PMG Rural Post Office press release

Congressman Rick Crawford’s Letter to Postmaster General Donahoe

The report also profiles collaborative work of members and staff to impact state and national policy.

Thank you to all RCA members who are tireless supporters of their rural school and community. We honor you and your work in this publication.

Rep. Kelley Linck with Renee Carr, Dorothy Singleton, and Lavina Grandon

Joint Education Committee hears testimony and discusses abandoned school building issue

The Fourche Valley School facility, built just a few years before the school was closed by receiving district Two Rivers, now sits vacant and padlocked. Built with insurance proceeds and approximately $400,000 from local donors and fundraisers, the local community wants back what they put their wallet, sweat equity, and heart into.

The Martin High School building in Altheimer sits vacant while the community has developed plans for a museum and for several years has requested use of this facility now owned by the Dollarway School District

The North Central Arkansas Food Bank, serving a nine-county area, is housed in the former Norfork School facility. A thrift store and city offices are also located in buildings of the former school campus.....all good examples of re-purposing vacated school facilities for community use.

The former Paron High School building was made available by the Bryant School District for community use. Meeting space for youth groups, a public library, a kitchen for community gatherings are all the result of this cooperative agreement. The Paron gym is also used for youth programs.

PRESS RELEASE

BY LAVINA GRANDON

On Monday, April 9, Rural Community Alliance President Lavina Grandon of Everton, Executive Director Renee Carr of Fox, Lead Organizer Dorothy Singleton of Sherrill, and member Cindy Aikman of Bluffton gave testimony in Little Rock before a joint meeting of the Senate and House Education Committees about an issue that has become increasingly important to rural communities, the fate of abandoned school buildings.

The meeting was chaired by Representative Eddie Cheatham of Crossett, Chair of the House Education Committee.  The testimony related to the interim study of a bill introduced but withdrawn by Representative Kelley Linck of Flippin in the 2011 legislative session that would have provided an avenue by which school districts could sell, lease, or donate a vacated school building to achieve another public purpose.  The bill was withdrawn when an attorney from the State School Boards Association claimed that it was unconstitutional.

In her Power Point presentation to introduce the testimony, Carr made the point the issue of vacated school buildings is important and becoming more so by the fact that of the 56 school districts that were consolidated by Arkansas’ Act 60 in 2004 more than two-thirds have had campuses closed.  As more schools fall below the 350 minimum enrollment, more communities will be affected by having their campuses closed and their buildings left vacant. Rural Community Alliance contends that school buildings that have been abandoned in these consolidations need to be repurposed to meet needs within the communities that paid for and house them.

Some examples of buildings that have been vacated but that school districts are holding on to are found in the former Fourche Valley and Altheimer school districts.  Repeated attempts by community members to obtain use of the empty buildings have proved useless.

By contrast, the Paron Community has obtained a long-term, low-cost lease of its former high school from the Bryant School district and has installed a library, meeting rooms, community kitchen, exercise facility, and youth basketball court.  The former Norfork school buildings house city offices, a regional food bank, and a non-profit thrift store.

Cindy Aikman testified to the Fourche Valley community’s unsuccessful efforts to obtain the use of their empty K-12 campus.  “The buildings are just sitting there locked,” stated Aikman, “and we can’t even open them for people to walk through when we have reunions.”  Singleton told of efforts of the Altheimer community to obtain the former Martin High School to house a Museum and Cultural Center. The Dollarway School District, now owner of the building, has not used nor disposed of the buildings in the five years since the Altheimer-Dollarway consolidation.  Carr shared that each year more school buildings across Arkansas are vacated, with Bright Star in Miller County one of the most recent added to this unfortunate list.

Legislators listened closely to the presentation and asked numerous questions about possible purposes for such buildings, school boards’ reasons for denying requests for them, and the legalities of disposing of former school buildings.

Representative Donna Hutchinson of Bella Vista stated that she was term limited but that she thought the Legislature should revisit the whole consolidation issue, noting extreme distances some children are forced to travel and the hardships on communities and parents of closing schools.  Senator Stephanie Flowers of Pine Bluff concurred, citing five school districts in her Senate district with similar circumstances.

