Pine Bluff renovating 5 campuses; new high school next

Pine Bluff School District Chief Operating Officer Leroy Harris (front to back), East Harding Construction Site Supervisor Carl Banks and East Harding Construction Director of Business Development Win Trafford look over an area at Southwood Elementary School where concrete trucks will stage for a concrete pour to test the ability of the surrounding ground to bear weight.
(Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/Dale Ellis)
Pine Bluff School District Chief Operating Officer Leroy Harris (front to back), East Harding Construction Site Supervisor Carl Banks and East Harding Construction Director of Business Development Win Trafford look over an area at Southwood Elementary School where concrete trucks will stage for a concrete pour to test the ability of the surrounding ground to bear weight. (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/Dale Ellis)

PINE BLUFF -- Four Pine Bluff School District schools and a preschool are undergoing renovations as part of a $1.3 million, three-phase project to improve facilities in advance of the planned construction of a new high school to replace an aging facility.

Phase One of renovations, which began in April, is scheduled to conclude in August, said Jeremy Owoh, who was superintendent until June 30. Phase Two is set to be performed during holiday breaks and to be concluded by early in the summer of 2021. Phase Three is scheduled for that summer.

"By then," Owoh said, "it is hoped that ground can be broken for the new high school."

The renovations are being paid for with a combination of 2 mills in property taxes earmarked for capital outlay expenditures and savings realized by the closure of two schools, sale of surplus school property and a reduction in force of about 50 positions districtwide. Those cost-saving measures were carried out by Owoh after he assumed the top position in the district a little less than two years ago when it was taken over by the state after being declared to be in fiscal and academic distress.

Owoh was appointed by Arkansas Education Secretary Johnny Key in September 2018 after the district was declared to be in fiscal distress by the state Board of Education. The school board and superintendent were dismissed. The next month, the state board declared the school district to be in academic distress as well.

Owoh left Pine Bluff to become deputy superintendent of Little Rock School District, which has been under state control since 2015. Key named Barbara Warren, superintendent of the state-controlled Dollarway School District, as Owoh's successor. Warren will oversee both school districts.

The five facilities undergoing renovations are:

• Jack Robey Junior High School, grades 6-8, built in 1986.

• Southwood Elementary School, kindergarten-fifth grade, built in 1964 (two wings added in 2006).

• 34th Avenue Elementary School, kindergarten-fifth grade, built in 2007.

• Broadmoor Elementary School, kindergarten- fifth grade, built in 2008.

• Forest Park/Greenville Pre-Kindergarten Center, built in 1964.

During the renovations, all facilities except the prekindergarten will be repainted, get LED lighting and water fountains installed, and receive new landscaping.

Hallways, classrooms, cafeterias and common areas will be painted a uniform gray districtwide, and each school will get its own accent color unique to that school.

"We wanted to make the schools really pop with fresh paint and give them a uniform look," said Leroy Harris, chief operating officer of the Pine Bluff district. "But we also wanted to give each school its own identity."

Jack Robey Junior High is getting the most extensive renovations, which Harris said include repairs to the school's heating, ventilation and air conditioning system, replacement of the HVAC and lighting systems in the gymnasium, replacement of 25,000 square feet of ceiling tiles, remodeling of the restrooms and expansion of the parking lot along Olive Street, in addition to the districtwide improvements.

As renovations continue, lockers will be removed from the hallways and replaced with seating areas for students, and the tile flooring will be removed in favor of polished concrete floors.

"Because schools are moving more and more to common classroom materials and electronic media instead of books and other materials assigned to each student, the need for lockers has been eliminated," Harris said. "That allows us to utilize this space in a way that will be of greater benefit to the students."

Win Trafford, director of business development for project construction manager East Harding Construction, said he attended eighth grade at the school the year it opened in 1987, which he said began as Pine Bluff Junior High for grades 8 and 9.

The school was renamed for former Pine Bluff Superintendent Jack Robey after he died in 1987 of injuries he suffered in an automobile accident while vacationing in Hawaii.

Trafford said the renovations will serve to give the school a fresh look.

