While Go Forward Pine Bluff hosted a meeting at the Pine Bluff Convention Center on Thursday evening to discuss the possible merger of the Dollarway School District with the Pine Bluff School District -- both of which are currently under state control -- Dollarway Superintendent Barbara Warren and other district officials went online to discuss gains the district has made even in the midst of a pandemic that has nearly three-quarters of the student body receiving instruction remotely.
The annual progress report for the 2019-2020 school year was held virtually over Zoom and was streamed live on Facebook.
Warren did not give an opinion regarding the community discussion opened by Go Forward Pine Bluff to consolidate the two districts, both of which she currently oversees, but she did say the progress report she scheduled for Thursday was not done to conflict with the other meeting. She said, however, that she had been contacted before the meeting and invited to attend but had already scheduled the progress report meeting.
"I'm not 100% certain if that is an extension of the conversation that Go Forward Pine Bluff and NAACP had some Tuesdays ago," Warren said in response to a question she received over the Zoom meeting app. "I do know it was slated as an opportunity for the community to share. I shared back to say that I already had our annual report scheduled."
At the meeting at the convention center, the topic of possible consolidation included an analysis of the Dollarway and Pine Bluff school districts as well as the Watson Chapel School District. The Commercial, however, reported in Thursday's edition that state Education Department officials are not considering Watson Chapel in any consolidation discussion because that school district is not in a state takeover situation.
Warren noted that on Dec. 10, the Dollarway School District will have been under state control for five years, and she said the state Board of Education had reached out to students, parents, teachers and others affiliated with the district to obtain feedback as the district works toward resumption of local control.
Warren and the principals for the district's three schools reported that the rate of decline in enrollments had slowed over the past five years. Warren said enrollment losses since the 2016-17 school year, which showed a loss of 126 students going into the 2017-18 school year, slowed significantly over the next three years. In 2018, 2019, and 2020, the district showed a loss of only another 75 students, with enrollment declining from 1,108 in 2016 to 982 in 2017, then from 982 to 907 students between 2017 and 2020.
Demographics of the school district in the 2019-20 school year showed that 92% of students were Black, 4% were white, 2% were Hispanic, and less than 1% each were Asian, Native American, or of two or more racial or ethnic groups. Of the total student body, 93% qualified for free or reduced meals, 14% were eligible for special education and 2% were English language learners.
Teacher salaries during the school year averaged just over $45,000 in the Dollarway School District, with 44% of teachers holding bachelor's degrees; 45% holding master's degrees; 6% holding specialist degrees; 1% holding doctoral degrees; and 1% of the teachers in the district were National Board certified.
School District Treasurer Dennis Johnson reported that the district received $6,899 per enrolled student in state foundation aid, which amounted to $3.4 million in the 2019-20 school year. The district also received $4.6 million from local tax collections, and $2.7 million in federal funding, which, when combined with Title I, Title IIA, Title VIB, professional development, ESA and ELL/ALE funding, provided the district with about $14.5 million from all revenue sources to operate.
"The district was classified in fiscal distress in April 2016 due to two indicators," Johnson said. Those indicators, he said, were declining balances that jeopardized the fiscal integrity of the district, and exceptions or violations found in state or federal audits.
"As you can see, in the 2014-15 school year, we ended the year with about a $3.2 million balance," Johnson said. "And between then and 2016-17, we flatlined at $3.2 million so we didn't see a decline there."
But, he noted, the 2017-18 school year ended with a balance of $2.2 million, then $1.5 million the following school year, and in the 2019-20 school year, the district ended with a balance of $437,000. Johnson explained that declining enrollment had eaten into the district's overall fiscal health and that some major upgrades in the district had also eaten into district revenues.
"Declining enrollment for us means less money," he said. "That doesn't mean we've been frivolous with our spending; it just means we're in the declining season."
Johnson said the second indicator, audit findings, had improved significantly, with 19 audit findings in the 2014-15 school year and only one audit finding in the district's latest audit.
"We're making great strides to clean up and to be fiscally sound," he said.
Deputy Superintendent Melvin Bryant, reporting on facilities upgrades, said that installation of surveillance cameras at all three campuses had been completed and that all facilities would soon be outfitted for controlled access. Bryant said that the first phase of signage installation for the school district has been completed and the second phase will soon be underway.
Test scores on the ACT/Aspire benchmark testing in the 2018 student cohort for fifth graders showed improvements in English, reading, and science, but math scores took a dive between 2018 and 2019, said School Improvement Specialist Dee Davis.
As those fifth grade students moved to sixth grade from 2018 to 2019, English proficiency scores rose from 44% to 48%, reading scores from 3% to 11%, and science scores from 7% to 11%. Math scores, however, declined from 23% to 9% from fifth to sixth grade between 2018 and 2019.
Davis said students, because of the covid-19 pandemic, were not tested in 2020, but will be tested again in 2021. The goals set for the 2018 fifth grade cohort in 2021, when those students will be tested as eighth graders, are 53% in English, 26% in reading, 11% in math, and 8% in science.