Senator Kim Hendren of Gravette expressed his opinion that the issue of abandoned school buildings is one that the Legislature “needs to fix.”  “We created this mess,” when voting for Act 60, he stated, “and we need to fix it.”

Senator Jeremy Hutchinson applauded the arrangement between the Bryant School District and the Paron community and personally vouched for the good that has come from the arrangement, which is in his district.

Ron Harder of the School Boards Association reiterated his concerns that a law that allowed school boards to donate a vacated school building to a community would violate a provision of the state Constitution that prohibits the donating of state property.  RCA President Lavina Grandon countered that school property belongs to the school district, not the state, and, therefore, this objection does not apply.

Representative Cheatham then asked if Representative John Catlett, of Rover, whose district includes Fourche Valley, would seek an Attorney General’s opinion on the matter, and Catlett agreed.

With several suggestions from committee members, Representative Linck stated his intention of reworking the bill and bringing it before the Legislature again in 2013.

Board Member Erma Brown of Stephens presents Governor Rockefeller's award to Doyle Webb of Benton who accepted on behalf of the family

RCA president Lavina Grandon with Gentlemen of Knowledge Tay Barber, Ty Barber, and Terrian Tyler

Board member Candace Williams of Elaine presents award to Rather Clark of Dermott

Board member Beverly Cothran of Everton gives introduction of NW honoree Andy Anderson

Andy Anderson of Diamond City gives acceptance speech

Frank Henry Jr. of Dermott receives Lifetime Achievement award from Board Member Dorothy Singleton of Sherrill

Cory Anderson, VP of Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, acknowledges Gov. Rockefeller award and talks about work of the Foundation

Board member Andrew Taylor of Eudora presents award to Rivercrest High School Gentlemen of Knowledge Terrian Tyler, Ty Barber, Tay Barber, Advisor Lindsey Spears, and mentor Blaine Alexander

District Director Andrea Allen receives award on behalf of Congressman Rick Crawford presented by Executive Director Renee Carr

Board member Penny Harris of Bradley presents award to Randy Abbott of Delight

Frank Henry, Jr, gives acceptance speech after receiving Lifetime Achievement Award

Guests sign in and register for door prizes

Guests enjoy the food and fellowship

Guests at the ceremony

Reprinted from Arkansas Democrat Gazette-Northwest Edition-Sunday, March 25, 2012