"It was in bad shape," he said. "Everything looked bad. The ceiling tiles were sagging, the paint was faded, the bathrooms were dilapidated -- a lot of needs are being addressed here."

At Southwood Elementary School, installation of a concrete pad is underway that will support two portable buildings to be used as classroom space.

Southwood and Forest Park/Greenville both have small, open-air courtyard spaces just outside each classroom. Over time, those spaces became overgrown with vegetation. Conversion of those spaces for classroom storage by closing them in and installing concrete flooring is part of Phase One of the renovations currently underway.

"Those courtyards were originally designed to allow natural lighting into the classroom spaces, but they're difficult to maintain and the classrooms need the additional storage," Harris said. "They also contribute to moisture problems and standing water issues when we get a lot of rain, so enclosing them made the most sense."

Large, open-air courtyards at Robey and Southwood will also be covered to alleviate drainage problems, Harris said.

Expansion of the cafeteria and media center, additional parking, reconfiguration of the bus loading area and updated signage are also in the works for Southwood.

Barriers will be installed at Forest Park/Greenville along a covered walkway to the gymnasium to add additional protection from the elements for students and teachers walking between the school and the gym as well as to help contain students within the walkway.

"We wanted to limit the exposure the kids have to the elements but also limit their exposure to passing traffic as well," Harris said. "Four-year-olds are impulsive. They can see a butterfly and the next thing you know they are off in the trees, and they may not think of the parking lot and street they have to cross first."

Broadmoor Elementary and 34th Avenue Elementary, which are the newest properties and are in better condition, will receive some improvements that are also being installed in the other buildings but otherwise had no special renovation needs, Harris said.

Those improvements include the new LED lighting, water fountains, fresh paint throughout and new landscaping. Owoh said new equipment to update the playgrounds at both schools is planned as a later addition.

As the last phase of renovations is scheduled to begin next summer, officials hope to also begin construction of the new high school, provided the $26 million in funding can be nailed down, Owoh said. The high school is more than 50 years old.

The plan, he said, is to replace the school, which was built in 1968, with a modern facility a building at a time, on top of the current high school's footprint.

"It's called a space replacement because we're tearing down and building up on the same ground," Owoh said. "The only buildings we will keep will be McFadden Gym, which we are going to renovate. We will renovate the stadium, a student center and the field house. All of the other buildings will be replaced with the new facility."

Owoh said the district hopes to receive part of the cost of construction from the state through a partnership application that district officials submitted March 1. If approved, the state's portion would amount to about $15.4 million, or 51% of the total, leaving the school district responsible for $10.6 million, Owoh said. He said the district initially expected to get a decision from the state by August, but he said the coronavirus pandemic will probably delay it.

Owoh said the best outcome would be to receive state approval to share the cost and approval from voters to extend the district's current debt service millage, now set to expire in 2036, to 2050. That would enable the district to leave the millage at its current rate, he said.

The total millage in the Pine Bluff School District is 41.7 mills (a mill is 1/1000th of 1% of a property's value as determined by the county tax assessor's office). Each mill generates about $385,000 a year for the district, Owoh said.

Out of that, 25 mills is set by the state to be used for maintenance and operation of the district. Additional millage for other needs must be approved by voters in the district.

Of the additional 16.7 mills, Owoh said, 14.7 mills is earmarked to service the school district's bonded indebtedness and 2 mills was approved by voters for transportation and capital outlay expenses.

"Those dedicated funds from the millage and the savings from last year are what we're using to renovate the buildings," he said.

If the state rejects the district's application to share the cost, Owoh cited two other options.

A second-lien bond issue would allow the district to sell bonds to finance the cost of construction that would be paid back with money over and above what the district needs to pay back previously issued bonds. Unlike general obligation bonds, which require voter approval to fund with a millage increase or extension, second-lien bonds would need the approval of the state Education Board.

A third option, Owoh said, would be for the district to seek voter approval of a 2-mill property tax increase along with a millage extension to 2050 that he said would cover the cost of the new high school.

Owoh said construction of the new high school is dependent upon the funding being secured through one of those three options. If none pans out, he said, the district will have to make do with the existing high school for the next few years.

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