GENTRY -- In what Randy Barrett, superintendent of Gentry Public Schools, called "the bummer of the summer," he told board members on Aug. 18 that the school district's application for partnership funding to build a new high school had been turned down. But that decision is now being appealed.
In December of 2013, the board voted unanimously to move forward with plans to put before the voters a new high school facility for the Gentry School District when it adopted a resolution to apply for partnership funding for the building project and decided to ask voters for a millage increase in the 2015 school election.
The plan was to build a new high school facility, including a competition gym, at a price tag of approximately $20 million, and then move the middle school into the existing high school facility and the intermediate school into the existing middle school facility.
The board made the decision to move forward with plans in December because a decision was necessary if the school district wished to apply for approximately $6 million in state partnership funding from the Arkansas Division of Public School Academic Facilities and Transportation. If no decision was made at the December meeting, the district would have had to wait for the next two-year cycle to apply and the funding might no longer be available at that time, according to Randy Barrett, superintendent of Gentry schools.
The school district's application for state funding to help with the construction project was denied, according to Barrett, because the school district didn't qualify for the state assistance. The Arkansas Division of Public School Academic Facilities and Transportation determined that the district already had enough usable space for students at its existing facilities -- saying that there was enough existing space at the campuses on Pioneer Lane to move the intermediate school there without the construction of a new school.
The July 10 letter and notification from the Arkansas Division of Public School Academic Facilities and Transportation sent from Charles Stein, director of the agency, stated the district's application showed "no suitability need," adding in the notes that the "district's application indicated no suitability -- excess exceeded POR (program of requirements) requirement for new school."
Barrett invited Stein to visit the schools and tour the campuses, and Stein saw for himself there was no extra classroom space at the schools on Pioneer Lane to house the intermediate school, Barrett said.
Barrett, with the approval of the school board, has filed an appeal to the denial, with a final decision due within 60 days.
Barrett said the board could choose to build a new intermediate school instead, at a much lower cost.
An intermediate school facility would cut the needed facility size almost in half -- at approximately 50,000 square feet and at a total cost of approximately $8 million, according to a facilities study done last year by Aliza Jones, an independent private facilities planning consultant used by the Gentry School District and many surrounding districts. She had estimated that a high school facility meeting the district's future needs would need to be close to 96,000 square feet if it included a gymnasium suitable for basketball games up to regional-level playoffs and that the price tag for such a new facility would be about $20 million, with the gym costing about $2 million of that total figure.
Barrett said the state had already determined that much of the existing intermediate school campus had outlasted its usefulness as a school, with only the gymnasium, cafeteria and a few of the classrooms built in 1984 counted as having a usable life for the district.
According to Arkansas Public School Academic Facilities and Transportation Rules Governing the Academic Facilities Partnership Program, the calculations are made by multiplying the age of the building times two and subtracting the result from 100. Facilities with a final result of zero or less are counted to have outlived their usefulness as a public school facility, putting the majority of the intermediate school campus at a negative value because of being 50 or more years old.
According to a conservative estimate from the school district's fiscal advisor, Stephens, Inc., the district would have had to ask the voters to approve a millage increase of 4.5 mills to build the high school with state assistance. The increase, according to Dennis Hunt, senior vice president and manager of Stephens, Inc., would have amounted to a property tax increase of approximately $90 annually for every $100,000 worth of taxable property.
The increase in annual debt service for the district for a 30-year bond would have be a maximum of $645,000, Hunt said.
Should the district choose to build an intermediate school campus instead, the needed millage increase would be less, as would the bonded debt payment, because the financed amount would be just over half the amount the district planned to finance to build a high school. To build a new high school without state assistance would require additional mills beyond what the board had considered requesting of voters.
Enrollment on Friday was 1,426, up about 20 from the close of last year, according to Barrett. Enrollment numbers usually increase slightly after the Labor Day holiday.
General News on 08/27/2014