Rural schools stay together

Small districts surviving in face of consolidations

BRENDA BERNET
ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

    Allen Holtby continues a family legacy as a sophomore at Bruno-Pyatt High School.
The 15-year-old’s mother and uncle are graduates. His grandparents, Regina and Terry Phillips, graduated from Bruno High School in 1968 before the Bruno and Pyatt school districts consolidated.
Now they both work for the district — Regina as a paraprofessional in a distance learning lab and Terry as director of maintenance.
“It’s interesting,” Holtby of Bruno said. “You can’t get by with much.”
Despite a consolidation in the mid-1970s and another in 2004, Bruno-Pyatt High School persists as a small high school in the rural Ozark Mountains, educating generations of families as it has done for decades like so many rural schools affected by school district mergers.
Legislation passed in 2004 prompted Bruno-Pyatt to consolidate with the St. Joe and Western Grove school districts into the Ozark Mountain School District.
While the individual school districts are no more, the district has maintained three kindergarten through 12th-grade campuses of 90 to 125 students in each of the former districts, covering three counties — Newton, Marion and Searcy.
The three Ozark Mountain campuses give parents in rural communities access to their children’s teachers and the superintendent, Ozark Mountain Superintendent Joe Hulsey said.
“When you shut schools down in communities, you shut parents down,” Hulsey said. “It’s not your school anymore. In larger districts, we call them ‘neighborhood schools.’ If we look at rural schools, we call it inefficient.”
The same legislation that resulted in Ozark Mountain spurred its neighbor to the north, the Lead Hill School District in Boone County, to propose a voluntary annexation after its enrollment fell below 350 students last fall.
But the state Board of Education rejected the proposal earlier this month in a 4-4 vote, with one abstention that counted as a vote against.
Lead Hill did not provide the state board with sufficient information concerning other viable options, said Ben Mays, chairman of the state board.
“It just sort of jumps out at you just looking at the map, there might be a much more efficient way of getting students to a school that had a larger size,” he said.
People are emotionally tied to their hometown school, Mays said.
“Population centers change. Bridges come in. Roads are built. Economies boom and go bust. All that affects where people live. You can’t just keep school districts the way they were 50 years ago just to keep the tradition,” he said.
Lavina Grandon, a Boone County resident who is board president of the Rural Community Alliance, said she thinks the state board’s decision goes against the intent of the 2004 law, known as Act 60.
Grandon remembers proponents of the law emphasizing the intent to eliminate duplication in school administration.
“Lead Hill patrons saw that as their best opportunity to go forward,” Grandon said. “They know the situation they find themselves in. They know how well Ozark Mountain has operated since consolidating.”
The nonprofit Rural Community Alliance has 1,200 members in small, rural communities across the state.
The organization aims to help residents advocate for rural schools and communities.
“It’s just sad four appointed people on a board have the ability to overrule the will of several thousand people,” Grandon said.
The Lead Hill School Board plans to meet at 7 p.m. Monday and again with the public at 7 p.m. Tuesday to consider possible options and to determine the direction the community favors, Lead Hill Superintendent Regina Brown said.
MERGER HISTORY 
The General Assembly passed Act 60 during the special legislative session of 2003 to reorganize the public education system.
The act became law in January 2004 and set procedures for the consolidation or annexation of school districts whose student populations fall below 350 for two consecutive years.
The act gives school districts the option of voluntarily merging with one or more districts by petitioning the state Board of Education.
The state board also can force a school district to annex or consolidate.
From 2004 through 2010, the most recent year for annexation or consolidation, 118 school districts merged, according to a 2010 report from the Office of Education Policy at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.
As of May 2010, the report states that 81 schools had closed across the state in the districts affected by consolidation since 2004.
Of those, 45 were high schools.
In an annexation, one school district joins a receiving school district.
A consolidation occurs when two or more districts become a single new district.
The state Department of Education does not track the number of petitions for voluntary consolidations or annexations that the state board has rejected, as happened with Lead Hill, said Seth Blomeley, spokesman for the department.
Brenda Gullett, a state board member, was among those who voted to grant Ozark Mountain’s petition to annex Lead Hill.
“We have a constitutional obligation to educate every child in this state,” Gullett said. “The truth is, it is becoming an insurmountable challenge to provide quality education for those students when they get stuck in these situations.”
In many cases, the receiving district will promise to keep a school open, but — as the district faces the reality of travel and utilities — they close schools, Gullett said.
The state board has been hesitant to use the option of dividing up a district and sending students to the closest campus, she said.
Arkansas lawmakers developed Act 60 in response to a landmark school finance case, Lake View School District No. 25 v. Huckabee, in which the Arkansas Supreme Court declared the public education system to be unconstitutional because it was inequitable and inadequate.
The bill states the General Assembly’s intent was to ensure the delivery of an adequate education in an efficient and effective manner.
The General Assembly set a minimum threshold of 350 students, the number settled on after then-Gov. Mike Huckabee initially proposed combining districts of fewer than 1,500 students, said Scott Smith, executive director of the Arkansas Public School Resource Center.
The nonprof it center works with rural school districts and charter schools and assists rural school districts in complying with the laws concerning annexations and consolidations.
Smith was legal counsel to the Arkansas Department of Education from 2000 to 2008 and, in that role, he was a chief adviser in the state board’s efforts to comply with Act 60.
The law allows the new district to retain only one superintendent, but it does not require a district to close schools, Smith said.
The Department of Education does not have any studies on whether the consolidations and annexations have resulted in greater efficiency, Blomeley said.
The public education system provides a set amount of money per student, said Gary Ritter, director of the Office of Education Policy in the department of education reform at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.
The research so far does not show significant savings from consolidations or annexations, he said.
