The Little Rock School District plans to ask taxpayers at a special election in May to extend 12.4 existing property tax mills for 14 years, to 2047, to finance a new high school and make other campus improvements.
Superintendent Mike Poore said Tuesday that he will ask Arkansas Education Commissioner Johnny Key to approve May 9 as the special election date.
Key must approve the election plan in both his role as the state commissioner and in his position as the school board for the 24,000-student Little Rock district that has operated under state control -- without a locally elected school board -- since January 2015, when six of the district's 48 schools were found to be in academic distress.
If approved, Little Rock's special election would be the same day as a special election in the neighboring Pulaski County Special School District on a similar proposal to extend 14.8 debt-service mills by 13 years to 2048.
That Pulaski County Special district's election is also subject to approval from Key, because it would be a special election on a day other than the annual school board election date in September.
Little Rock district leaders earlier had asked for and received approval for a March 14 election. They withdrew that plan to give themselves more time to fully identify the building improvements that would be undertaken at each campus in addition to the construction of a high school in the southwest part of the city.
Poore said Tuesday that a description of the projects will be included in the election request that will be sent to Key at the end of this week.
The latest millage election plan comes at a time when the district has decided to close three schools and repurpose a fourth as part of an $11 million package of budget cuts for the 2017-18 school year.
District leaders have said the school closings and cuts in staffing and bus transportation service are necessary -- in conjunction with budget cuts this school year and in the past -- to offset the scheduled end to $37.3 million a year in state desegregation aid.
"I know that this is kind of a challenging idea in the sense that there is no school board that gets to approve it, and it is a challenging idea when you have just finished budget reductions," Poore said in an interview.
"But we have a chance to do a couple of things that have been talked about for years and years and years, and we can do it without raising someone's taxes," he said. "We can get to the commitment of a southwest high school that has been promised to this community. The second thing is we can move forward on building projects that will impact learning environments for the start of next year. Will we get all of them done? No, but we can start work on a lot of things that can make a difference immediately."
The Little Rock district's request to voters for an extension of 12.4 mills would not increase the district's existing 46.4-mill property-tax rate, but it would result in taxpayers continuing to pay the same rate for more years.
If the Little Rock district's proposal is approved by voters, the 12.4 mills would be extended by 14 years to 2047. Those 12.4 debt-service mills will otherwise expire in 2033.
The district levies 32 mills for maintenance and operation of the district, the revenue from which is used to pay salaries and bills, and it has 2 mills dedicated to the upkeep of technology systems.
The extension of the 12.4 debt-service mills, paired with the refinancing of existing bond at a lower interest rate, would generate about $202,645,000 to support bonds that would be paid off over 30 years, according to information compiled earlier this year by the district.
About $160 million of that would be new money that could go toward the construction of a $90 million high school and improvements elsewhere in the state's largest school district. The remainder of the $202.6 million would be used to pay off previously issued bonds and support second-lien bonds in the future.
District leaders are working with the Polk, Stanley, Wilcox architecture firm on the design of a high school for as many as 2,250 ninth- through 12th-graders on a 55-acre site in southwest Little Rock. The proposed school would replace both McClellan and J.A. Fair high schools.
The district-owned site is between Mabelvale Pike and Mann Road behind the Home Depot and Wal-Mart stores. Initial planning for a new high school predates the state takeover of the school district. The Little Rock School Board voted to purchase the land for a replacement school for McClellan in April 2013.
In addition to the high school, Poore has said building projects are likely to include renovation of the existing McClellan High campus for another purpose, such as a kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school.
Some of the other projects will include new roofs, windows, lighting systems and heating and air-conditioning systems, Poore said.
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 district's 46.4-mill tax rate generates $928 in tax revenue a year for the school system.
The Little Rock district last asked for voter approval of a change of any kind in property-tax rate or tax-rate structure in 2000.
Deborah Roush, a spokesman for the Pulaski County Special district, said Tuesday that the proposal on extending 14.8 mills for 13 years has not yet been forwarded to Key for approval.
The district would use much of the the $65 million raised by extending the millage for projects that would include expanding Sylvan Hills High School in Sherwood to hold as many as 2,200 students. The school has doubled its enrollment since the 2010-11 school year to 1,452 this year and is projected to reach more than 1,600 students in the 2017-18 school year.
The Pulaski Special district has a total tax rate of 40.7 mills.
Metro on 02/22/2017