school facility because we never were approached over the past 10 months as we worked to sell the Woodruff property," Superintendent Mike Poore wrote in February.
The state division, as required by law, gave 30-day notice to all charter school operators in the state and to the Arkansas Public School Resource Center of the district's plans to sell to someone other than to a charter school operator.
The division did not receive an objection to the district's sale of the school.
"Therefore, the division grants the district's petition for waiver," Brad Montgomery, director of the division, recently wrote to Poore.
State probes illegal passing of buses
The state of Arkansas participated in a national one-day survey Tuesday -- to determine the prevalence of motorists illegally passing school buses that are stopped with their lights flashing and stop-arms deployed to pick up or drop off students.
The National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services will use the results to help improve safety measures at the state and national levels.
All school bus drivers were asked to record any instances of illegal passing that occurred Tuesday and report the incidents to their supervisors, who were then to calculate district totals and submit them.
Metro on 04/30/2018