“Why would I not spend everything I’ve got?” Ritter said. “The state even chastises districts for keeping large balances. There’s no vehicle to save money and no benefit to cut down costs.”
The state’s funding formula includes additional money for districts experiencing declining enrollment, and it’s possible school consolidations could have generated some savings by reducing the number of districts receiving that funding, Ritter said.
School consolidations result in fewer superintendents.
However, a more important question concerns whether consolidations and annexations lead to educational advantages for students, he said.
The merged districts do not appear to have a positive or negative impact on students’ academic performance, he said.
OTHERS CLOSER 
Some other districts are closer to Lead Hill schools than the Ozark Mountain campuses, said Randy Rogers, the Lead Hill School Board president.
He said he could understand the sentiment of state board members who suggested Lead Hill merge with a closer district.
But the proposal to join with Ozark Mountain was based on the wishes of Lead Hill voters, Rogers said.
Ozark Mountain has kept campuses in each of the former districts.
Those three Ozark Mountain campuses are smaller than Lead Hill, so the plan was feasible, Rogers said.
Rogers compared the plan of creating a new district with four separate campuses to a larger district in a more urban city with multiple campuses.
Both the Lead Hill and Ozark Mountain school boards approved resolutions in December and January supporting the move and submitted a petition for annexation to the state board.
Rogers said the Lead Hill School Board will take a step back and consider the questions and concerns of state board members, but the priority will be finding a district willing to keep a campus at Lead Hill.
“Ozark Mountain’s been very successful with the three former districts,” Rogers said. “They’ve proven it can be done and done successfully. We’re meeting what the law requires.”
Lead Hill had an enrollment of 370 in 2010-11, and the district has not reported an official enrollment of less than 350 yet, Rogers said.
The district’s enrollment started at 330 last fall and had increased to about 340 students this spring.
The earliest any action could be required is July 1, 2014, Smith said.
It’s possible the district’s enrollment could increase, meaning the district would be under no legal requirement to join another district.
The district’s options for a voluntary merger include resubmitting its petition to join with Ozark Mountain or to propose joining a different district, Smith said.
The state board has approved some noncontiguous district mergers but is somewhat skeptical of those proposals, he said.
The community of Lead Hill has deep connections with the school district, much like the other campuses within Ozark Mountain, Rogers said.
Rogers’ father graduated from Lead Hill High School in 1965.
Rogers graduated in 1986. His wife graduated in 1987, and his daughter will graduate this year.
However, a more important reason for trying to maintain the Lead Hill campus is a sense that the children benefit when taught in their community, Rogers said.
Sending children to a school 10 to 12 miles farther from the Lead Hill campus could limit their involvement in after-school programs, Rogers said.
Lead Hill’s longest bus routes are about 45 minutes, but if the students were to attend a different school, the bus routes would be longer.
With a school in Lead Hill, parents are able to volunteer to read books in classrooms, Rogers said.
“If you take that and move to another area, the involvement falls because of the distance,” Rogers said.
‘PART OF OUR CULTURE’ 
When Act 60 passed, Western Grove had an enrollment just short of 300, said Judy Ballard, who was the superintendent of Western Grove when it consolidated.
Ballard is now curriculum and federal programs director for Ozark Mountain.
The then-Western Grove School Board conducted community meetings and developed a list of options, which included joining a Newton County district, Ballard said.
The Western Grove community voted, and about 80 percent of residents chose to consolidate with St. Joe and Bruno-Pyatt, Ballard said.
The consolidation was intended to give Ozark Mountain some protection against a future merger, Ballard said.
Ozark Mountain started with an enrollment of about 770 students, but that number has dropped each year since to 660 students this year, according to Ballard and records from the Arkansas Department of Education.
The economy and high gas prices prompted some families to move to find work or shorten commutes, Ballard said.
Declining enrollment has led the district to cut about 10 positions as employees have left or retired since the consolidation, she said.
The consolidation also put long-standing rivals on the basketball court in the same school district.
Each campus still has a separate basketball team and coach, but the students are on district teams in other sports, including track, baseball and softball.
“We’re competing on the basketball court, but we still get along,” said Jessica Phillips, a junior on the St. Joe High School Wildcats basketball team.
Phillips began attending St. Joe High School when she was in the eighth grade after moving from California.
She is now among about 15 students in St. Joe’s junior class.
“It’s little,” Phillips said. “It’s easy to get to know people. Everybody talks to everybody.”
The campuses share other teachers and use technology to overcome distances.
Each Ozark Mountain campus has two distance learning classrooms equipped with video cameras and large flatscreen televisions.
One classroom connects students to courses taught outside the district, such as Spanish.
Another classroom allows students from all three campuses to be taught in one course taught by an Ozark Mountain teacher.
Advanced Placement English students from Bruno-Pyatt and Western Grove are taught by a St. Joe teacher by video.
Cody Hudson coaches the district’s track team. Hudson, a 2004 Western Grove graduate, spends three days each week in after-school practices at Western Grove. Practices take place at Bruno-Pyatt and St. Joe on the other two days, he said.
The senior high students rotate campuses for practice, and Hudson works with junior high students on their campuses. About 40 seventh- through 12th-graders are involved in track.
“You’ve got to be flexible,” Hudson said.
The schools for Lead Hill, Bruno-Pyatt, St. Joe and Western Grove have educated many families in the surrounding communities for generations. Many of the teachers are graduates, as are their parents, siblings, children, grandchildren and nieces and nephews.
“It’s definitely part of our culture,” said Beverly Cothran, a 1981 Bruno-Pyatt graduate who is now the school’s librarian. “It’s part of [who] you are and where you came from. You build a sense of pride. I was a Patriot, too.”
Rene Robinson, a 1976 graduate of Western Grove, has taught high school social studies on the campus for 22 years. She remembers the anxiety the Western Grove community had about consolidating into Ozark Mountain because of their rivalries on the basketball court, but those concerns were not realized, she said.
“We’ve all kept our identity,” she said.

