GENTRY -- What do residents of the Gentry School District want? How much are they willing to pay? These are the two questions which school district patrons must decide, and soon, according to members of the Gentry School Board tasked with the decision of charting the course for the school district's future.
In a special town-hall meeting on April 13, Randy Barrett, superintendent of Gentry Schools, quoted from an email he received from district resident Al Lemke which said, "Tonight's meeting may be one of the most important meetings in 20 years." Barrett said the meeting was to get input on the thinking and desires of district patrons. "The Gentry Public School District belongs to you and not to me," Barrett said, "I'm just a hired hand."
Barrett explained to the 40-plus persons in attendance (mostly teachers and school employees) some of the options before the district and the elected representatives of the district, the Gentry School Board.
According to Barrett, the district's current intermediate school campus has pretty much outlived its usefulness as a modern school campus, with the wing buildings constructed in the 1959 to early 1960s' range, the commons area in 1972 and the main classroom areas in 1982.
The initial plan of the school board was to pursue building a new high school with a competition gym on the Pioneer Lane campus and moving the middle school into the current high school and the intermediate school into the current middle school. The plan would have placed all the schools on a single campus, reducing bus transportation issues, and have allowed the high school to be designed and built to better meet the needs of students under the new Common Core Curriculum.
The plan, according to Barrett, was to build the new $20 million high school with between five and six million dollars in partnership funding from the Arkansas Division of Public School Academic Facilities and Transportation and to request a millage increase of approximately 4.5 mils for the rest. But the district never made it past the partnership funding request, Barrett explained, making the needed millage increase for the district to "go it alone" approximately 8.7 mills or an additional $174 per year in taxes per $100,000 of actual value of property rather than the $90 increase per $100,000 originally planned.
Barrett said he viewed the increase for such a locally-funded initiative as too much to ask of tax payers within the school district. However, should residents within the school district still wish to pursue that option and pay the increase in taxes, the board could yet pursue the plan.
As alternates to this original plan, Barrett suggested four other scenarios, the first being to demolish the older wing buildings on the intermediate school campus and build a new stand-alone classroom building where the wing buildings are now located. He said the plan would have the advantage of keeping traffic flow as it is now but would lock the district into having a 2017 classroom building used with buildings that would be approaching 50 years old. No cost estimate was yet determined.
The second scenario, according to Barrett, would be to build additional classroom space on the middle school campus for the fourth and fifth grades and move the third grade into the primary school using the classrooms currently used for specialty classes. The plan would require reconfiguring the schools to make the middle school be grades four through eight and the primary school grades kindergarten through grade three. It would have the benefit of having all the campuses on Pioneer Lane and fully utilize all facility space but would leave little room for future growth. No cost estimate was yet determined.
The third scenario, Barrett said, was to build an entirely new intermediate school on district-owned land behind the current primary school campus. The estimated cost would be about $10 million, according to Barrett, and require an increase of 4 to 5 mils on district taxpayers. The plan would have the advantage of having a new, modern facility for the intermediate school but would also make it very difficult for the district to build a new high school until 2035.
The fourth suggested scenario would be to build additional classroom space at the middle school and primary school, putting the fifth grade at the middle school and the third and fourth grades at the primary school. The plan would avoid having fourth graders in the middle school and would have all students in the Pioneer Lane location but would also leave little room for growth. No cost estimate was yet determined.
Plans which split up the intermediate school would require some staff changes, including creating assistant principal positions because of the larger number of students per campus.
All plans which involved moving the intermediate students to the Pioneer Lane location would also require opening up a second driveway or street access on the west side of the schools, another additional cost to the schools and the city.
Questions from those attending the town-hall meeting dealt with cafeteria space, putting younger children together with older children on the middle school campus and lost jobs. Barrett told those in attendance that the primary school was originally planned to house the intermediate school too, so cafeteria space would be adequate. He also pointed out the expansion walls on the middle school to allow for such expansion projects. In regard to job losses, he said he didn't anticipate job losses because of the need for assistant principals in campuses with more than 500 students. He said any job losses (such as the need for less cafeteria workers) could be handled through normal attrition.
In an effort to learn which direction residents wish the district to pursue, the district is planning an online survey on its website. The survey will also seek public input on the matters of a conversion charter school for the high school and refining the district's mission statement.
General News on 04/22/2015