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The Arkansas Board of Education voted Thursday to annex the 920-student Dollarway School District to the Pine Bluff School District, effective July 1.
Back up: Why is the Board of Education in charge of the Dollarway schools? The district was taken over by the state five years ago initially because of chronically low student results on state-required tests.
Later, the state also discovered financial mismanagement in the district and additionally classified it as in financial distress.
What did taking over the district mean? The board dissolved the locally elected school board and the district came under the control of Education Secretary Johnny Key and the state Board of Education.
The state also replaced the superintendent with someone selected by the state, Barbara Warren.
Under Arkansas law, the state can only take over a district for five years. If a district has improved enough by state standards in that time, it goes back to having a locally elected school board and self-governing.
Key said although the Dollarway district “has made significant progress both fiscally and academically," it had not improved enough to return to local control.
When that happens, the state can:
• Reconstitute a district by giving it a different form of governance
• Consolidate it with another district to create an all new district
• Annex it to make it a part of another district
The state chose the last option for Dollarway schools.
What will the annexation look like? The plan envisions all campuses in the newly expanded district to remain open, including the two high schools.
The Pine Bluff School District is also under state control, so the plan has the effect of continued state intervention for the Dollarway community. The expanded district could remain under state authority for three more years.
The expanded district will be eligible for extra state funding for two school years as a result of the annexation, and the merging is expected to save money because certain operations and costs will no longer be duplicated.
Barbara Warren, the state-appointed superintendent of the Dollarway district since 2015, took on the added role of state-appointed superintendent of the Pine Bluff district earlier this calendar year.
She is expected to remain as the state-directed superintendent of the expanded Pine Bluff district.