The Arkansas Board of Education on Thursday ordered the involuntary incorporation of the Hughes School District into the West Memphis school system because of declining enrollment, effective July 1.
West Memphis and Hughes are about 28 miles apart. Already, some 150 Hughes students attend schools in West Memphis, leaders of the larger district said. Hughes' enrollment has fallen under the 350-student minimum for operating a district, requiring either a voluntary or involuntary merger with another district.
The Education Board's vote came after representatives of the 300-student Hughes district, which is largely in St. Francis County, unsuccessfully petitioned for a one-year state waiver of the consolidation requirement on the basis of Act 377 of the just completed legislative session.
That new act permits the Education Board to waive the consolidation requirement for a small district on a yearly basis if the underenrolled district is not in fiscal, academic or facility distress and fully complies with accreditation standards.
James Valley, an attorney for the Hughes district, argued to the Education Board that the Hughes district -- which was classified two years ago as being in "fiscal distress status," primarily because of problems found by state auditing -- is not in "fiscal distress."
He said in both his written and oral arguments to the state Education Board that "fiscal distress" is an undefined term in state law and must be interpreted to mean "a state of extreme misfortune pertaining to finances."
"The Hughes School District is not, by any measure, in a state of extreme misfortune pertaining to its finances and is in equal or better financial condition than many school districts in the state of Arkansas," Valley wrote in the petition on behalf of the Hughes district. "Hughes has an undisputed projected year-end balance of more than $1.4 million" in a annual budget of about $2.2 million, he wrote.
Valley told the Education Board that the emergency clause putting Act 377 into effect right away was meant to apply to or "capture" the Hughes district. That's because Hughes was the only district in the state that had fallen under the 350-student minimum for two consecutive years, 2012-14, and had been notified that it must merge to another district beginning with the coming 2015-16 school year.
Rep. Charlotte Douglas, R-Alma, verified for the Education Board at Thursday's meeting that it was her intent in seeking the emergency clause to make the new law apply to Hughes. She said that she didn't consider state audit findings of miscoded expenses in Hughes to rise to the level of fiscal distress.
But Jeremy Lasiter, the Arkansas Department of Education's chief legal counsel, told the state board that the new law does not apply to the Hughes district. The district is ineligible for a waiver of consolidation, he said, because it is labeled as a district in fiscal distress. He said there is no difference between "fiscal distress status" and "fiscal distress."
Lasiter also said Hughes could not be immediately removed from the fiscal-distress classification because there is a process for removing the label. That process requires the Education Department to certify that the district has met the requirements of its financial improvement plan.
Eric Saunders, the Education Department's assistant commissioner for financial services, said more-recent state audits of the district found some of the same violations.
Hughes Superintendent Sheryl Owens, backed by Hughes community members and students, asked the board to preserve the district.
"We believe we can prove that a small rural district can be effective," Owens said. "We've made consistent progress in our finances and academics," she said.
She said the district's balances have grown from $400,000 to more than $1 million and that the audit findings have gone "from many to very few."
Owens also said that consolidating the district with another -- be it Forrest City, which is about 23 miles away, or West Memphis -- would create a hardship on Hughes students who live in what she referred to as a geographically isolated district with about 107 miles of paved roads and 140 miles of gravel roads. She predicted that some students would have to ride buses for more than an hour each way in a merged district.
Students Adrick Smith and Kendra Glasper, both juniors at Hughes High School, asked that their school system remain open.
"My dream has always been to graduate as a Blue Devil," Smith said. "Please keep the school open and make my dreams come true."
Glasper said closing the school would jeopardize her No. 1 ranking in her class, as well as her basketball and track participation.
Former Arkansas legislator Randy Alexander also lobbied on behalf of the Hughes district, citing his work as chairman of a legislative study on the approximately 75 school district consolidations required by Act 60 of 2003.
"What burns me up about this," Alexander said in an interview about the Act 60 consolidations, "is that we said we were doing this to save money. We didn't save money. We spent a lot more money. And we said we were doing it to improve academics. There is no evidence that that happened. There is no evidence of any other benefit."
State Education Commissioner Johnny Key recommended that the Hughes district be consolidated with either the Forrest City School District or West Memphis. He said the department has confidence that Forrest City, which has some schools classified as academically distressed, is on the right track to improve them. West Memphis already has a proven track record on achievement, he said.
Lasiter, the Education Department legal counsel, noted that West Memphis is not a party to any kind of desegregation order that would have to be considered in a consolidation. Forrest City is a subject of a court order, which is the reason that the Forrest City district is not accepting transfer students from other districts or allowing their students to transfer elsewhere.
Forrest City had initially planned to voluntarily take in the Hughes district but backed out last month as the result of some matters that were unresolved at the time. The district's superintendent said Thursday that Forrest City would take the Hughes district and leave students in grades kindergarten through eighth grades at the Hughes campus for at least the coming year, rather than closing the Hughes campus.
Education Board member Alice Mahony of El Dorado made the motion to grant the Act 377 waiver to the Hughes district for one year. But that was defeated in a 5-3 vote of the Education Board.
Education Board member Diane Zook of Melbourne made the motion to order the consolidation of Hughes with West Memphis. Because West Memphis does allow students to transfer to other districts through the state's School Choice Act, the Hughes students could apply to attend schools in districts other than West Memphis, she said.
The motion passed with a 7-1 vote with Mahony casting the only no vote.
Metro on 04/10/2015