EDUCATION BOARD

votes to allow Sparkman schools to stay open.

Sparkman High alumni, students and parents beckoned the state Board of Education on Thursday to keep the K-12 campus going in spite of its own superintendent calling it “the very definition of a failing school” and one that needed to be shut down.

In the end, the board sided with Sparkman’s supporters and voted 4-3 to keep Sparkman’s high school and elementary school open in spite of their declining enrollment and low scores.

“I feel very blessed,” said Valerie Barbarita, one of more than a dozen people who spoke during Thursday’s public meeting in Little Rock. “Our town did a lot of praying over this.”

Barbarita told the board the threat of both schools being closed was “agonizing” for her, her two children who attend the elementary school, and the entire Sparkman community. She wept when the vote was tallied.

The Harmony Grove School District sought to close the entire K-12 campus after the end of the current school year. Its board of directors had voted 5-2 to close it.

By rule, a local board can only close a school in its district if the vote is unanimous. If a majority vote in favor of a school closure, the matter goes before the state board.

The Sparkman schools had their own school district until 2004, when it was consolidated into the Harmony Grove School District, said Superintendent Albert Snow. It was Snow who on Thursday tried to persuade the state board to shut down the Sparkman campus.

The elementary school serves K-6 students and has an enrollment of 60 students.

The high school, which serves students in grades 7 through 12, has an enrollment of 56 students. Last year, the elementary school earned a C grade from the state Department of Education. The previous two years, it received an F grade. The high school has received a D grade during the past three years.

By comparison, Harmony Grove schools, which Sparkman students would have enrolled in next year had the Sparkman schools closed, earned B’s across the board, Snow said.

Snow acknowledged the group of Sparkman supporters in the audience during Thursday’s meeting. More than half the seats were occupied by supporters of the school, with many of them donning the schools’ colors, purple and gold.

“I would’ve loved to have seen this passion when [Sparkman Elementary] got two F’s in a row,” Snow said. “Not too many schools in the state get that grade.”

Board member Susan Chambers made a motion to deny the petition for closure of Sparkman, and it was seconded by Charisse Dean.

Chambers and Dean, along with board members R. Brett Williamson and Fitz Hill, voted in favor of denying the petition. Board members Ouida Newton, Sarah Moore and Kathy McFetridge voted no.

Little Rock attorney Jess Askew III, who specializes in school district matters, spoke on behalf of Sparkman. He said the practice of closing isolated schools results in “education deserts” and unnecessarily long commutes for students who have to travel 20 or more miles one way to get to school.

The Sparkman campus is 25 miles from the Harmony Grove campus. Snow said the Sparkman household with the longest distance to Harmony Grove could have made it to school in 41 minutes. Opponents of the school closure said the bus ride from those far distances could have lasted up to two hours if one takes into account all of the stops that a bus is required to make. That would make an entire school day stretch out to 10 hours, they said.

Snow also pointed out that the K-12 campus lost a total of 33 students during the current school year, a staggering loss considering the low enrollment. Additionally, roughly 20% of teachers this year were new hires.

It is difficult to “maintain academic standards” with that level of turnover, Snow said.

Among those who urged the state board to save the schools was Sparkman Mayor Rickey Craig, who said rural communities need to be preserved. Small towns will rot, he said, if their educational centers are neglected or taken away.

“When you destroy a school in a small town, it has a domino effect on the entire community,” Craig said.