This is the third part of a series on the state of the Pine Bluff School District.
No longer do school buses marked "Dollarway School District" drive down Fluker Avenue or the roads that cross it in the Townsend Park area. They now read "Pine Bluff School District."
That's been the case since the old Dollarway district was annexed into its neighboring entity last July. Alumni gathered at Cardinal Stadium just days before the merger to ceremonially say goodbye to their own school system, while many have expressed a sigh of relief that the centerpiece of their community, Dollarway High School, would remain open.
The state Board of Education required upon approving the annexation in December 2020 that all Dollarway campuses remain open, and Superintendent Barbara Warren -- who supervised both districts pre-annexation -- has said the campuses would remain open as long as it's feasible.
"To close a school is a huge, huge issue," Warren said, citing the merger of the Altheimer Unified School District into Dollarway in 2006. "Anybody who spent time there knows the impact of schools closing and how some things happened around that time had on them at that time. And that impacts our children. So, this isn't about necessarily protecting a place. It's not even about trying to make people feel a certain way. It's about trying to make certain we protect the community that protects the children and supports the needs of our students."
The remaining life of Dollarway High, the present campus of which was remodeled in 2010, is unknown. The school, however, has a dwindling population, which was a key factor in the state board's decision to shut down the financially-challenged district.
"We have to look every year at what we can afford to do," Warren said, asked how long before Dollarway and Pine Bluff high schools are potentially consolidated. "I mean every year, superintendents around the world, not just us in this area. You have to look at what you can do."
When we look at what you're going to do, it's not just about money. It's a huge driving force, but it's not just about money."
Warren also reiterated her wish that a new Pine Bluff High School campus would finally unite the two student bodies. That plan was almost systematized when district officials in the spring announced a plan to merge district seventh- and eighth-graders on one campus, but it was put on hold when it instead opted to turn both Jack Robey Junior High -- PBHS' feeder campus -- and Robert F. Morehead Middle School into campuses serving grades 7-9.
Still, a high school merger is not off the table.
"The long story to this ... if I had my rathers, if I could just make the decision and not consider some of those factors, I would look at our coming together as the high school when the high school is built," she said.
The "first thing" Warren said she was tasked as Dollarway superintendent was to reduce the number of campuses from four to three. Dollarway High moved from its original Dollarway Road location to the former middle school campus on Fluker Avenue. Robert F. Morehead Middle School is now located on the campus of the former Townsend Park Elementary.
Members of the PBSD Stakeholders for Consolidation have long opposed the continued existence of the former Dollarway schools -- James Matthews Elementary, Morehead Middle and Dollarway High. Charline Wright, the group's chairperson, attended a state board meeting along with 10 other group members to express what she described as "dysfunction, chaos, incompetence and confusion" in the PBSD's first year post-annexation.
"Annexation leadership refuses to merge Dollarway High and Middle School campuses into Pine Bluff High and Jack Robey [Junior High], which would solve the certified staffing issues," Wright wrote in an email to The Commercial, among other complaints.
Wright, a retired educator, believes the Dollarway schools should have ceased to operate, adding Dollarway High has a projected student population of 173 students and 44 teachers for a student-teacher ratio of 4-1 and Morehead is projected to have 211 students and 24 teachers, a 9-1 ratio. Pine Bluff High and Jack Robey Junior High had ratios of 14-1 and 10-1 during the 2021-22 school year.
Arkansas Department of Education deputy commissioner Stacy Smith and Warren did not immediately address Wright's complaints, which followed Friday's state board meeting in which the board heard a quarterly report on the PBSD. Warren and her assistant superintendents spoke with The Commercial on Thursday.
Critics of Dollarway's continued existence argue the district would save money in operational costs by closing the three northern Pine Bluff schools.
"To say you can save a lot of money here, maybe you could," Warren said. "But what would it do to transportation costs? What would it do to other factors that may not be as readily seen, and it takes time to get that right."
Kelvin Gragg, one of two new assistant superintendents in the PBSD, was involved in a consolidation as Dumas High School principal when its district consolidated with the Gould district in the 2000s.
"At that time, if we had our rathers, we would have walked through it and taken our time doing it, but the state didn't give us that option," Gragg said. "The state said, you're going to come, and you're going to come this day."
The "big push" of state Legislature at the time was for districts to maintain student populations of 350 or higher, Gragg said.
Phillip Carlock, another new assistant superintendent, was principal of an elementary school in Little Rock that he said absorbed two schools.
"You deal with all the culture issues and trying to blend together communities. All those things are growing pains when the district is trying to be more efficient," Carlock said.
In the meantime, Warren and other leaders have the chore of strengthening security -- another hot-button topic locally -- at all nine PBSD campuses. The district recently hired Strategos International to conduct a risk assessment, details of which Gragg said he would hear this week.
"I always said, when I was a principal [at PBHS], the safety of the campus started with me and my staff," he said. "What are the parameters? Where are we going? And more importantly, what are the expectations we have of our kids? I think that's going to be the start of anything, re-establishing those expectations. I truly believe the kids are going to do what you expect them to do."
Asked about security personnel, Warren said the PBSD currently has three commissioned officers in addition to an unspecified number of security officers contracted through Vigilant Force, a Pine Bluff security firm.
"We're just going to try to hire and fill spots," Warren said. "We definitely need more security officers. We need five-plus officers, but the strategy for how and where we put them, that'll further determine what our numbers are. We're still working on some of that planning."
Warren said she will issue "a robust report" on safety during the PBSD's annual report to the public in September.
Tuesday: PBSD faces challenges in teacher pay.