In Little Rock, North Little Rock and Pulaski County Special school districts, the choice is November.
In Jacksonville/North Pulaski, Bryant, Russellville, Rivercrest and Paris school districts, the choice has been made and it is May.
Across the state, school boards said goodbye in 2017 to the annual, stand-alone September school board elections and are now exercising provisions in Act 910 of 2017 to choose new school board election dates in either May or November.
In even-numbered years, starting in 2018, the school elections will be held either in conjunction with the May preferential primary elections or the November general election. The general election is held on the first Tuesday following the first Monday of the month.
In odd-numbered years, the school board elections will be held on the dates that the primary or general elections would be held if they were to take place.
The deadline for notifying Arkansas' county clerks of a school board's election date choice is Feb. 22, which is the first day of the candidacy filing period for the preferential primary in May.
"Of those that have already made their decisions, the majority of boards so far have been picking the May preferential primary date," Boyce Watkins, advocacy director for the Arkansas School Boards Association, said in an interview. "There are a few that have chosen November. That's one of the good things about the act -- it gives a board an option based on what works best for their communities."
The association, which doesn't have a tally on the numbers of districts choosing either date, has been giving its member school boards the advantages and disadvantages of the different dates.
"If you ask the members in the different districts, there may be things that are very unique and specific to only one district to cause them to choose one date over the other," he said. "One of the issues that seems to make May a better option is that superintendent contracts are reviewed in December and recommendations on the contract are made in January.
"If you bring new board members on in November, they may very well be coming into their first meeting needing to consider [the renewal, extension or termination of ] a superintendent's contract," Watkins added. "They really don't have enough knowledge in many cases about the superintendent and the objectives for the district. A May date would be better in regard to giving one or more new school board members time to review what has been going on in the district -- not only about the superintendent's contract but also about budgets."
The association isn't recommending one election date over another, Watkins said. But it had resisted the proposal to eliminate the September election date when the matter was in bill form before the state Legislature.
"We strongly believed and testified as such that the school board election is an election that is certainly important enough to be a stand-alone election, Watkins said. "We supported leaving it by itself."
Gary Newton, executive director of the Arkansas Learns organization, which advocates for family choice in selecting schools for children, is a former executive of the Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce. He is a longtime proponent of November school board elections.
Newton said Wednesday that he accompanied Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce leaders in recent visits to different parts of the state to encourage business leaders to urge their local boards to select November school board elections.
"I think we have seen in Pulaski County Special and Helena-West Helena school districts the fruit of that -- more engagement, more buy-in," Newton said. "Both of those districts followed their record-setting [voter turnout in November] with successful millage campaigns."
Both Pulaski County Special and Helena-West Helena districts in 2016 exited five years of state control for fiscal distress. Arkansas Education Commissioner Johnny Key used his legal authority at that time to schedule November 2016 school board elections for those districts -- rather than traditional September elections.
The Pulaski County Special election for seven new board members in November 2016 drew almost 32,000 voters. Helena-West Helena voters at the November 2016 election selected seven members but defeated a proposed property tax increase. But just a few months later Helena-West Helena voters approved a 9.75-mill property tax.
Voters in the Pulaski County Special district voted in June this year to approve the 13-year extension of 14.8 mills already being levied.
"As long as we choose to govern our school districts via a democracy, we should do everything we can to maximize that democracy," Newton said. "While May is a tremendous step up from September, if you really want to go all out and engage as many people as possible, choose November."
Andrew Bagley, president of the Helena-West Helena board, said in a recent Arkansas Democrat-Gazette guest column that the November election with its wide voter participation laid the groundwork for re-establishing trust and community engagement in the school district. He said district leaders had asked Key to set the November date, believing the choice was a moral imperative.
"Good things come from the increased engagement that higher-turnout elections bring between your district and community," Bagley wrote.
The North Little Rock School Board, in recently selecting the November date, noted that a late-in-the-year school board election would give the district more time earlier in the year to hold a special election on property taxes -- should that be needed. A special election on taxes can't be held after the regular school election in which the district's tax rate is on the ballot, because school tax votes can't be held more than once a year.
Watkins, from the school boards association, said it could be harder to pass tax-rate changes at elections held in conjunction with the May primary or November general election because of the heavy voter turnout. However, that won't be an issue in the odd-numbered years in which there are not typically preferential primary or general election issues on the ballots.
"Those years may possibly be a good time to run your millage issues when they would basically run by themselves," Watkins said.
In the Jacksonville/North Pulaski School District, there was no big push for one date over the other, School Board President Daniel Gray said.
"There were a lot of pros and cons on both sides but we felt having a school board member in place for an entire school year was important," Gray said.
"More people felt comfortable with May, so we went with May," said Gray about the decision that will result in three of the board's seven seats -- including his -- being open for election next spring.
Gray acknowledged that the Jacksonville district was bucking the decisions made by the other three districts in Pulaski County but also noted that nearby Cabot is going with a May date for school board elections.
Bryan Poe, election coordinator in Pulaski County, said he and his staff left the decisions strictly to the school boards. He doesn't anticipate the school election law changes to create a hardship for his staff.
"We ironed it out pretty good last year with the Pulaski County Special district's November election," Poe said, adding that it is not known at this point whether the Little Rock district, which is operating under state control without an elected board, will have school board elections in 2018.
The Little Rock district -- the state's largest -- has asked the commissioner to approve a district policy revision that establishes an annual school board election in November.
The Russellville School Board selected May for its elections.
"It was an easy choice for the seven of us on our board," Russellville board member Chris Cloud said. "With a May election, it would allow a new member -- if we have a new member -- to have several months on the board before a superintendent's annual evaluation in January."
Wayne Fawcett, superintendent of the Paris School District, said his board also selected May, thinking that it would be better to have a board member elected in May and seated in June so that when the new school year started, the new school board member would be ready to go.
Had the board waited for elections in November, the new board member wouldn't be seated until almost December.
Fawcett said there exists some concern about the election date changes.
"I hate to say the school board elections are going to get lost in the shuffle," Fawcett said. "Obviously you are going to have far more turnout in November or May than generally you do in a September school board election. You hope it doesn't become a case of 'There are names on the ballot and I don't know anything about them so I'm just going to choose the first name' or 'I like his or her name.'"
The September elections were more personal, he said. The candidates were out and talking about nothing but school district issues. In May or November, a lot of candidates will be talking about many different issues besides schools, he said.
Newton discounted the argument that stand-alone elections attract informed voters.
"That could not be more dismissive of how we govern every other aspect of our world," he said.
He also discounted arguments that the school board elections will be downplayed when held with primary and general elections, noting the low turnouts or even no turnouts that have occurred in the September elections.
Watkins said there are 27 states that do school elections in conjunction with primary or general elections.
"Whether or not it is able to be done, that's pretty much been proven," Watkins said. "Whether it is actually best, I don't know."
Metro on 11/25/2017