Residents of Sparkman have filed a lawsuit against the Harmony Grove School District, hoping to stop the closure of the Sparkman High School campus.
In April, the Harmony Grove School Board voted 5-2 to move 40 Sparkman High School students in grades 7-12 to Harmony Grove High School. Harmony Grove Superintendent Al Snow said the low number of students made the continued use of the Sparkman High School campus unsustainable.
"At this time, there are 108 students K-12 at the Sparkman school. Eleven of them are seniors. After they graduate, it will be 97 students. ... In my office I have three school choice requests to go to a school other than Sparkman; if they continue with that, it will be 94 students -- 54 students grade first through sixth and 40 at the high school. That's not sustainable," he said.
Snow stated that no kindergartners had yet enrolled for 2023.
The lawsuit filed in Ouachita County District Court argues that the closure would force some students to travel up to two hours each way to school and place an undue burden on them.
It also states that since Sparkman High School is a local education agency offering grades kindergarten-12, state code prohibits closing part of the Sparkman school without either a unanimous vote of the School Board or an order from the state Board of Education approving such action.
"HGSD has not satisfied either legal requirement," the lawsuit stated. "The law clearly prohibits HGSD's eliminating 7-12 grade education in Sparkman."
The Harmony Grove School District, as of yet, has not answered the lawsuit.
Previous attempts to close the Sparkman campus by the Harmony Grove School District have been denied by the state Education Board.
According to documents from the state Education Board, "On January 16, 2020, by majority vote, the Harmony Grove Board of Directors voted to close the District's Sparkman K-12 campus at the end of the 2019-2020 school year, with five members voting in favor of closure and two voting against closure."
Because it was not a unanimous vote, state law required the state board's approval for closure of the Sparkman campus.
Due to testimony and a petition from residents of Sparkman, the state Education Board ruled then that the closure was not in the best interest of Sparkman students.