District's plans on line in vote

7.6-mill increase for building gains supporters, a few foes

This image from WER Architects/Planners shows the proposed layout of a new Jacksonville high school that would be built on the site of the vacant Jacksonville Middle School and open as soon as 2019 if voters approve a property-tax increase in Tuesday’s election.
This image from WER Architects/Planners shows the proposed layout of a new Jacksonville high school that would be built on the site of the vacant Jacksonville Middle School and open as soon as 2019 if voters approve a property-tax increase in Tuesday’s election.

Voters in the new Jacksonville/North Pulaski School District will decide on a 7.6-mill property-tax increase for school construction and expansion at a special election Tuesday.

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Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Information about Pulaski County voting locations.

If approved, the money generated by the tax increase will go toward an $80 million building plan -- including a new high school and elementary school -- in the fledgling school system.

Early voting, which began Tuesday, will conclude at 5 p.m. Monday at the Pulaski County Regional Building, 501 W. Markham St. At the end of the day Friday, 1,175 people had voted early in the election.

Polling places will be open in the Jacksonville/North Pulaski district from 7:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, election day.

The Education Corps Jacksonville/North Pulaski has spearheaded the "Forward February 9" campaign for the tax increase. The tax proposal has won support from the Jacksonville City Council, different civic clubs, area chambers of commerce and the editorial pages of the hometown newspapers. The proposal also attracted some complaints on social media, plus some opponents who have picketed around town.

"I've had an opportunity to work in a few places," Jacksonville/North Pulaski Superintendent Tony Wood said last week in thanking the Forward February 9 organization for its work. "The commitment -- and concentration of that commitment -- for the children in this community is really unique, " he said.

The vote on raising the school district tax from the existing 40.7 mills to 48.3 mills comes even before the new district officially hires teachers -- which is set to happen later this spring -- or opens its doors to students in August.

But nothing is very typical about the district that was created by a state Board of Education order in November 2014 and will begin on July 1 operating independently of the Pulaski County Special School District from which it was carved. State statutes had to be passed to establish a process for forming the new district, and a federal judge presiding in the 33-year-old, multiparty Pulaski County school desegregation lawsuit had to sign off on it.

U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. will continue to play a monitoring role in the district's early history: The new district must meet the same desegregation obligations that the Pulaski County Special district has yet to fulfill. Those unmet obligations include equalizing the well-worn school buildings in Jacksonville and in parts of the Pulaski County Special district that serve a relatively high percentage of black students to the newer, more modern Maumelle High, Chenal Elementary and Sherwood Middle schools. Those schools are in heavily white, more affluent parts of the Pulaski County Special district.

Leaders of the new district plan to combine the Jacksonville and North Pulaski high schools into the Jacksonville High campus for the 2016-17 school year. The North Pulaski High building will become the middle school for the entire district.

The district intends to build an approximately $60 million replacement high school campus on the site of the now vacant Jacksonville Middle School campus on School Street. The new school would be in view of passers-by on U.S. 67/167. WER Architects/Planners has done some preliminary design work on the campus, which could open as soon as 2019.

The current Jacksonville High was built in 1968. It has had some renovations to improve an unsafe stair system and address a lack of accessibility for people with disabilities. The campus has multiple buildings. Its classrooms open into hallways that are open to the outdoors.

The new district's building plan also calls for replacing Arnold Drive Elementary on Little Rock Air Force Base and Tolleson Elementary just off the base with one new elementary school. Arnold Drive was built in 1968. Tolleson was built in 1957. The Tolleson campus includes two, two-room portable classroom buildings.

The plan further envisions adding a large multipurpose room to the Bayou Meto, Pinewood, Murrell Taylor and Warren Dupree elementaries.

Marshall, the presiding judge in the desegregation case, approved the Jacksonville/North Pulaski district's building plan earlier this year. But, at the same time, he directed the new district to submit plans to him by year's end for actually replacing Bayou Meto, Pinewood, Taylor and Dupree. Those schools are not targeted for rebuilding in the current $80 million plan. District leaders have said that the new multipurpose rooms can be incorporated into the eventual new buildings for those schools.

