Leaders in the Pulaski County Special School District point to the 100-plus-students-a-year growth in enrollment at Sylvan Hills High School and say that the Sherwood campus needs to be expanded -- pronto.
To that end, the district's School Board decided earlier this year to ask voters at a special June 13 election to extend the levy of 14.8 of the district's overall 40.7-mill property-tax rate as a way to finance up to $66.49 million in bonds for classroom and other additions to the school on Bear Paw Drive.
The 13-year tax extension -- from 2035, when the 14.8 mills are now due to expire, to 2048 -- would not increase a property owner's annual school-tax payment but would require the same tax payment for more years.
Early voting for the special election begins Tuesday at two locations: The Pulaski County Regional Building, 501 W. Markham St., Little Rock, and the Jack Evans Senior Citizen Center, 2301 Thornhill Drive, Sherwood.
The early-voting hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and June 12 at the Pulaski County Regional Building.
The hours to vote early are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday at the Jack Evans center. There is no early voting at the center on June 12.
Polling places throughout the Pulaski County district will be open from 7:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. on election day.
The election is districtwide for voters living not only in Sherwood but also those living in areas such as Maumelle, far-west Little Rock and southeast Pulaski County.
Pulaski County Special district Superintendent Jerry Guess said last week that the district must act fast to be able to open the expanded campus in just over two years.
"This is a critical situation," Guess said about Sylvan Hills High, which was built in 1967 for about 850 students.
"The enrollment is already at almost 1,450," he said. "And the incoming ninth-grade class will be 100 larger than the senior class that just graduated. If we waited until November to do the election, the possibility of getting into the building in the fall of 2019 is just gone. Space is such issue that the board decided to go ahead with a special election because we need to get this project underway."
If the millage extension is approved, the district would issue bonds and likely break ground on the projects in December or early January, Guess said.
The construction plans call for a new, multistory classroom building with a media center and science laboratories, a new cafeteria and kitchen, an auditorium, an arena and a multipurpose facility -- all to accommodate as many as 2,200 ninth-through-12th graders.
The special election comes at a time when the Pulaski County Special district is already in the midst of an extensive building program.
A new Mills University Studies High School on Dixon Road is under construction and scheduled for opening in August 2018. The existing Mills campus will then be converted into a middle school to replace the existing Fuller Middle School, which will be demolished.
The Pulaski County Special district is also building a new Robinson Middle School in the western part of the county for opening in August 2018. The projects are being done with existing district funds in combination with $20.7 million in state desegregation aid.
The Mills and Fuller projects, in particular, are being done in response to the Pulaski County Special district's obligations in a long-running federal school desegregation lawsuit.
Those obligations call for the 12,000-student district to equalize the condition of its older schools that serve high percentages of black students to the district's newer schools -- Chenal Elementary, Maumelle Middle and High Schools and Sylvan Hills Middle School -- in more affluent communities that have larger white populations.
The special election also comes in the aftermath of voters in the neighboring, state-controlled Little Rock School District soundly rejecting a similar tax-extension plan, the funds from which were earmarked for a new high school and other building updates. The Pulaski County Special district operated under state control and without an elected school board for five years before the new seven-member School Board was elected last November.
The Campaign to Continue Our Progress is spearheading the Pulaski County Special district's drive for the 13-year extension of the 14.8 tax mills.
No organized opposition to the tax proposal has surfaced.
Linda George of Sherwood, a retired elementary school principal, is co-chairman of the campaign that has relied on yard signs, fliers, talks to school faculties and parent groups, addresses to community and business organizations, and social media to promote approval of the tax extension. The Campaign to Continue Our Progress organization has a Facebook page using that name.
Days before early voting started, the campaigners exhausted their supply of 500 yard signs, George said.
And while a majority of the yard signs appear to be in the Sherwood area that will benefit the most from the Sylvan Hills High expansion, George said last week that she has been pleased with the reception of the tax proposal in the other parts of the far-flung district.
That's helped by the fact that other parts of the district are getting new schools.
"It's not been, 'Yeah, but what do we get?'" she said. "I think everyone looks at Sylvan Hills and sees that there are nearly 1,500 students in a school built for 850 ... and there is no tax increase. They ask, Why would anybody vote against this?'"
"One of the things I've said is 'Whatever you are paying in taxes on June 12 you will pay on June 14 whether it passes or fails but, if you vote for it, we get a new high school.' That is what we hope people will see and understand," George said.
Sherwood community and government leaders have in recent years initiated efforts to form a possible Sherwood school district that would be independent of the Pulaski County Special district in much the same way that the Jacksonville/North Pulaski School District recently detached from the Pulaski County Special district.
Any further efforts by Sherwood to detach must wait on the Pulaski County district to be released from federal court supervision of its desegregation efforts in regard to facilities, school staffing, student discipline and internal monitoring of desegregation efforts.
"The only thing we are asked is: 'How does this new school affect Sherwood being able to have its own school district?" George said. "What it does is it moves us closer to being out of court supervision. One of the things under court supervision is facilities. If it helps us get out of supervision for that, then it moves us a step closer" to having a Sherwood district.
"Sherwood is still part of Pulaski County Special," George added. "We want to help Pulaski County get out of court supervision."
Guess, the district's superintendent, said the critical issues are overcrowding and the need for additional space at Sylvan Hills High.
"Whether or not Sherwood detaches is completely isolated from this question," Guess said about the election. "If Sherwood were to ever say 'We want our own district,' they would have to figure out how to pay for their own buildings."
Guess referred to the Jacksonville detachment in which the Pulaski County Special district campuses in the Jacksonville area had to be appraised and the new district had to pay the Pulaski County Special district a fair market value for them.
The proposed tax extension would not raise tax bills, but it would increase the Pulaski County Special district's annual debt-service payment.
The district's debt-service payment for this year is $8.4 million, according to information provided to the district by Stephens Inc., which is the district's financial adviser on the millage plan.
New bonds issued based on the extended 14.8 mills would cause the district's current debt payment of $8.4 million to increase to a projected $10.1 million in 2018, $15.2 million in 2019 and then to more than $16.3 million in each of 2020 through 2032. The projected annual amounts would decline to $15.9 million in each year from 2033 through 2035, and then to $6.4 million in each year, 2036 through 2048.
The June 13 vote will be the only Pulaski County School District election in 2017. Because all seven members of the School Board were elected in November , there will be no election for school board members in 2017.
The special tax election this month will meet the district's constitutional obligation to hold an annual vote on the district's property-tax rate.
Metro on 06/04/2017