JONESBORO—The Jonesboro Public School Board president, Chris Harrell, received a 12-year service plaque at Tuesday’s meeting. He will be stepping down next year.
Superintendent Dr. Kim Wilbanks shared her thoughts on Harrell’s time on the board and expressed her gratitude for him.
“I could say a lot of sappy things, but I’ll skip those. Mr. Harrell has been a loyal board member. He has led through many different opportunities that he had, and it’s been my pleasure to work beside Mr. Harrell. We greatly appreciate your service to the Jonesboro Public Schools,” Wilbanks said.
Brock Ferguson of Zone 5 will replace Harrell as president in the upcoming school year. Harrell explained the importance of the school board and how it brings the community together.
“The church is the hope of the world and I think second place goes to the school. I think the work that the school does is vitally important and life-changing. It’s been a real honor and privilege to work with these folks (school board). I’m excited for Brock, he’s going to do a great job. We do our best and don’t always get it right, because we’re human. These folks labor over decisions for the sake of the district,” Harrell said.
Later in the agenda, the district’s enrollment numbers and financial construction numbers on newly built buildings were released.
The district enrolled 6,451 students in 2024-25, which was 31 less than last year. The 13 school campuses include 816 employees, with 530 of them being licensed and 206 being classified.
“You can see that we’re slightly down from the previous year. We’re seeing pretty good growth, and since COVID, our numbers are similar to those seen in other districts. We still have not totally rebounded from those years when students were virtual and choosing other education options. We’re currently very full in the 7th through 12th grade with large classes in each of those grades,” Wilbanks said.
Later in the meeting, three students were denied legal transfers due to large enrollment throughout their desired grades. Also, none of the student’s parents showed up for representation at the meeting.
Disbursing officer Tim Stewart said the board should deny all three students, with the rest of the school board agreeing.
A 2019 GMC Sierra will replace the superintendent’s current vehicle, a 2014 GMC Acadia. The district will then transfer the previous vehicle to a different department within the school district for professional development, and the vehicle currently used for that purpose will go to the maintenance department.
“We’ve got to be able to get our people around the district,” Superintendent Nicholas Jankoviak said. “With multiple vehicles, we’re able to divide and conquer.”
“We’ve got to be able to get our people around the district, With multiple vehicles, we’re able to divide and conquer.”
Superintendent Nicholas Jankoviak
It is the district’s responsibility to provide a vehicle for the superintendent’s business and personal use according to the PSD superintendent’s contract. The district will also assume all expenses related to this vehicle’s use, including insurance, fuel, maintenance, etc.
During the March 11 meeting, the school board voted to purchase the vehicle. The vehicle, with just over 28,000 miles, combined with a six-year or 120,000-mile warranty, will cost the district $48,828.
Michael McBryde, senior vice president of Stephens Inc., presented a plan to the board concerning the district’s plan to sell their bonds and the next steps the district should take now since the bond restructure passed March 5.
Michael McBryde, senior vice president of Stephens Inc., presented the board with a plan to sell the district’s bonds. Shelby Russom | Delta Digital News Service
McBryde said it is important to have one final meeting with the school board before selling the bonds to ensure everyone is on the same page.
“It’s just kinda always one of those things,” he said. “Before you sell a couple million dollars worth of bonds, it’s always nice to have a little touch-in meeting.”
McBryde said he believes if the district sells its bonds in the current market, it will have a better interest rate.
“That means you’ll get your $17 million and actually reduce your total annual payment,” he said.
Josh Honeycutt, school board secretary, said the proposal is fantastic and will save the district $3 million over 30 years.
The bond sale will begin with the state-required publishing of the sale in the local newspapers. Currently, the bond sale will take place April 9.
PSD school board motioned to approve an alternate calendar based on hours, not days. A traditional academic calendar requires a minimum of 178 instructional days. The board-approved alternate calendar requires the district to have 1,068 instructional hours, allowing them to save additional time for days off, such as inclement weather.
Currently, the district is banking 1,101.42 hours, meaning the district will have 33.42 hours to bank.
“We can bank over five six-hour days,” Jankoviak said. “So, what will happen is if we get bad weather, we can allow the students to stay home five times without having them make up any days at the end of the school year.”
The district will utilize the extra days for professional learning communities (PLC), which act as teacher collaboration days. Jankoviak said this year, the district really focused on incorporating PLC days and believes they will help improve the district.
He said PSD currently employs two of the only high-impact teachers in northeast Arkansas, and he believes allowing them to collaborate with their colleagues will help improve the district.
Oak Grove’s principal, Jamie Dial, stated the academic achievement of the students of Oak Grove Middle School (OGMS). The school’s current enrollment is 503, with 234 fifth and 269 sixth-grade students. The average attendance is 91%. The school employs 32 certified teachers, with 22 having over six years of teaching experience in the district.
“Our staff is strong,” Dial said. “They’re doing a great job; we’re doing everything we can for the kids.”
Dial said the teachers within OGMS have gone above and beyond in grasping PLCs with math, science and language arts.
Within the OGMS math department, the PLC meets every week to discuss remediation pathways from previous testing data. Dial said both sixth-grade math teachers show growth as high as 17% with their students’ ACT Aspire test scores.
OGMS began Imagine Math Small Group on Demand Tutoring. This year-long virtual program will help 56 high-risk students bridge the gap in their math skills.
In other business:
The school board elected Jeremy Hancock as president and disbursing officer, Teresa Hill as vice president and Josh Honeycutt as secretary. The remaining board members were elected as secondary disbursing officers.
Due to law changes, the board approved policy updates from the Arkansas School Board Association effective July 1, 2024.