"[T]o achieve unitary status, JNPSD must have a plan for making all facilities clean, safe, attractive and equal and must be implementing that plan in good faith to the extent practicable," the judge said in a Jan. 14 order.

The district must supplement its building plan by Dec. 31 with the "when-and-how specifics about replacing the schools so that all the new district's elementary schools are equal," the judge wrote.

The judge has scheduled a status conference with attorneys in the ongoing case -- including the Jacksonville/North Pulaski attorneys -- for 1:30 p.m. March 16 on matters in the case, which could include facilities and the outcome of the millage election.

The Jacksonville chapter of the NAACP is not taking a position on the tax question but has been working in recent weeks to educate the public and respond to calls about the election.

"Our only stand is that we want what is best for the student but we aren't taking a yes or no stand," Gwendolyn Harper, Jacksonville NAACP president, said last week. "We will give you the information but we don't tell you how to vote or give you an opinion."

Harper said she believes people are generally aware of the election but some are confused or don't understand that the school buildings must be improved if the new district is to be released from federal court monitoring.

"Judge Marshall has said that we can go on with the building plan, but he wants another plan for the rest of the schools. That's important," Harper said. "That made a big difference because a lot of people thought the elementary schools were going to be left out."

Harper, a resident of Jacksonville since 1986 and a grandmother, declined to say how she will vote but added that community members have "tried so long to be able to get a school system that the people, the community and even the state will be proud to take their children."

The money raised by the proposed 7.6-mill increase -- combined with the money from the extension of the district's existing 14.8 debt-services mills -- would be used to repay over 25 years a $46 million bond issue. Additionally, the district is seeking Arkansas Partnership Program funding -- which could be as much as half the cost of any new academic space.

District leaders also are anticipating the receipt of as much as $8 million from the U.S. Department of Defense to help with the building of the elementary school close to Little Rock Air Force Base. The Defense Department also is providing the land for the school.

The proposed tax increase would cost the owner of a $50,000 home an additional $76 a year. The owner of a $100,000 home would pay an additional $152 a year.

A mill is one-10th of 1 cent. One mill levied on an assessed value of $1,000 yields $1 in property taxes. Arkansas counties tax property at 20 percent of appraised or market value, so a $100,000 house has a taxable value of $20,000. That $20,000 multiplied by the proposed 0.0076 increase would result in the $152 tax increase on a $100,000 home.

Debbie Fulton and Ratchell Richter stood one day last week on Municipal Drive in Jacksonville, near the community center where early voting was taking place, waving a homemade sign in opposition to the tax increase.

Richter is upset that her child at Fuller Middle School's gifted education program elsewhere in the Pulaski County Special district will have to return to Jacksonville-area schools when the new district becomes operational.

She said she doesn't believe there will be an adequate gifted program.

Both Richter and Fulton said they aren't opposed to new school buildings. Fulton said her granddaughter's elementary school has some issues with mold. But she said she is opposed to a tax increase that will hurt the city's many low-income residents -- many of whom aren't aware of the special election.

"We are just asking that they find a better way," Fulton said, suggesting the district seek grants and other revenue sources.

"When we mention doing a citywide fundraiser ... and getting some big name talent out here ... they don't want to hear it," she said.

Jacksonville Mayor Gary Fletcher and Alderman Kenny Elliott also were waving signs -- Forward campaign signs -- outside the community center last week.

Fletcher, who said fundraisers are not realistic for raising enough money, urged that people look at the proposed tax increase not as a cost but as an investment in students and in the community.

He also said the potential of the new district is creating new energy in the city. He said the planners of a new Edwards Cash Value grocery store "gave Jacksonville a second look" only because of the announced plans for a new $60 million high school.

Fletcher said it would be a shame for the new district not to take the opportunity to invest in Jacksonville students in a way that the Pulaski County Special district did not.

"To do nothing costs you far more than to do something proactive," Fletcher said. "To think you can glide on at no expense or no pain, is foolish. Things either get better or they get worse. Nothing stays stagnant. So its costing you already."

Metro on 02/07/2016

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