Little Rock schools' bond sale funds upgrades for fields, facilities

Kevin Yarberry, the Little Rock School District’s director of maintenance and operations, talks about construction going on at Scott Field in Little Rock on Friday.
Kevin Yarberry, the Little Rock School District’s director of maintenance and operations, talks about construction going on at Scott Field in Little Rock on Friday.

An army of bulldozers, backhoes and other pieces of heavy equipment is at work at the Little Rock School District's Scott Field this summer, transforming the old junior high athletic field in the city's midtown into a suitable home field for Hall High.

The overhauled field will cost the district more than $2.5 million, Kevin Yarberry, district director of maintenance and operations, said Friday as machinery roared, groaned and tracked across the site on H Street between North University Avenue and Fillmore Street.

The Scott Field stadium project is one of several construction and replacement projects underway in the city's school system in the aftermath of September's sale of second-lien bonds that generated some $93 million.

The bulk of the money -- as much as $55 million-- is going toward the construction of the $103 million Southwest High, on Mabelvale Pike and Mann Road, that will open to as many as 2,250 students in August 2020.

Other projects in various stages of planning, bidding and constructing include improving the athletic fields at McClellan and Fair high schools, replacing roofs at Watson and Terry elementaries, and adding air conditioning in never-before air-conditioned school kitchens, gymnasiums and auxiliary gymnasiums at about a dozen schools.

"A lot of the work being done is inside and not what the public can see on the outside," Yarberry said.

Kitchen air conditioning is being installed or is out for bids for Horace Mann Middle and for Brady, McDermott, Terry, Baseline, Wakefield and Watson elementaries.

Dunbar Middle School is being water-proofed. Washington Elementary is seeing restroom improvements. Energy-efficient LED lights are being installed at Carver Elementary. And Bale Elementary is home to a new boiler.

The "Student Center" in the district's 810 W. Markham St. administration building is expanding into the building's lobby to increase seating capacity. There will also be an upgrade in audio and video systems to the room that previously served as the School Board meeting place before the district was taken over by the state in January 2015 and lost its locally elected board.

At Scott Field, visitor bleachers, concession space, press box and restrooms are now partially constructed on the previously undeveloped south side of the field.

The field itself, when finished in August, will feature synthetic turf where there was once grass.

A competition-worthy rubber-substance track will encircle it, Yarberry said.

And the north, home-side of the field will include refurbished and/or rebuilt bleachers, a concession stand and press box, as well as an all new-paved plaza or concourse area with an arched gateway between the athletic field and Forest Heights STEM Academy.

Scott Field adjoins Forest Heights, a kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school. Hall is actually across University Avenue, about a half-mile to the west.

The regulation track at Scott Field and the newly finished regulation track at J.A. Fair High can host conference and state track and field events, Yarberry said, which has not been possible in the Little Rock district in recent years.

The Fair High field, which is open to the public, also has a new press box and a new grass surface -- finished earlier this spring. Similarly, McClellan High's field is getting a new press box, a newly re-graded surface and a newly planted grass field.

District leaders made the decision to put grass rather than the more expensive synthetic turf at McClellan and Fair because those campuses will ultimately be closed as high schools and their students assigned to the new Southwest High, which will have its own athletic facilities.

"Instead of spending a lot of money on turf, we took a fraction of that and just replaced the grass so they can have a good, safe playing surface in the next couple of years," Yarberry said about Fair and McClellan.

Preliminary plans are to convert the McClellan campus into a kindergarten-through-eighth-grade campus. There have been no announced plans for how to use the Fair campus.

John Daniels, the district's athletic director and a former Hall High coach and principal, on Friday welcomed the districtwide improvements, particularly those to the athletic facilities.

"Truth is we've been behind a little bit," Daniels said. "We're trying our best to catch up. We don't want our kids going other places just like others don't want their kids to leave. We are really working hard.

"I couldn't tell you the last time we really took athletics as seriously as we are taking them right now," Daniels continued. "I really feel like athletics and extracurricular activities are a means to change the culture of schools." He added that changes in culture -- including the restoration of pride in a school -- contribute to improving student achievement and raising a school's letter-grade rating from the state.

The projects are underway in a district that in May 2017 failed to win voter approval of a tax extension to raise $160 million for districtwide building construction, renovation and repairs. Nearly 65 percent of Little Rock district voters rejected the proposed 13-year extension of 12.4 mills of the district's 46.4-mill property tax rate.

District leaders in September issued second-lien bonds -- with approval from the state Board of Education -- to raise a smaller amount of money, about $93 million for building projects.

Second-lien bonds don't require voter approval. The second-lien bond debt is to be repaid with debt-service revenue that the district receives over and above what the school system needs to repay its previously existing debt.

The money to pay off the bonds will come largely as the result of anticipated increases in the assessed value of property in the Little Rock district.

A Section on 06/11/2018

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