Plans are changing for the Pulaski County Special School District's College Station, Harris and Scott elementary campuses, which are set to be closed and replaced with a single, new school with proceeds from a proposed property tax increase.
Superintendent Jerry Guess said Friday that he will recommend to the district's Citizens Advisory Board at a 6:30 p.m. special meeting Monday a revision to the building plan to instead renovate College Station and Harris elementary schools and keep those campuses where they are.
The district would keep its plan to build a new elementary school -- but make it a smaller one -- along the Interstate 440 corridor that would serve the Scott area and other parts of eastern Pulaski County, Guess said. The current Scott Elementary, which is to be closed at the conclusion of this school year, would instead stay open until the new school is completed, he said.
The building of the new campus -- like the improvements to College Station and Harris -- hinges on the success of a proposed 5.6-mill property tax increase, Guess said.
The special election on the tax proposal for construction, renovation and repairs throughout the district is May 12.
"I'm trying to make adjustments based on the input from the community and leaders regarding what is going on," Guess said.
"I thought the [Harris and College Station] communities would be excited about a new elementary school in that area for their kids. But they are really very adamantly supporting the schools that they've got: Harris and College Station," Guess said.
"We've had public meetings and we've talked to people and I've talked to civic leaders, and they are more interested in keeping the historical significance of Harris and College Station by keeping them open and maybe making some improvements."
Guess said the district leaders would use the same money that they would have used to construct a large, 800-seat elementary school to build a smaller school plus make improvements to the Harris and College Station schools. The improvements in mind, he said, include enclosing the hallways at College Station where each classroom opens up to the outdoors.
The district is planning to pair money raised by a tax increase with $20.8 million in state desegregation aid to finance a $221 million school construction and renovation plan that would result in improvements at every campus in the 17,000-student district.
"I met with the Scott Elementary staff this morning and told them what I had planned. I told the College Station people last night that I would approach it that way. I'm making the same thing known to the Harris folks. I'm trying to react to their concerns and their issues."
Donna Houston, who attended College Station Elementary and now is a grandmother to a College Station Elementary pupil, helped organize the community meeting with Guess about the school that attracted about 60 people Thursday.
Houston was pleased that the school won't close and that repairs are forthcoming if the millage proposal is passed by voters. She is eager to get that in writing from the district at the Monday meeting of the advisory board.
"At first we weren't for the millage, but now that we know ... they are going to need the millage money to repair these schools," Houston said.
"We'll have to," she said about voting for the millage. "That school really needs repairs."
The 5.6-mill tax increase being posed to voters would raise the district's tax rate to 46.3 mills and would cost the owner of a $100,000 home an additional $112 per year, and the owner of a $200,000 home an additional $224 per year.
A mill is one-tenth of 1 cent. One mill levied on an assessed value of $1,000 yields $1 in property taxes. Arkansas counties assess property at 20 percent of appraised value, so a $100,000 house has an assessed value of $20,000. That $20,000 multiplied by the proposed 0.0056 boost would generate the $112 tax increase.
District leaders point out that even with the increase, the tax rate in the district would be lower than the rates in the neighboring Little Rock and North Little Rock districts.
The proposed building plan -- first described late last year to the federal judge presiding in the district's 32-year-old federal school desegregation lawsuit -- calls for the construction of new Mills and Robinson high school campuses at a cost of $50 million each, and the expansion of Sylvan Hills High, nearly doubling its size.
Additionally, the current Fuller Middle School would be moved to the current Mills High campus in southeastern Pulaski County, and Robinson Middle would be moved to the current Robinson High campus in western Pulaski County. The existing middle school buildings at both locations would be demolished for parking.
Elsewhere, portable classroom buildings would be replaced with permanent classrooms, walls would be installed in open-space schools, school kitchens would be renovated, traffic access would be improved, and gymnasiums and multipurpose rooms would be added to schools that do not now have those features.
Regardless of the election outcome, the district has committed to build a new Mills High and move Fuller Middle to the current Mills site. The district is obligated in a long-running school desegregation lawsuit to bring the condition of its campuses in the southeast part of the district more in line with the much newer campuses in Maumelle and Sherwood.
The Pulaski County Special district last received voter approval for a property-tax increase in 1992, when voters approved an 8-mill increase at a time when the district was threatened with insolvency.
Metro on 04/25/2015