Tax push starts in county district
13 added years sought so new Sylvan Hills High can be built
A group supporting a tax extension for the Pulaski County Special School District began a campaign Wednesday, calling for residents to back the measure in a June 13 special election.
Linda George, a retired teacher and administrator in the district, and Karyn Maynard, a parent, are leading the campaign to continue the collection of 14.8 debt-service mills for another 13 years. The tax plan will help finance a $65 million bond issue to expand Sylvan Hills High School in Sherwood and other maintenance projects.
If approved, neither the district’s current total tax rate of 40.7 mills nor the rate for taxes property owners pay annually for the schools will change. But property owners would pay that current rate for more years: the 14.8 mills that would otherwise expire in 2035 would continue through 2043.
“The money raised will be used to build a new Sylvan Hills High School,” George
said. “It will alleviate the overcrowding, and it will provide classrooms, science labs and facilities that will not only accommodate the current almost 1,500 students but will also allow for continued growth for our high school and our community as it continues to grow.”
There is no known organized group opposing the levy extension.
The bond issue would come as the district is planning to build a new Mills High School in southeast Pulaski County and a new Robinson Middle School in the western part of the district, both of which are to open in fall 2018. It would also come as the district is planning budget cuts to offset the end of $20.8 million annually in state desegregation aid. The final year for the money is the 2017-18 school year, and that amount must be designated for building costs.
Now the Committee to Continue Our Progress will begin talking to parents and community members at all the district’s schools, parent teacher associations and extracurricular events, George said. It will also use social media, including Nextdoor, the private app for neighborhoods, for question-and-answer events, Maynard said.
The group has raised $3,150 from seven contributors, according to an April financial report it submitted to the Arkansas Ethics Commission. School Board President Linda Remele and First Arkansas Bank and Trust in Jacksonville each donated $1,000.
The main project would expand Sylvan Hills High — which, School Board member Shelby Thomas said, was designed to hold 850 students — to accommodate as many as 2,200 students in the 201920 school year. New housing developments in Sherwood have attracted more residents and caused the high school’s enrollment to balloon.
Sylvan Hills High has doubled its enrollment since the 2010-11 school year to 1,452 this year, and officials said they expect to reach more than 1,600 next year. The school is using temporary buildings in the back of its campus, and its ninth graders were moved this academic year to the “Freshmen Campus” 5 miles away at the old Northwood Middle School.
The school currently has three lunch periods because it cannot accommodate everyone in the cafeteria, said Denny Tipton, calculus teacher and coach at Sylvan Hills High. It has one science lab and one computer lab, he said. It has an auditorium that allows for three different groups to watch an event, he said.
“I’ve been here for 20 years,” Tipton said. “I’ve been looking at the same building for 20 years. I get to go to all kinds of different places, and I get to see new growth … and new buildings. Our kids, our community, our teachers, we deserve it, too.”
High school sophomore Timothy Espejo said he wouldn’t get to experience the new high school but that it was “awesome” that friends and their siblings would enjoy “a better facility with better technology.”
Good schools make good business, said Sherwood Mayor Virginia Young, adding that she wants to continue the improvement that the community and school have made.
“And I want to add, too, that the only increases that anyone will experience are increases in educational opportunities, increases in safety for our students, and increases in business growth as we demonstrate that we are building our future around the youth around the city of Sherwood,” she said.
Thomas, the School Board member and parent of a Sylvan Hills High junior, said students deserve a better education, and teachers a better work environment.
“We need to come together as a community; we need to come together as a district and do this for our students,” he said. “Now, Sherwood is going to get a new school. Our teachers are going to get a new environment. Our students are going to gain from this. But the whole district will reap the rewards of this. So I encourage everyone to go out and support this extension.”