A petition for a special election to be held in the former Weiner School District on whether to detach from the Harrisburg School District was pulled from the Arkansas Board of Education's agenda Thursday.
Education Commissioner Johnny Key said the election matter "was not yet ripe" for the state board's consideration.
Residents of the Weiner, Waldenburg and Fisher communities in northeast Arkansas would like to re-establish the Weiner district and operate it as a kindergarten-through-12th-grade agriculture academy -- as envisioned by Act 1286 of this year's legislative session.
The act calls for the Arkansas Department of Career Education, in collaboration with the Arkansas Department of Education, to adopt rules for setting up an agriculture school as a pilot program.
Key said those necessary rules have not been fully drafted and have yet to go through the process of being presented for public review and for approval at the state agency and legislative committee levels. He also said he has asked for an Arkansas attorney general's opinion on matters related to carrying out Act 1286.
The Weiner district was annexed in 2010 to the Harrisburg district after the Weiner district's enrollment fell below the 350-student minimum required for maintaining a school district. Residents in the former Weiner district were unsuccessful in their legal challenges to the state-ordered annexation.
The proposed Weiner Agriculture and Technology Academy School District would not have to meet the 350-student minimum for a district, planners have said.
Already, the planners for the academy have developed a list of courses such as crop production, beef and equine science, welding, electricity, and technology in agriculture, along with the more typical high school courses of English, geometry, history and chemistry.