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/BRENDA BERNET 
Senior Brandon Martin, 18, builds a can-crusher out of scrap pipe during his shop class at Western Grove High School in Newton County.

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/BRENDA BERNET 
Sophomore Allen Holtby, 15, rolls clay in art class for a sculpture last month at the Bruno-Pyatt campus. Bruno-Pyatt consolidated with the St. Joe and Western Grove school districts to become the Ozark Mountain School District. Holtby is a third-generation Bruno-Pyatt student.

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/BRENDA BERNET 
The Bruno-Pyatt campus in Eros in Marion County houses all grades and joined the Ozark Mountain School District in 2004.

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/BRENDA BERNET 
The St. Joe campus in Searcy County houses all grades and became part of the Ozark Mountain School District in 2004.

The honorees will be presented awards at a reception on Friday March 30 at 6 pm at the Arkansas Activities Association at 3920 Richards Road in North Little Rock.  Our members and supporters are invited to attend.  Business attire is appropriate.  Appetizers will be served.

We appreciate Electric Cooperatives of Arkansas for again sponsoring this event.

From NE Arkansas our co-honorees are:  The Gentlemen of Knowledge from Rivercrest High School.  These impressive young men participated in a student-voice program and tackled academic achievement head-on with their peers.  The results are as impressive as these young men.

Congressman Rick Crawford from Jonesboro is our other NE honoree.  He has co-sponsored the All Children are Equal Act that would bring back $2.5 million in Federal Title I funding to Arkansas’ schools.  He also sponsored the Protecting Our Rural Post Offices Act, which would give relief to many of Arkansas’ rural post offices that are in the cross-hairs of USPS.

Our NW honoree is Andy Anderson of Diamond City who as a volunteer garnered the support of 22 water systems and their customers in north Arkansas to construct the Ozark Mountain Regional Water Project.  The $72 million project is currently under construction and will solve water issues for many residents of north Arkansas.

Our SW honoree is Randy Abbott of Delight who is the driving force behind the work of volunteers of South East Pike County Alliance and their efforts to revitalize the town and preserve the musical heritage of the area.

The SE honoree is Rather Clark of Dermott who has been a strong advocate and leader for Dermott School and the Revitalization Project in Dermott.

The late Governor Winthrop Rockefeller is our central Arkansas honoree and will be remembered and recognized for his vision and support of rural Arkansas. This year marks the Centennial Anniversary of his birth.

Frank Henry, Jr. of Dermott will receive the Lifetime Achievement award for his life of service to Chicot County, Dermott, the port authority, chamber of commerce, Crawfish Festival, and the list goes on!

Please join us and help celebrate the work going on in rural Arkansas!