By John Lyon
Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK — The state Board of Education voted Monday to place three school districts on the list of districts in fiscal distress.
The Mansfield School District in Sebastian County, Mammoth Spring district in Fulton County and Osceola district in Mississippi County are projected to have deficits ranging from $121,306 to more than $760,000 by June 2010, state education officials said.
Districts that remain in fiscal distress for two years face mandatory consolidation or annexation to another district.
The state board rejected an appeal by the Mammoth Spring district. Superintendent Ronald Taylor said voters had approved an extra 5 mills of property taxes and district officials had a plan to turn the district’s finances around.
“We think we can handle this without state intervention,” Taylor said.
The other two districts did not appeal.
The Mammoth Spring district is projected to have a $121,306 deficit by June 2010. The Mansfield district’s deficit is projected to be $244,339, and the Osceola district is projected to have a deficit of $764,279.
Also Monday, the board voted to reject a request by the Turrell School District for voluntary annexation into the Earle School District. Both districts are in Crittenden County.
Turrell is classified by the state as fiscally distressed and faces mandatory consolidation or annexation with another district next year. Turrell Superintendent Alfred Hogan said officials in Earle have promised to keep Turrell’s elementary school open if the districts merge.
Daryel Jackson, the father of two Turrell students, asked the board to reject the request, saying he favors annexation into the Marion School District. He said Marion’s academic record surpasses Earle’s and noted that combining the Earle and Turrell districts would create a student population that was 93 percent black.
“These kids need to learn diversity,” Jackson said.
Turrell is now 89 percent black. Earle is 95 percent black, and Marion is 37 percent black.
The board also considered a letter from the attorney general’s office recommending that it take great care “to satisfy itself that there are legitimate, non-racially-motivated reasons” for the annexation.
Only one board member, Jim Cooper of Melbourne, voted to approve the voluntary annexation.
The board voted to approve a request by the Two Rivers School District in Yell County to close the Fourche Valley K-12 campus in Briggsville. Superintendent Sherry Holliman said closing the isolated campus would help the district avoid fiscal distress.
District patron Margaret Bogle complained that the Two Rivers School Board did not give sufficient public notice before voting for closure at a special meeting in March.
Holliman said it was well known in the district that the possible closure of Fourche Valley was an issue, though she acknowledged that the agenda for the special meeting only mentioned “district budget and staffing” and that no Fourche Valley patrons attended. Patrons did get to ask questions at a later meeting, she said.
“It sounds to me like the hard decision to do this would have been a lot more palatable if the people that were going to be the targets of the change would have had an opportunity to be part of the discussion,” said board member Brenda Gullett of Fayetteville.
Bogle also said the closure would require some students to spend two hours on the bus traveling to school. Holliman said no student would spend more than an hour and a half traveling to school.
The board rejected a request by the Pulaski County Special School District to issue up to $81 million in bonds to pay for a new middle school in Sherwood and a new high school in Maumelle. Some members said they were concerned that the district’s plan put too much emphasis on facilities, to the detriment of other areas.
Superintendent Rob McGill said the district’s school board would come up with a new plan and present it to the state board in May.
