The state Board of Education voted on Thursday to support the Harmony Grove School District's decision to close Sparkman High School because of declining enrollment.
The seventh-through-12th-grade Sparkman students will transfer to Harmony Grove High School, about 25 miles away.
The Sparkman campus — which includes an elementary school and a high school — is part of the Harmony Grove School District in Ouachita County, the result of a 2005 voluntary annexation. Sparkman residents have fought efforts by the Harmony Grove School Board to transfer Sparkman students to Harmony Grove at least twice since 2020.
Sparkman alumni, students and parents beckoned the state Board of Education on March 12, 2020, to keep the campus open, and the state board voted to keep it open at that time.
The district has argued that the declining enrollment has made it costlier to run the campus at the secondary-school level and that the students would have access to more classes and resources at the district's larger high school, near Camden.
Read Friday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for more details.