JACKSONVILLE — On Sept. 16, voters overwhelmingly approved the formation of a new Jacksonville-area school district. About 21 percent of eligible voters came out to vote, and nearly 95 percent of the voters participating in the special election voted in favor of the new district, but it was a long road to get the issue on the ballot.
Daniel Gray, chairman of the Jacksonville/North Pulaski School District Education Corps, said perseverance was key to making the vote a reality.
“It’s possible when you believe in something and when you think you can make a difference,” he said. “We never quit. Lots of people have been involved, and I have no doubt we’re going to be successful because of that commitment. That passion is there.”
The new district encompasses about 100 square miles and includes Jacksonville High School and North Pulaski High School, as well as Bayou Meto, Murrell Taylor, Pinewood, Harry Tolleson, Arnold Drive and Warren Dupree elementary schools; Homer Adkins Pre-kindergarten Center; and Jacksonville Middle School. The district will include 4,000 to 4,500 students.
Gray, who has two children in school — one in seventh grade and one in fourth grade — has been involved in the efforts for a Jacksonville/North Pulaski School District since 2007, and he said there was a shift in attitude that helped propel the efforts that had been going on for decades.
“We took a different approach to it,” he said. “It was always like we were trying to be antagonistic, so we changed our approach in 2007 to help and convince [the Pulaski County Special School District] that it was good for them, too.”
Part of that shift was creating relationships with principals and administrators in the Jacksonville area and finding out what they needed. People behind the new-school-district effort started mentoring students and met with the school board of the Pulaski County Special School District for several years.
In 2008, the Pulaski County Special School District approved of the new school district, but setbacks came the next year, hindering the effort again.
Those efforts were renewed in 2012, and at that point, Gray said, the Jacksonville/North Pulaski School District Education Corps was formed in order to propel the campaign forward.
“We said that whenever something happens, we need to be ready,” he said. “We started passing hurdles, and we were ready to go. We had our signatures, we had a feasibility study, we had everything in place.”
It was important to the Education Corps to leave nothing to chance, Gray said. Polling, public meetings, relationships and studies took place until the election was held.
“We just got it all out there, and were trying to get ahead of any negativity that would have been present,” Gray said. “I don’t know if it would have been 95 percent approval if we didn’t work as hard as we did.”
Still, members of the Education Corps were surprised at the high numbers that came in on election day. Gray said they were told that 80 percent approval would be “knocking it out of the park,” but the votes came in even better than that.
“We were confident that it was going to be a large margin, but I don’t think anyone expected 95 percent,” he said. “It just shows how much the area’s yearning for local control.”
At this point, the new district’s school board is expected to be officially created at the November state school board meeting. When that happens, a local committee will go through applications and select an interim school board who will then go about finding someone to serve as superintendent during the transition period.
Staff writer Angela Spencer can be reached at (501) 244-4307 or aspencer@arkansasonline.com.