In tax vote, school with walls a wish

District upgrades ride on levy’s rise

 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/STATON BREIDENTHAL --5/13/13--  Pulaski County Special School District superintendent Jerry Guess listens Monday as the state Board of Education discusses continuation of the districts fiscal distress classification.
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/STATON BREIDENTHAL --5/13/13-- Pulaski County Special School District superintendent Jerry Guess listens Monday as the state Board of Education discusses continuation of the districts fiscal distress classification.

Robinson Elementary School in the Pulaski County Special School District is a one-room schoolhouse of sorts -- but a really, really big room in which bookcases and other storage units section off classrooms without walls.

At the district's College Station Elementary, the classrooms have walls. But those rooms -- along with the cafeteria and the physical-education space -- are in as many as five buildings with no main entrance and connected by outdoor walkways exposed to the elements.

Leaders in the Pulaski County Special district have construction plans for those two schools and for about 30 other campuses in the 17,000-student district. The plans, which include two new high schools, two new elementary schools and two relocated middle schools, hinge largely on a proposed 5.6-mill school property tax increase.

That increase would raise the school-tax rate from the current 40.7 mills to 46.3 mills and cost the owner of a $50,000 home an additional $56 a year and the owner of a $100,000 home an additional $112 a year.

The proposed increase, which has attracted both public support and opposition, is the sole issue on the ballot in Tuesday's special election.

Polling places will be open from 7:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday in all parts of the Pulaski County Special district -- except the area that makes up the new Jacksonville/North Pulaski School District. Residents there won't participate in the election, nor will the tax be applied to them if it passes.

On Monday, early voters can cast ballots at the Pulaski County Regional Building, 501 W. Markham St. in Little Rock. Hours for early voting are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

More than 1,200 people participated in early voting last week.

Jerry Guess, superintendent of the district, said the facility needs in the state's third-largest school system have reached a critical point.

"We need more work done than can be done with second-lien bonds alone," he said.

Second-lien bonds are financed with a district's existing revenue and not with the income from a property-tax increase.

The district's $221 million facility plan calls for building new Wilbur Mills and Joe T. Robinson high schools and doubling the size of Sylvan Hills High, each at a cost of $50 million.

Additionally, the district plans to move Fuller Middle School to the current Mills High building and Robinson Middle to the current Robinson High site. The current buildings for the two middle schools would be demolished.

The plan also calls for a new Robinson Elementary School -- one with walled classrooms -- and a new elementary school along Interstate 440 to serve Scott and other east Pulaski County communities.

"We're an open-space school, and that's just not a popular educational concept any longer," Principal Kim Truslow said last week. "When parents come look ... they have a hard time feeling that their child will receive an excellent education even though you can look at every piece of data published and see that this is an excellent school."

She said the school, built in 1974, has a capacity for 500 but a current enrollment of 187, some of whom were reading to two visiting therapy dogs last week.

Others were working with Wildwood Park for the Arts-sponsored poet-in-residence Chris James.

"With a new facility, we're hoping to draw more people to the school," Truslow said.

The school doesn't have any dedicated multipurpose space for recess or physical education. The cafeteria is used for that -- if it's not being used for breakfast or lunch. Otherwise, the indoor recess is in each classroom space, sometimes using exercise videos and games displayed on electronic white boards.

Adding walls to the current school was not feasible because the size of resulting spaces would not meet state requirements, Truslow said.

At other schools, including the nearly 60-year-old College Station Elementary, the district's plans call for enclosing open-air hallways, replacing portable buildings with permanent classrooms, adding multipurpose/gymnasium space and improving car/school bus access to schools.

At one point the district proposed replacing College Station, Harris and Scott elementaries with one new school. But Scott, Harris and College Station residents objected to losing their campuses. Guess and his staff -- with approval from Arkansas Education Commissioner Johnny Key -- modified the plan to keep and improve Harris in the McAlmont Community and College Station, plus build a $12 million school along Interstate 440.

If the property-tax increase passes, Scott Elementary will remain open until the new school is built. Otherwise the school will be closed and Scott pupils assigned to Harris Elementary.

Another provision in the plan is to move Cato Elementary to the Northwood Middle School campus. The district will no longer use Northwood as a middle school because enrollment has declined.

The proposed 5.6 mills would raise about $12 million a year that would finance $203 million in 30-year construction bonds. The district also would use a portion of the $20.6 million in state desegregation aid that is earmarked for facilities.

The new schools and renovations would help the district earn release from federal court supervision of its desegregation efforts, Guess said.

One of the areas still being monitored by the court in the 32-year-old Pulaski County school desegregation lawsuit is the disparity in the facilities. District schools range from the new Maumelle High and Middle schools and the new Sylvan Hills Middle School in Sherwood to much older schools elsewhere, including in the southeast portion of the district that is less affluent and has a greater proportion of black students.

District leaders have committed to the court to build a new Mills High and move Fuller Middle to the current Mills site regardless of the outcome of Tuesday's special election.

"We certainly believe this will get us unitary," Guess said about the districtwide building plan. "Even more important, or at least as important, is that students need these facilities. It's critical."

Sylvan Hills High in Sherwood is in urgent need of expansion, he said as an example. The school was built for 700 but is serving 990 this year, and officials project to enroll as many as 1,500 within three years.

Preston Lewis, a Maumelle alderman and leader in efforts to establish a Maumelle school district separate from the Pulaski County Special district, said last week that he is campaigning against the proposed 5.6-mill tax increase, using social media to direct his message to other Maumelle residents and those in the Chenal and Ferndale areas south of the Arkansas River.

Lewis said the school-tax increase for new facilities "is not the golden ticket" to attaining release from federal court supervision of desegregation efforts. He said facilities are only one-fifth of that equation.

"A new Mills High School will be built regardless of whether the millage passes," Lewis said. "By most accounts, Mills is the No. 1 facility people are targeting for unitary status. We see that that will be addressed. But we are concerned -- what is the district doing for academic achievement? What is it doing for discipline? What is it doing for staffing equity? Those are important milestones as well [for unitary status]. Saying that it is all about facilities -- we just don't see it."

Guess said the district is working on all the areas -- staffing, student achievement and monitoring.

He also said the plans by Maumelle and Sherwood leaders to form their own school districts can be addressed in the future.

"This millage increase will not negatively impact that. Both communities will need to have more than the current 40.7 mill tax rate we currently have to operate," he said. "The Sherwood people understand that the increase will help them with a new high school and help them prepare for a detachment if they pursue that."

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 increase would generate a $112 tax increase.

The 42-page description of the building plan and millage proposal is on the district's website: pcssd.org.

"We do need to be comparable to other schools, facilitywise," Truslow said about replacing the open-space Robinson Elementary.

"First impressions -- parents just can't get past it. In today's society looks are everything, unfortunately. They don't really look deeper to find out what is going on. They make a snap decision based on what the school looks like."

SundayMonday on 05/10/2015

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