BENTONVILLE -- The School District chose one of its own to be Evening Star Elementary School's first principal.
Ashley Williams, Jones Elementary School's principal since 2011, will move about 7 miles south to lead Evening Star, which is under construction and scheduled to open in August. The School Board approved the move at its meeting Monday.
Site development
The Bentonville School Board on Monday approved a guaranteed maximum price of $2,194,257 for work preparing the site of the School District’s fourth junior high school for construction. The entire project, including building and furnishing the school, is expected to cost about $40 million.
The school, scheduled to open in August 2020 with an ideal capacity of 800 students, will be built on the northeast quadrant of the intersection of Holloway Road and North Vaughn Road in Centerton.
Source: Staff report
"She is an exceptional principal," Superintendent Debbie Jones said about Williams. "She's done a beautiful job at Mary Mae Jones Elementary School. And she went through a pretty rigorous process with the interviews along with several other really strong candidates."
Williams expressed a vision of working with Evening Star's parents and students to develop a world-class school, Jones said.
"She's ready to start communicating with the parents and having coffee and cookies with them," Jones said. "We're excited about the future there."
Williams guided Jones Elementary to becoming a Leader in Me school. Leader in Me is a whole-school transformation model that aims to empower students with the leadership and life skills they need to thrive in and out of school.
Evening Star, the district's 12th elementary school, is on West Pleasant Grove Road in Rogers. The name, which the board chose in October, refers to the name of a one-room school house that once stood less than a quarter of a mile from the new school's site.
Williams' entire 20-year career has been with Bentonville. She started in 1998 as a teacher at Apple Glen Elementary School, then taught at two middle schools for a combined nine years. After one year as a district math specialist, she spent one year as an assistant principal at Jones Elementary before taking over as that school's principal for the retiring Mike Mumma, according to her resume.
Williams attended Monday's board meeting and received applause from the board and audience once the board approved her new job. She also was honored during a board meeting in May for achieving the designation of master principal through the Arkansas Leadership Academy.
The district will immediately begin the process of filling the principal opening at Jones Elementary, Jones said.
In other business, the board approved a pay raise for some workers after Arkansas voters approved a measure last month to raise the state's minimum wage to $11 an hour by 2021.
The minimum wage will increase from $8.50 to $9.25 starting Jan. 1. Student technology workers, who make $8.79 per hour, make up the main employee group in the district affected by the change. The district also occasionally has temporary, full-time summer employees in the maintenance and transportation departments paid at this wage.
Student technology workers support the district's technology department. There are about five or six who work during the school year and 10 to 12 who work full time during the summer, according to Dena Ross, chief operations officer.
The district expects to pay an additional $2,081 through June 30 above what was originally projected for this fiscal year because of the minimum wage increase.
NW News on 12/18/2018