For the first time since September 2010, school board elections will be held this year in the Pulaski County Special and the Helena-West Helena school districts.
Election Day isn't until Nov. 8, but the one-week-only candidate filing period for the election begins at noon Tuesday and ends at noon on Aug. 30 in the clerk's offices in Pulaski and Phillips counties.
Typically, Arkansas school districts choose school board members in school elections held on the third Tuesday of each September. That will still be the case for nearly all of the state's 235 school districts this year, including other districts in Pulaski and Phillips counties. Those elections will be Sept. 20.
"We will make it work," Pulaski County Clerk Larry Crane said Friday about a November school board election. "And the Pulaski County Election Commission will make it work. They will actually be handling the mechanics of the election except for the few things that we do."
The Pulaski County Special and Helena-West Helena boards will each have seven positions, and all seven positions on each board are open. Pulaski County Special has seven, single-member zones. Helena-West Helena has five single-member zones and two at large, districtwide positions.
To qualify to run for the unpaid school board seats, candidates running for a zone seat must live in the zone they want to represent. And they must submit to their county clerk a petition for their candidacy signed by at least 20 qualified electors in the zone, if applicable, or the district if running for an at large position.
Pulaski County Special and the Helena-West Helena districts were taken over by the state in 2011 because they were in fiscal distress. Their superintendents were placed under the direction of the state's education commissioner, and their elected school boards were dissolved.
After five years of state control of the districts, the Arkansas Board of Education voted earlier this year to return local control to the systems after the election and training of members for the new school boards.
Arkansas Education Commissioner Johnny Key directed that the board elections in both systems be held in conjunction with the Nov. 8 general election, as is permitted by Act 1281 of 2015.
Jerry Guess, superintendent of the 12,000-student Pulaski County Special district, said Friday that based on conversations and inquiries to him, he believes there could be multiple candidates running for each of the seats.
"I would say there are two or three people in each of the zones who have called and inquired, and asked where they could get information," Guess said, adding that at least three of the district's state-appointed, seven-member Community Advisory Board members have indicated that they might become candidates for election.
That the school board members might all be new with little or no board experience in the district could be a challenge for the new board.
"They are going to have to find their way in how they define their role and responsibilities," Guess said.
Guess is starting his sixth year as the district's state-appointed superintendent.
"I think we have shown that the district has operated quite well under the current governance model," he said. "I believe we made a lot of progress in these past five years. I think a board member would think that there has been minimal oversight to this point, and it seems to have worked well. The things we have done have put the district into a much-improved posture."
Another of the challenges in the coming election is familiarizing the public with the very significant changes made to the Pulaski County Special district's election zones since the previous 2010 board election.
The election zone boundaries were altered to reflect population changes shown in the 2010 U.S. Census and to reflect the detachment from the county district of the 100 square miles that make up the new Jacksonville/North Pulaski School District. What was once Zone 1, which encompassed the southeast section of the district, now roughly makes up Zone 2, for example. Zone 7 that used to encompass Jacksonville and north Pulaski County is now an area in west Pulaski County.
In the Helena-West Helena School District, which had a student count of 1,349 late last week, six of the seven state-appointed Community Advisory Board members are expected to be among the candidates that run in the Nov. 8 election that will also feature a proposed 9.75-mill property tax increase for school construction.
Superintendent John Hoy said he expects the newly elected board to be challenged to carry out the vision and mission that have been set by the advisory board.
"When a new board is elected, there may be some thought to turning in new directions for the district," Hoy said. "Right now I am good with the direction we are going, and I would like for us to continue in a similar direction. We are trying to positively impact all of our children. I think we have taken on some initiatives this year that are moving toward that end. I hate to take on initiatives and all of a sudden change the initiatives without giving them time to kick in and actually work."
The district this year has redesigned its alternative education program with the goal of assigning all students who would otherwise be suspended and sent home to the alternative education program.
Another initiative is the establishment of a college preparatory academy within the elementary school, Hoy said.
The setting of the two school elections in conjunction with the general election this year required some legislation to resolve conflicts between the older election laws.
Act 15 of a special legislative session earlier this year removed legal obstacles to holding a school board election at a time when voters are also choosing their federal, state, county and local representatives.
As a result of Act 15, school election issues and general election issues can be on the same ballot.
The requirement that a school election be held within the physical boundaries of a school district is waived for a November election, and early voting will take place for two weeks before the election. Early voting before a September school election is limited to one week before the election day.
The new law also authorizes a school district to reimburse each county in which the school election appears on the general election ballot for additional costs incurred by the county for the school election.
Metro on 08/22/2016