By JOHN HOFHEIMER
Leader senior staff writer
The Pulaski County Special School District Board on Wednesday night approved a $241 million 2011-2012 budget with $7.9 million in cuts, which will be used to pay for a $104 million building program for three new schools in Jacksonville and school makeovers at College Station, Harris and Scott elementary schools and Robinson Middle School.
That proposal includes closing Jacksonville Elementary School at the end of this year, reassigning teachers and students to nearby elementary schools until a replacement opens for the 2013-2014 school year.
The budget also calls for yanking Maumelle Middle School’s successful “true middle school concept” block schedule because the school board feared it couldn’t afford it for all district middle school programs.
PACT GRIEVaNCE
Marty Nix, president of the Pulaski Association of Classroom Teachers, had notified Superintendent Charles Hopson that the union would file a grievance over the closing of Jacksonville Elementary, when no other school in recent history has been closed before its replacement was completed.
“We’ve never been opposed to building new schools in Jacksonville,” Nix said. “But there is no need to displace teachers and students.”
She said the grievance was based on deviation from past practices.
Hopson replied in an e-mail that he intended to press on with the building program, which required closing Jacksonville Elementary School.
The question of funding Maumelle’s middle school schedule arose when board member Gwen Williams said if all middle schools can’t have it, none should, except Fuller Middle School, where it is court ordered.
Hopson said he was a supporter of the middle school concept, which includes block scheduling, which features longer and fewer class periods and features team teaching, but that this year, the building program has taken the top priority.
With the state Education Department threatening to designate PCSSD as being in fiscal distress, the board was reluctant to spend the additional $1.5 million from its $5 million “rainy-day fund” for the additional 23 teachers that would be needed.
PREAPPROVAL REQUIRED
The question of implementing a true middle school concept across the board died when Chief Financial Officer Anita Farver reminded the board that with the district under the threat of fiscal distress, it could not spend more money or add teachers without prior approval of the state.
Board member Tim Clark of Maumelle voted against the motion that stripped Maumelle Middle School’s program.
Board president Bill Vasquez promised the board could revisit the question after the district’s fiscal-distress appeal is considered at the state Board of Education meeting May 16.
Most school districts pass their operating budgets at the beginning of the school year, but Farver said the board’s decision to approve its projected budget in April, beginning this year, was another step in the move toward sound financial oversight and control.
Vasquez said the fiscal-distress question is not about the actual money the district has, but about the legislative audit that was critical of the financial controls the district did and did not exert over its finances.
Vasquez said because of the new proposed building program in the district, he expected enrollment to be up next year for the first time in 20 years.
There is some evidence that the new Sherwood Middle School and the new Maumelle High School would attract new students, bringing the district an additional $7,000 per student in state aid.
