When Jacksonville civic leaders pushed to form their own school district, the desire for improved school buildings was a motivator.
When the Pulaski County Special School District agreed to a new Jacksonville district, it was because of school buildings.
And now, the new Jacksonville/North Pulaski system -- subject to federal desegregation obligations to provide equitable school buildings -- is asking voters for a 7.6-mill school property tax increase to help finance new schools and school additions.
The fledgling district that is on the brink of a July 1 detachment from the Pulaski County Special district is holding a special election Feb. 9 on the proposed tax increase.
Early voting begins Tuesday and will run through Friday in the Jacksonville Community Center at 5 Municipal Drive. The voting hours at that site are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Additionally, early voting can be done from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and Feb. 8 at the Pulaski County Regional Building in downtown Little Rock at 501 W. Markham St.
"Our people want to take care of our kids," Daniel Gray, president of the Jacksonville/North Pulaski School Board, said Friday in support of the tax proposal. "We've been deprived. Our facilities have been deplorable, and our kids have been withheld from all areas for too long. This is our time to take care of our kids."
Education Corps of Jacksonville/North Pulaski is leading the campaign in support of the tax increase. Information about the new district, video testimonials about the proposed increase, polling sites for election day and the actual language on the ballot are available on the Corps' website: ourowndistrict.com.
There has been no organized opposition to the tax proposal, but some people have grumbled about it in social media postings.
Nearly 95 percent of 3,985 voters in September 2014 voted in favor of carving a new Jacksonville/North Pulaski public school district out of the Pulaski County Special School District -- a proposal that required federal court approval before it could go to voters.
Now, 1½ years later, voters in the new district will return to the polls to decide on a 48.3-mill tax rate for schools, up from the current 40.7 mills. The new district's 40.7-mill tax rate for schools is the same as it was when it was part of the Pulaski County Special district.
The increase would cost the owner of a $50,000 home an additional $76 a year. The owner of a $100,000 home would pay an additional $152 a year.
A mill is one-10th of 1 cent. One mill levied on an assessed value of $1,000 yields $1 in property taxes. Arkansas counties tax property at 20 percent of appraised or market value, so a $100,000 house has a taxable value of $20,000. That $20,000 multiplied by the proposed 0.0076 increase would result in the $152 tax increase on a $100,000 home.
Some of the social-media complaints about the proposed 7.6-mill increase have said it represents a 19 percent rise in the district's school tax rate even before the district serves its first student.
Gray counters that by saying the proposed increase would result in a 14 percent increase in the total tax property rate paid by Jacksonville residents for libraries, fire and police pensions, county government and roads, as well as for schools. That total rate is currently 53.8 mills. Five other municipalities -- including Little Rock, North Little Rock and Maumelle -- will continue to have higher tax rates than Jacksonville even with its proposed school tax increase.
The proposed 48.3 mills for schools is the same as the current rate in the North Little Rock School District and higher than the school tax rates in Pulaski County Special and Little Rock districts.
The revenue generated by the Jacksonville/North Pulaski increase would be used to help finance $80 million in construction projects, including a replacement for Jacksonville High, a new elementary school to replace Arnold Drive and Tolleson elementaries, and the addition of multipurpose rooms to the four other elementaries: Bayou Meto, Pinewood, Murrell Taylor and Warren Dupree.
The money raised by the proposed 7.6-mill increase -- combined with the money from the extension of the district's existing 14.8 debt-services mills -- would be used to pay the debt over 25 years on a $46 million bond issue. Additionally, the district is seeking Arkansas Partnership Program funding and U.S. Department of Defense funding to help with the costs of the new and expanded schools. (Little Rock Air Force Base is in Jacksonville, and the new district will serve students from the base.)
A new Jacksonville High School, being designed by WER Architects/Planners and projected to cost about $60 million, would be located on the site of the now vacant Jacksonville Middle School, formerly known as Jacksonville North and Jacksonville South middle schools.
The current North Pulaski High will become the middle school for the entire district in the 2016-17 school year.
The Feb. 9 election will be the only school district-related election in Jacksonville this year. There will be no school board election in September because all seven board members were elected last September to terms of two or more years.
Jacksonville/North Pulaski residents voted to form a new district in 2014 after U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. in January of that year approved a comprehensive settlement in the long-running Pulaski County school-desegregation lawsuit.
The settlement -- negotiated by the Little Rock, North Little Rock and Pulaski County Special districts, the state and intervening parties for teachers and for black students -- included a provision allowing Jacksonville to form its own district, in accordance with state laws. The settlement also said that any new district would be bound by the terms of the settlement agreement.
Scott Richardson, an attorney for the Jacksonville/North Pulaski district, said Friday that the new district "has a strong desire to provide the best learning environment it can for students."
At the same time, the new district has legal responsibilities regarding facilities that another new district would not have, Richardson said.
The Pulaski County Special district's desegregation plan -- Plan 2000 -- requires school facilities that "are clean, safe, attractive and equal."
The Pulaski County Special District -- with its new Maumelle High, Sherwood Middle and Chenal Elementary schools and much older schools, including Mills High and Fuller Middle -- has not yet met that obligation.
Until the new Jacksonville district formed, Jacksonville High, Jacksonville Middle and Arnold Drive elementary schools were among those that the Pulaski County Special district was obligated to improve.
The Pulaski County Special district agreed to the formation of the new district because the new district would qualify for significant amounts of state building aid to improve the Jacksonville area schools. The Pulaski County Special district is largely ineligible for state building aid because of its local property tax wealth.
"There's no doubt that the district is not unitary in facilities, and it will have to improve its facilities to become unitary," Richardson said about Jacksonville/North Pulaski. "I don't know how the district will fulfill that requirement without the millage increase."
Marshall, the presiding judge in the federal desegregation lawsuit, approved the Jacksonville/North Pulaski district's building plan in a Jan. 14 order this year, calling it a significant step toward equal facilities for all students.
But the judge also said the district's plan is missing a timetable for replacing four elementary schools -- Bayou Meto, Warren Dupree, Pinewood and Murrell Taylor.
"[T]o achieve unitary status, JNPSD must have a plan for making all facilities clean, safe, attractive and equal and must be implementing that plan in good faith to the extent practicable," the judge said.
The district must supplement its building plan by Dec. 31 with the "when-and-how specifics about replacing the schools so that all the new district's elementary schools are equal," the judge wrote.
Metro on 01/31/2016