The state Board of Education voted Thursday to return the Lee County School District to local control a month after the body removed its designation as being academically distressed.
In separate cases, the board also voted to have the Pulaski County Special School District and the Helena-West Helena School District stay under fiscal distress and to keep in place state-created community advisory boards in those areas.
The Lee County district also remains under fiscal distress but with the state handing back control, an election for a local school board will be held in September. The state will maintain control until after that election and the new board members are trained.
Hazel Burnett, the Education Department's coordinator for fiscal-distress accountability and reporting, told the board the 827-student district has shown improvement but is still budgeted to have a low year-end balance.
"I would not be ready to cut them loose on the financial side at this point," she said, noting that the fiscal distress designation was added less than a year ago in May 2014.
Lee County Superintendent Willie Murdock told the board the district has seen positive changes. And, she said, officials there are already planning community events to try to stir interest in the school board.
"We want a board that's going to be focused on the needs of the children," she said. "We're trying to prime them right now and get people interested."
Board member Vicki Saviers warned before the vote that it would be "really painful" if the progress in Lee County reverses and the state has to take control again.
"I am urging every able-bodied person in Lee County to become engaged in your school, to help Ms. Murdock do what she needs to do to provide the best staff that she can for kids," she said. "We need to all pull together on this to help them be the best that they can."
The state board removed the local Lee County board last year and hired Murdock to lead the district because of low achievement. At its February meeting, the board removed the academic distress label because more than 49.5 percent of the district's students scored proficient or better on state math and literacy exams over three years.
The state Education Department recommended the fiscal distress designation be continued in Pulaski County and the community advisory board created in 2013 be kept in place. The state board is required to take action before April 1, so the March meeting was the last opportunity before that date. The state department noted in its recommendation that a review of the district's fiscal distress status is under way and not yet complete.
"... [S]hould our review indicate that PCSSD is no longer in fiscal distress and has met all of the goals in its Fiscal Distress Improvement Plan, we will return to the Board with a recommendation that the district be removed from fiscal distress classification and from state authority," the recommendation said.
See Friday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for more on this story.