By John Lyon
Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK — A legislative panel voted Tuesday to take up a thorny question during the interim between sessions: What should happen when a school district has declining enrollment but is so isolated that consolidation with another district is impractical?
The House and Senate Education committees approved a proposal by Sen. Randy Laverty, D-Jasper, for an interim study on school districts with “special geographic circumstances” that face forced consolidation or annexation because of low student enrollment.
Richard Denniston, superintendent of the Deer-Mount Judea School District, testified in support of the study proposal and invited the panel to launch its study with a meeting in his district in the Ozark Mountains. The lawmakers accepted, agreeing to hold the meeting sometime in September.
“Once you come to the area to visit our beautiful part of the world and see the limit that we have with our geographical distress, I believe that you will better understand the complications that lie within,” Denniston told the panel.
Under a 2003 state law, a school district that has fewer than 350 students for two consecutive years is subject to mandatory consolidation with another district. Rep. Buddy Lovell, D-Marked Tree, asked Denniston if he expected the study to lead to legislation that would allow his district to go below the 350-student threshold without being consolidated.
“Yes sir, that’s what I’m sharing with you. … We are around 370, 375 currently, and we are headed toward below 350. So what I’m asking this committee to do is do an evidence-based study to say, OK, if this goes below 350, what is the best solution?” Denniston said.
The only likely consolidation scenario for Deer-Mount Judea would be to combine with the Jasper district, which would create the state’s largest school district at 1,058 square miles, Denniston said.
Rep. Roy Ragland, R-Marshall, presented the study proposal for Laverty, who was absent because of illness. Ragland said the Dewitt School District in Arkansas County, now the state’s largest school district at 900 square miles, does not pose the same travel difficulties as the Deer-Mount Judea district in mountainous Newton County.
“DeWitt’s a lot flatter. The roads are a lot straighter, and they’re not nearly as steep,” he said.
Several bills that would have modified the state’s consolidation law in various ways failed in the Legislature this year. The state Department of Education and the state attorney general’s office opposed the bills, saying any change to the consolidation law that was not supported by a study could re-open the long-running Lake View lawsuit over the adequacy of Arkansas’ public education system.
“We’re playing by the rules,” Denniston said Tuesday. “The attorney general’s office said, ‘Hey, you need an evidence-based study,’ and that’s what we’re requesting.”
