Pupils too few, district desperate

Officials in the Stephens School District are looking for a partner school district willing to keep their school open, but time is running short, the School Board president said.

If the district does not find a partner, the Arkansas Department of Education has informed the district, the state Board of Education will decide the fate of the district in the spring, said Erma Brown, president of the Stephens district board. The district straddles the line between Columbia and Ouachita counties.

“We don’t have a problem going with another school district, but keep our campus here,” she said. “They can change the name. We want our babies and our high school students to remain here locally.”

Enrollments in the Hartford, Kirby and Stephens school districts were all below 350 students this fall, and it was the second year for Stephens below the mark. They are among 11 school districts statewide with fall enrollments of 400 or fewer.

Small school districts pay attention to enrollment because, since 2004, state law has required districts to merge - either voluntarily or under the direction of the state Board of Education - when average enrollments fall below 350 students for two consecutive years.

That law was Act 60 of the 2003 special legislative session on education and related legislative acts, and when it passed, the state had 308 school districts. The state now has 238 school districts.

“We’re kind of lost as to what needs to be done to get people to come,” Hartford Superintendent Teresa Ragsdale said. “We’re already considering what needs to be done if we don’t have the enrollment next year. The board is looking at alternatives.”

Hartford has seen its enrollment in the past seven years rise as high as 399 students in the 2011-12 school year, but that number fell to 356 last year and was at 325 as of Oct. 1.

The Bradley School District last year was among 12 districts across the state with fewer than 400 students. The district’s Oct. 1 count would have been about 350 this year. But instead of waiting, the district petitioned the state Board of Education to annex with the Emerson-Taylor School District, which is now the Emerson-Taylor-Bradley School District, said Gammye Moore, now an assistant superintendent for the district of about 970 students.

“I started watching numbers a couple of years ago,” Moore said. “Everybody knew within three or four years, we would have to consolidate with somebody. We just didn’t want to wait until we were forced to go in with somebody we didn’t want to go with.”

Bradley, with a 2010 population of 628, is about 45 miles from Shreveport, with little in its economy to attract new residents, Moore said. About 80 percent of students attending school in the Lafayette County town are from low-income households, on the basis of their applications for free and reduced-priced lunch.

“South Arkansas and eastern Arkansas, it’s just been a decline all over the state,” Moore said. “If we had a factory to come in here that would employ 1,000 people … it would bring in people. Then you have growth. We just don’t have that here. But we’re here,and we educate. We have some great kids and great teachers.”

In the Kirby School District, school enrollment has suffered after the closing of a lumber mill in Glenwood, about nine miles away, and from a lack of housing, Kirby Superintendent Jeff Alexander said.

Enrollment in Kirby hovered around 450 from 2004-05 to 2008-09, but the district has since lost more than 100 students, according to records from the Arkansas Department of Education. Kirby enrolled 356 students last year, and this year’s Oct. 1 count was 346.

Community members are hopeful and are working to create a positive image for the school, Alexander said. They organized a fall festival and have discussed advertising.

“There’s some community members working toward getting some housing in the area,” Alexander said. “The lumber mill that shut down, there’s a good chance it may be reopened.”

The Stephens School District has lost more than 200 students in nine years, going from 537 in the 2004-05 school year to 314 this year, according to state department records.

Brown, the School Board president, said she does not know why parents are leaving, but she said they are taking their students to other school districts even though Stephens officials have not approved the transfers. The district has sent letters to the districts the students attend, but nothing has changed, she said.

Stephens officials have talked to parents in public meetings and encouraged them to return, but those efforts have not worked, said Brown, who had a daughter graduate from the district and now has two grandchildren attending school there.

“It’s been devastating to me,” Brown said. “It’s sad because I know with our students leaving, our town is basically going to die.”

Stephens has considered several options for joining with other districts, Brown said. The most promising proposal had been to join with the nearby Nevada School District, but officials recently learned that the district is no longer interested in becoming a partner with Stephens, Brown said.

The Camden Fairview School District also was a potential partner, but the district would not want to leave a campus in Stephens, Brown said. Stephens is about 20 miles southwest of Camden.

Some families in McNeil in Columbia County, a town from which the Stephens district draws pupils, have said they want their children to go to the Magnolia School District, but some families who live in Stephens, which is in Ouachita County, want to become part of Camden Fairview, Brown said.

If the Stephens school were to close, the closing would affect families living there, and those employed with the district would lose their jobs, Brown said.

“We’re still looking, trying to see what we can do,” Brown said. “We really want to save our school.”

Front Section, Pages 1 on 10/31/2013

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