Response to Lloyd’s letter

Editor:

This letter is written in response to Ms. Linda Lloyd’s letter to the editor, published in the Nov. 29 edition of The Weekly Vista. After reading her letter, I respectfully suggest to Ms. Lloyd that she arrive at the intersection of Duvall Lane and Boyce Drive a few minutes prior to 6:15 a.m. and meet with a 5-year-old and others waiting to get on a school bus to take them to Bentonville. I would like for her to explain to the 5-yearold why he needs to stand there in the cold — maybe snow, rain or heat — for the next 12 years of his life and spend at least two hours of his school day just riding a bus.

Ms. Lloyd is misinformed as to the detachment process when she recommended that we should also detach from Gravette and Pea Ridge school districts. The Arkansas Department of Education (ADE) rules for detachment specify that we must detach from one school district only and Gravette and Pea Ridge do not qualify for detachment. ADE has declared that Bella Vista is fully qualified to detach from the Bentonville School District. The Bella Vista Patriots will follow the detachment process, one step at a time. The first step is to get 1,180 signed petitions to get our proposal on the November 2024 election ballot. Then we will have to work on a feasibility report to submit to the ADE.

Ms. Lloyd went on to go through a laundry list of what it would cost to have our own schools. Bella Vista residents have been paying school taxes for over a hundred years. Our millage rate is 48, which is one of the highest in Arkansas, and for those years of paying school taxes, our money has gone to Bentonville so they can build their opulent new schools, while we have nothing tangible to show for paying our school taxes.

In setting up our family budgets we organize what are necessities and what are not so necessary. In Bella Vista, our priorities seem to be to pay CEO Tom Judson an annual salary of $305,642 so he can bring in POA non-members from who knows where to play golf. Approximately 18 percent of our residents play golf. According to an IRS tax filing available on the POA website [bellavistapoa.com/wp-content/ uploads/2023/11/Website990-990T-with-Memo.pdf], Judson’s total compensation in 2022 was $511,888.

In Ms. Lloyd’s closing statement, she questioned if having public school children attend classes in church Sunday school classrooms was legal. To date, the Patriots and officials in Little Rock have not been able to find a state statute that bans public school students from attending classes in churches. As one of the first hires at Northwest Arkansas Community College, as Division Chairman of Math and Science — because we had no buildings, we started the college by using Sunday school classrooms.

Jim Parsons Bella Vista