Plans sought for re- use of 2 elementary schools
LR district sets March 31 deadline
The Little Rock School District on Tuesday announced it is seeking proposals for the use of two campuses — Franklin Elementary and Woodruff Early Childhood Center — that will no longer house district pupils after this school year.
All responses are due by 2 p. m. March 31 to what school district leaders are calling the “Invitation for Submission of Interest for Redeployment of the properties.”
District leaders have said they would present proposals made for use of the empty campuses to the school neighborhoods for feedback.
In January, Little Rock Superintendent Mike Poore and his staff recommended to Arkansas Education Commissioner Johnny Key that three schools be closed and a fourth re- purposed to save $ 3.8 million in an overall plan to cut about $ 11 million from the district’s budget in 2017- 18.
The district is pairing the cuts for 2017- 18 with reductions made this year and in past school years to offset the scheduled end to $ 37.3 million a year in state desegregation aid. That special funding will end after the 2017- 18 school year as the result of a January 2014 agreement in a long running federal school desegregation lawsuit.
Key, who acts as the school board for the state- controlled Little Rock district, approved the district plan to close the Franklin, Woodruff, and Hamilton Learning Academy campuses and convert Wilson Elementary into an alternative education school for secondary students.
Key’s approval of the school closure plan came over the objections of community members who wanted the schools to remain open or at least be the subject of an impact study before discontinuing their use.
While the district is advertising for proposals for the use of Franklin, which sits on 10 acres at 1701 S. Harrison St., and for Woodruff, which is on 1.9 acres at 2010 W. Seventh St., it is holding on to the Hamilton Learning Academy. That campus — the former Southwest Middle School, is being considered for use as a component of a kindergarten through eighth grade school in future years.
The advertising of the soon- to- be- vacant Franklin and Woodruff campuses by the Little Rock district comes as the Arkansas Legislature is considering Senate Bill 308. The bill that has been approved by the Senate and is pending in the House of Representatives would, in part, grant open- enrollment charter schools within a district’s geographical boundaries the first rights to lease or purchase unused or under- used school facilities in that district.
More information about the Little Rock properties is available by contacting Darral Paradis, the district’s director of procurement, 447- 2262.