A new school district of approximately 4,000 students needs an administrative staff, and that staff needs a base of operation from which to work.
To that end, leaders in the new Jacksonville/North Pulaski School District have arranged to lease from Jacksonville, at a cost of $100 a year, the city's former police station at 1414 W. Main St.
The Jacksonville Police Department's headquarters are now at 1400 Marshall Road.
March 1 is the target date for school district leaders to move into their offices, Chief of Staff Phyllis Stewart said.
"We're excited about it because we will be close to the new high school, and it's an opportunity for us to have a presence on Main Street," Stewart said. "If Jacksonville continues to revitalize downtown, we'll be right in the middle of everything. And it will be an easy location for our community and our patrons to find."
District planners have selected the site of the now-vacant Jacksonville Middle School buildings, 1320 School St., to be the home to a new Jacksonville High School building. A Feb. 9 special election is planned on a proposed 7.6-mill property tax increase to finance the replacement high school, a replacement elementary school and improvements to other campuses.
The Jacksonville/North Pulaski district was created late last year by an order of the Arkansas Board of Education after residents of the affected area voted overwhelmingly in September 2014 in favor of forming a new district that would be carved out of the existing Pulaski County Special School District.
However, since that order the new district has remained under the supervision of the Pulaski County Special district so that employees, assets and debts could be divided and so that the new district can otherwise get established.
The new district, which now has an elected seven-member School Board and three administrators, will become independent of the Pulaski County Special district on July 1. Well before then, district leaders are planning to hire principals, teachers and support staff for the 2016-17 school year.
Stewart, Superintendent Tony Wood and Assistant Superintendent Jeremy Owoh are currently working out of offices provided by First Arkansas Bank & Trust at 602 W. Main St.
School Board meetings have been held at Jacksonville City Hall, and that will continue to be the case after the move to the new administrative headquarters. There is not satisfactory space in the new office site for the monthly School Board meetings that routinely attract 50 or so audience members.
The Pulaski County Special district's maintenance department is doing most of the renovation work on the new office space. The labor is at no cost to the new district but the district will pay for the materials, Stewart said. Derek Scott, the Pulaski County Special district's executive director of operations, said the job involves taking down some temporary walls and fixing the layout, redoing the floors, replacing the lighting, and painting.
A contractor did have to come in to make some structural modifications to ensure the building's stability, Scott said.
The total cost of the work to the new district is expected to be $250,000 to $400,000, Scott said.
The former police station, which is connected to the city's still-operating courts building, was constructed in 1964, expanded in 1978 and expanded again in 1993, according to Jacksonville's website.
Metro on 11/28/2015