Spare unused-leave pay, NLR chief says
North Little Rock Superintendent Kelly Rodgers said Thursday he wants to remove from the budget-chopping block the district's practice of paying employees for their unused sick leave when they exit the district.
The district is in the midst of cutting expenses for 2017-18 and subsequent years to offset the loss of $7.6 million in state state desegregation aid that is to end after the 2017-18 year. Discontinuing the payouts for unused sick leave was one of several budget-saving proposals. But Rodgers said he feared that the proposal would cause some employees to attempt to use their sick-leave days before the end of the school year, leaving classrooms and other job sites to be manned by substitutes.
The district has paid an average of $161,000 a year in recent years for the sick-leave benefit.
Other proposed budget cuts remain on the table. School Board members said Thursday that they want to be armed with all possible costs and scenarios going into an April 6 work session on the budget issues.
Jacksonville district to gain pre-K center
Homer Adkins Early Childhood Education Center is located within the boundaries of the Jacksonville/North Pulaski School District, and, in 2017-18, the district will for the first time run the center for 3- and 4-year-olds living in the district.
The Pulaski County Special School District is the current operator of the pre-kindergarten center, in accordance with an earlier agreement spelling out the terms for the Jacksonville district's detachment from the Pulaski County Special district.
Leaders in the two districts have agreed to accelerate by one year a change in the management of the center. The center will serve as many as 220 children in the Jacksonville district and will be funded -- as it is now for the Pulaski Special district -- by the Arkansas Better Chance program.
The Pulaski County Special district is expected to expand the number of early-childhood education seats at its various elementary schools to compensate for the loss of the Homer Adkins center.
The Homer Adkins center will increase to nine the total number of campuses in the new Jacksonville/North Pulaski system, which is completing its first year of operation.
Bryant pupil's essay reels in scholarship
Taylor Scifres of Bryant High School is the recipient of a $2,500 college scholarship for winning this year's Ideas Matter Scholarship Essay Contest sponsored by the Clinton Presidential Center.
Scifres wrote about a plan for providing victims of domestic violence with information on how to access help.
Runners-up are Zelda Engler-Young of Conway High School and Jarrell Imamura of the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts in Hot Springs.
The annual contest calls on Arkansas high school students to produce ideas for confronting community problems.
Metro on 03/18/2017