District’s facilities look has court case in mind

Board sees duplication in master plan

The School Board for the Pulaski County Special School District on Tuesday urged district staff members to make changes in the state-required facilities plan that won’t jeopardize the district’s case in a coming federal court hearing on the condition and equity of district campuses.

Superintendent Charles McNulty and Curtis Johnson, executive director of operations, led the School Board through a work session on the annual, six-year master facilities plan that is overdue to the Arkansas Department of Education. Board members asked earlier this month for the session on the draft plan because of concerns about what they saw as outdated and duplicative content, rather than a focus on what is forthcoming in the 12,000-student district.

The board and staff are dealing with the facilities plan at a time when they are also preparing for a July 14 federal hearing in the long-running Pulaski County school desegregation lawsuit.

U.S. District Chief Judge D. Price Marshall Jr., the presiding judge in the 37-year

old lawsuit, has scheduled a hearing to determine whether the district has met its desegregation obligations in regard to equitable school buildings and other matters, making it eligible to be released from further court supervision.

Board member Alicia Gillen of Maumelle asked attorney Devin Bates on Tuesday whether there was anything in the facilities draft that was not relevant and should be removed or, on the other hand, should definitely be preserved within the plan.

“That is our biggest concern — if we are going to sign off on this, we want to be sure,” she said.

School Board member Stephen Delaney emphasized the significance of the master facilities plan to the district.

“It’s a master plan and in normal districts they would do this in a normal way, but you know we are under a consent decree and so it is a litigation document,” Delaney said. “We would really like to know whether the team is comfortable litigating on this document.”

School Board President Linda Remele of Sherwood told Johnson that the large facilities plan could be significantly reduced if duplicative yearly tasks dating back five or six years could be eliminated. She added that building plans that never materialized — such as the construction of a new Robinson High School that hinged on a tax increase that didn’t pass — could be eliminated.

The plan should begin with the 2019-20 school year and go forward, rather than go back to 2014 and focus on projects that the district didn’t do, Remele said, and added that the state Department of Education has the old information in the district’s previously submitted annual plans.

“It’s kind of been done but it feels kind of undone to us because it doesn’t include the next six years,” School Board member Brian Maune of west Little Rock told Johnson.

Johnson said that in his 1½ years in the district his focus and that of the superintendent has been on stabilizing the district’s finances while completing the district’s ongoing construction of a new Mills High, new Robinson Middle, greatly expanded Sylvan Hills High and the relocation of the old Fuller Middle School to the renovated Mills Middle School campus. Those projects total about $165 million.

He said his efforts have been on setting a foundation on which planning for the future can be done. He asked that the district staff and School Board work together in a transparent way to ensure the historical accuracy of the facilities efforts, as well as make informed decisions about the future.

“I don’t have a problem cleaning the slate, but my deal is that we do it as a team,” he said.

Gillen said she has appreciated the staff’s recent efforts, saying she recalled how board members in the past had to leverage one another to get what they wanted. It was never a collaborative process, and it was never unifying.

“It was dirty. We don’t want to go back to that,” she said, and called for the staff to give the board members lots of details about projects so they can sell the ideas to their communities — even when the projects for their area schools are not first in line.

In addition to completing the Robinson, Mills and Sylvan Hills projects, Johnson said, the draft facilities report includes some other issues that are rising to the top of the list of priorities.

College Station, Harris and Lawson are three elementary schools that are in need of some help, Johnson said.

Also an issue is the need to deal with outdated wastewater treatment plants at Lawson, Landmark and Oak Grove elementary schools, as well the plant that services the Robinson Elementary, Middle and High schools. Each will cost in excess of $400,000 to be replaced, he said.

The Baker Elementary septic system also needs to be addressed, he said.

Additionally, Maumelle High does not have a track and field facility, unlike the other high school campuses.

And, he said, Robinson High in the high-growth western part of Pulaski County needs to be expanded, possibly by adding some 20 classrooms.