PBSD ignored

Editor, The Commercial: The Pine Bluff community was left out of the decision making of the annexation versus consolidation.

Dollarway School District was given 13 community engagements prior to annexation and the Pine Bluff School District was denied community engagement and input as to whether we felt consolidation was best for the students and the PB community and district.

Decisions are being made as well without Pine Bluff community engagement such as the relocating of students, building of a new high school, school board zoning maps. We feel the maps are not in the best interest of the former PBSD. The Arkansas Geographic Information Systems Office that helped developed these maps stated that they had given engagement meetings with other districts prior to the finalization of the maps and again PBSD stakeholders were again left out. The community does not know which ones are best but they are published in hopes that we will solicit community engagement in our best interest or the leadership will pick what they want the district to have, which is advantageous to them.

Consolidation would have resulted in legal parameters that would resulted in Dollarway and Pine Bluff being a new district not under state control, i.e., meaning they would be locally controlled.

The pros and cons of finance and operations implications of the newly formed consolidated district would have been the same as annexation. The consolidated district would receive the same $3.5 million of incentive funding as annexation.

The Implications for Stakeholders for consolidation for students were the same, the student services and offerings would be inclusive of what is to be offered in both districts. The newly formed district would be able to hire its own leadership that has a proven record of success. This is where the community feels that we have been set up for failure or denied leadership that will enable it to improve. We were given the same ineffective leadership and supports that did not remove Dollarway and Altheimer from academic and fiscal distress in fiveplus years and were placed over a district that is 5 times the size of Dollarway and Altheimer. The Arkansas Educational Support and Accountability System Level 5 states that the superintendent must be removed permanently, reassigned or suspended.

The Pine Bluff community did not know there were options available — annexation, consolidation, reconstitution, or return to local control.

The Arkansas Department of Education did not inform the Pine Bluff School District that they didn’t include Dollarway pandemic funds in its final determination of fiscal distress for annexation, nor has it followed its clear process to remove Pine Bluff School District from fiscal distress by petitioning that we be removed. The Dollarway district monies and pandemic monies from PB and Dollarway clearly show that the annexed district is not under fiscal distress.

The leadership and ADE intentionally leave the PB community out of the engagement prior to decisions being made to make decisions that they say are not reversible. As concerned PB stakeholders, we petitioned the Arkansas State Board of Education in November 2021, December 2021, and January 2022 public and it can be reviewed on the State Board Videos, December 2021 and January 2022 to reconsider the annexation and to grant consolidation. The ADE was not successful in placing leadership in Dollarway and Altheimer that would have restored local control and removed the academic distress status. The PBSD community feels that we are denied a new consolidation district to start over with new proven leadership, supports, and a clean slate of accountability. Some parents and stakeholders depend on the 4 pages of The Pine Bluff Commercial to inform them and you, and the PB community have been left out of the annexation events prior to annexation, as well as what is happening after annexation as consolidation would have been to our advantage.

Another concern is that the annexed PBSD has 4 new buildings, and if we are fiscally distressed it makes no sense to undertake building a new high school campus when you have been promised to receive $12 million for academic renovations. Take the $12 million and renovate PBHS, and in the near future when the academic and fiscal distress is removed, plan for a new high school.

CHARLINE WRIGHT, PINE BLUFF