Smackover-Norphlet School District looking for input on reorganization plans
The SmackoverNorphlet School District is looking for input about plans to reorganize the school system.
To kick off getting community input, the district hosted a meeting Thursday night at Norphlet Middle School before releasing an online survey.
Conversations around reorganization started during the summer when the district started looking into giving teachers a raise. Superintendent John Gross said when he came to the district at the beginning of the summer, Smackover-Norphlet was the second lowest paying district in the area and he felt that was unacceptable.
The school board ended up giving a $750 raise across the board to teachers, which brought them to the second highest paying school district in the county, after the personnel policy committee (PPC) offered suggestions of ways to cut down on the district’s expenses.
Among other suggestions, such as moving medicaid billing, minor electrical and plumbing repairs, substitute teachers and custodial duties in-house rather than paying a company to do it, the PPC offered three recommendations of ways to reorganize the schools. It also suggested reducing the number of paraprofessionals with the school district. Gross said thus far in the school year, the district has had three paraprofessionals leave and only one has been replaced.
The board tossed out one of the suggested reorganization plans, but the two others were brought to the community Thursday night.
One of the main recommended changes presented Thursday was to look at uniting the Smackover Elementary School and the Norphlet Elementary School. This came from looking at the number of students at the two campuses and looking to maximize the student-to-teacher ratio. Gross said that by combining the two schools, the district would need five fewer classes for kindergarten through fifth grade students. Similarly, it would reduce the number of teacher positions.
Both options would involve both campuses
remaining active, but would change the grade breakdowns for each, and would allow the district to move the Smackover Preschool onto the Norphlet campus. The idea of moving the preschool is focused around being able to expand – and reduce the number of potential students put on the waitlist – and having the students on a safer campus.
Gross told community members that the Smackover Preschool campus is not very safe considering its location just off of the Smackover Highway, lack of fencing and fewer people in the area. He expressed concerns that if somebody wanted to take one of the students, they might be able to get across the state border without anybody realizing the student was gone.
Meanwhile, Gross said that the Norphlet campus is the most secure one the district has because of fencing and door locks that make it harder for somebody to get in without going through the front office.
The first option for reorganizing the district suggested reducing the Norphlet Elementary School to one class per grade level with the “overflow students” being transported to Smackover Elementary.
The second option, which was favored by the school board when it was first presented, would have kindergarten through fourth grade at Smackover and
fifth grade through eighth grade going to Norphlet.
Either of these options would mean having five fewer elementary teachers than the district currently has. Curriculum Director Jennifer Lee said that with the district’s rate of turnover, it’s likely this would be achievable by not refilling teaching positions and potentially moving current teachers to different grade levels.
The district is looking for input from community members regarding the proposed plans through a survey on the district’s website. It is anonymous, but asks for some basic information about how the person filling it out is connected to the district. It then asks which proposal is favored, the pros and cons of each, and any other suggestions or concerns about it. Additional information about the plans and other recommendations are available on the website as well.
The survey will be open until Friday with the goal of presenting the information to the school board at its meeting on Dec. 11. However, Lee said that if somebody misses the survey, the district still wants to hear their input and would encourage them to call the district.
“We want as much input as we can get,” Lee said.