Maumelle looks at having own schools

City to explore whether making new district is feasible

A resolution to support Maumelle to look at creating its own school district passed the Maumelle City Council in a unanimous voice vote Monday night and drew applause from about two dozen supporters in the audience.

Alderman Preston Lewis proposed the resolution that is a starting point for the city of 17,201 residents to begin exploring if it should try to break away from the Pulaski County Special School District to have an independent district made up almost entirely of school children from within Maumelle.

“I honestly think that this issue would have been explored sooner,” Lewis, elected to the city council in November, said in an interview before the meeting. “I think we should get out of the ought-to phase and into the what-we-are-doing phase.”

A firm would need to be hired for a feasibility study to determine the economics of the city forming a school district, Mayor Mike Watson said, but that would come later. An advocacy group would also need to be organized, Lewis said.

“You have to take a first step,” Alderman Steve Mosley said. “This allows us to take a first step.”

“I think it would be some of the best money Maumelle could spend,” Alderman Burch Johnson said of a fea-

sibility study.

Alderman Caleb Norris, an attorney, said he supported the legislation but had “a lot of reservations” because of legal issues involved that would include the county district. The Pulaski County school district remains under a federal desegregation order.

Among reasons to be independent, Lewis said, is the “fragile” state of the county school district and Maumelle secondary schools “underperforming” on standardized tests. Also, a city district would relieve peak-hour traffic on Maumelle Boulevard, an often-heard complaint from residents, by reducing the number of students who choose to go into Little Rock or North Little Rock to school.

The Arkansas Board of Education in March 2011 labeled the county school district as fiscally distressed for audit findings of financial mismanagement. In June 2011, dissatisfied with the district’s efforts to achieve long-term solvency, state officials took control of the district, dissolving the elected school board and dismissing the board-hired superintendent.

Comments from residents were somewhat mixed, though overall supportive.

“We’re opening the door to make this community stronger and to improve the educational environment for our kids,” Russ Galbraith said in support.

Tony Brainerd, a former alderman who volunteers as a wrestling coach at Maumelle High School, cautioned the council to not “run down what we’ve got and that we spent a long time to get and that has our name on it” in any campaign to start its own district.

Luke Ribich, a board of trustees member at Maumelle’s Academics Plus Charter School, also cautioned against how much the effort could cost the city in likely legal fees and in assuming the bond indebtedness of the school properties the city would be responsible for if it forms its own district.

In a presentation to the council, Lewis outlined his proposal and the benefits to it. It would take a change in state laws at the 2014-15 state legislative session, he said, and the community’s “enthusiasm” and support to pull it off.

According to the state law Lewis said would need to change, a new district detaching from an existing school district would need a minimum of 4,000 students. Lewis estimated a Maumelle School District starting with about 2,200 students.

Jacksonville has also tried for more than 30 years to leave the Pulaski County school district, finally successfully petitioning the Arkansas Board of Education in 2003 to allow a Jacksonville election for possibly forming an independent school district. A federal judge, however, stopped the election before it could be held based on the county district’s objections that a new district would hinder its desegregation plan. Jacksonville is still trying, 10 years later.

“There will be some precedents to follow and that we intend to follow some of these,” Lewis said, referring to Jacksonville’s efforts. “I’m being optimistic, no doubt about it. But if we never do anything, we’re guaranteed to never go anywhere with this.”