Superintendent Barbara Warren's plan was to outline the goals of a Pine Bluff School District facilities committee with minimal back-and-forth between her and attendees at a Tuesday night meeting, but the more than 100 people inside Pine Bluff High School's cafeteria made their voices heard anyway.
Many reacted negatively to Warren's idea of establishing a new high school at the former Belair Elementary School campus on Commerce Road, but her idea is just that, she clarified during the interest meeting. She also stressed that the original construction plan for a new Pine Bluff High School at its present West 11th Avenue location hasn't changed, adding that the project received state funding last August.
Warren, however, also introduced the Belair option publicly during a January stakeholder meeting, a move that she defended.
"It would have been so much easier -- Lord knows it would have been so much easier -- not to say a word about Belair," Warren said. "It's important to know if I think there is another viable option for consideration that I don't let the faces scare me and I don't let the comments keep me from positioning ourselves to take a look."
The four goals of Tuesday's meeting, Warren outlined, were to take the first steps toward organizing the committee, establishing its goals, providing clarity regarding facility-related matters and setting the next steps for the committee.
"The four objectives were met without having those exchanges," Warren said, when asked about not fielding questions toward the end of the meeting. She has faced public criticism over a perceived lack of communication with employees and community members over recent changes in the PBSD, most notably its annexation of the Dollarway School District last July.
Charline Wright, who graduated from PBHS in 1975, did not approve of Warren not asking for feedback.
"If we had leadership that was used to Pine Bluff High School when I was here -- the same campus was here when I left here in 2007," Wright said. "[Warren] was placed here by the state, and she's inexperienced."
The Arkansas Department of Education, which supervises the PBSD, named Warren the Dollarway superintendent in 2015. She's also led the Pine Bluff district since 2020.
Interest in the committee was high. Warren offered a breakdown that showed 72 community members, 43 district employees, 29 parents and guardians and nine students registered to take part in the introductory meeting.
The facilities committee, when established, would be asked to consider both high school construction options as well as the idea of relocating sixth-graders back to elementary campuses and establishing a unified seventh- and eighth-grade campus for the 2022-23 school year. The decision of where to build a new PBHS, Warren said, would need to be made by a school board in place, which state and district officials have said could happen by late 2023, which would be the fifth anniversary of the state's takeover of the PBSD.
A limited authority board recommended by the Arkansas Department of Education could be in place as early as this fall, Warren said.
Warren's realignment proposal, which she said was formulated after discussions with building principals and other district leaders, would call for the present PBHS to be temporarily relocated at the present Jack Robey Junior High School campus and Dollarway High School to remain open until a new high school is established.
The reason for possibly relocating PBHS is centered mainly around safety, Warren stated. District and state officials have often mentioned the multiple access points of the present campus as a safety issue, given recent violent events on and in the vicinity of the school.
But Wright complained that the Jack Robey campus, established in 1986, does not have the specialized academic buildings that the older PBHS has.
"So, what are you going to do with our kids when it comes to this?" Wright asked rhetorically.
Staffing, fiscal impact and culture/climate shift were among other considerations Warren listed in her configuration plan.
The real possibility of unifying Pine Bluff and Dollarway high schools was something Warren publicly acknowledged for the first time Tuesday. Asked about a timeline for the move, Warren said ninth- through 12th-graders would continue to go to the high school in their zone until the new campus is established.
"Even with the enrollment trend -- even if the trend holds -- we're not looking at it dropping so much that we would be put in a position where one of those other buildings could hold them," Warren said. "Our goal would be to have stability and a transition to a new high school."
PBHS enrolls 890 students, about 200 more than in Wright's 1975 graduating class alone. Dollarway High enrolls 231.
Mar'Tavius Proctor, a 2019 Dollarway High graduate, supports the idea of temporarily relocating PBHS to Robey and said he'd like to see unity in the annexed district before decisions are made.
"We can't have that if we're having to support two different high schools," Proctor said. "Yes, I'm Dollarway all day. But at some point, you have to think what's best for our students that's currently in this school district. You can't have recent graduates voicing their opinions without considering what's best."
The PBSD is finalizing the draft of the facilities plan and will communicate with internal stakeholders -- teachers, staff and students -- in listening sessions prior to making final decisions and sharing those with all stakeholders, Warren said. The next facilities committee meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. April 26 at the PBHS cafeteria.
Meanwhile, a school board zone stakeholder informational meeting is set for 6 p.m. April 5 at the Dollarway High School cafeteria, 2600 Fluker Ave.
Pine Bluff School District Superintendent Barbara Warren conducts a facilities committee meeting before a large crowd inside Pine Bluff High School's cafeteria Tuesday, March 29, 2022. (Pine Bluff Commercial/I.C. Murrell)