The board expelled a 10th-grade student for the remainder of the 2023-24 school year for actions that violated student policies 4.18, 4.20, 4.21 and 4.22 and student rule two in the Paragould High School Student Policies Handbook.
PARAGOULD, ARK – The Greene County Technical School District decided to participate in a new type of optional interim testing for the 2023-2024 school year.
The new testing program, the Arkansas Teaching and Learning Assessment System (ATLAS), interim testing acts as a way to track how students are performing and how to help them improve. The system offers classroom, summative and end-of-the-year assessments for grades third through 10th.
“We opted into practicing with the interims, and I’m so glad we did because the kids will be better prepared for the summative,” said Assistant Superintendent Kodie Potter during the Feb. 15 meeting.
“We opted into practicing with the interims, and I’m so glad we did because the kids will be better prepared for the summative,”
Assistant Superintendent Kodie Potter
Caroline Schenk, district administrator of instructional programs, said this differs from any testing GCT has undergone because the testing is more difficult. Still, she said she is hopeful the students will succeed.
The science portion is the only ATLAS interim testing available since the program is still new. The tests will eventually cover multiple subjects including math, reading, writing, etc. Scheck said the district hopes to implement every interim testing as it becomes available next year.
When given the science interim test, GCT’s students showcased skills from six points above the state average of 89 at the fifth-grade level to four points below the state average of 64 at the third-grade level.
“We have work to do,” Schenk said. “We are not happy with being below the state average. We would like to excel, so we will keep working.”
Along with the testing, Greene County Tech will put together “gold documents.” These documents detail how well each student is doing in a particular area and include test scores and lists of teachers’ expectations for their grade level. Lead teachers can edit and refer to these forms as the year progresses to monitor each student’s performance and show other teachers what the district expects their students to understand by a certain point in their academic career.
“We are so proud of our staff, our teachers. They are working so hard, and they are knocking this out,” Schenk said. “We never dreamed we’d be as far as we are with all of this.”
Greene County Technical School District reported at the end of January 2024, its operating account had an ending cash balance of about $14.8 million, of which $868,000 remains in special projects. The district is restricting $500,000 for construction, and about $5.6 million remains in the July 22 bond proceeds fund. The current budget leaves about $7.8 million for operating.
Three cadets from GCT’s Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC) presented to the school board members detailing their organization’s 2023-2024 school year successes.
JROTC set school impact goals for the program over the next school year. The first goal was for 75% of cadets to receive at least a 2.0 GPA in regular education classes and a 3.0 GPA in the JROTC class. Deputy Corps Commander Cadet Bailee Williams said they are on track and expect to meet that goal by the end of the school year. The second goal of the program is to reach a 75% participation rate in non-mandatory activities for the 2023-2024 school year, of which they have passed with a participation rate of 97%. JROTC also wants to recruit at least 75 first-year students during their GCT Junior High School recruitment events while maintaining 70% of the corps.
Cadets from GCT give a presentation on their JROTC program on Feb. 15, 2024.
“Our unit is currently maintaining 87.5% of the corps for the upcoming spring semester,” Williams said. “We also have 80.6% of the corps expressing interest in reenrolling into JROTC next year.”
JROTC also set goals for the earning of community service hours. Currently, the unit earned 1,732 hours with an average of 17.32 hours per cadet.
Throughout the fall and spring semesters, JROTC raised $5,925 selling peanuts and bath bombs and $5,170 selling digital coupons and discount cards. JROTC will donate $700 to the family of a GCT student diagnosed with cancer and $500 to the family of an eighth grader who was involved in a car accident.
Superintendent Scott Gerrish said he appreciates the work Sgt. Scott Burlingame has put into JROTC and believes the program is worth all the effort.
In the meeting, the board also:
Reviewed how teachers feel about the implementation of the alternate calendar and early start.
Approved a second read of classified and licensed personnel policies.
Approved incoming and outgoing student transfer petitions.
Approved a resolution authorizing the district to request a waiver.
Approved a special education data system.
and renewed the district’s ASBA Worker’s Compensation Trust.
PARAGOULD, Ark. – Greene County Technical School Board approved a waiver to revise the 2023-2024 school year calendar in a special school board meeting yesterday.
The Greene County Technical School administration recommended the school board approve a waiver from the state department allowing the district to change the school year calendar from a traditional to an alternate calendar to make up for school days lost to inclement weather.
The waiver would allow the district to count the instructional minutes on the first day of school, Aug. 14, 2023, and count to the end of the calendar school year, May 24, 2024. The district has already been gathering extra instructional minutes throughout the school year but could not bank those minutes under a traditional calendar. Currently, the high school banks 365 instructional minutes daily, five minutes over the daily minimum. With the alternate calendar, the district can bank those extra five minutes a day and put them towards covering for inclement weather.
“By approving this waiver, we’ve banked enough time that out of the three snow days we missed this year, we can take two off and only be needing to make up one snow day,” GCT’s Supt. Scott Gerrish said.
“By approving this waiver, we’ve banked enough time that out of the three snow days we missed this year, we can take two off and only be needing to make up one snow day,”
GCT’s Supt. Scott Gerrish
The board voted to approve the waiver, which will remedy the school’s inability to use alternative methods of instruction, or AMI, days, due to the Arkansas Learns Act. The approval of this will mean the school now expects students to attend school Feb. 19, 2024, making up for instructional time lost during inclement weather. The school plans to announce the change through social media as early as Thursday, Feb. 1, 2024. Going forward, the state will expect the school board to revote on the alternate calendar each school year. President of the school board Tim Roswell said since there are no longer AMI days, banking extra instructional hours seems like the most logical way to make up for lost time and keep students from having to attend school in the last week of May 2024.
After time spent in executive session, the school board voted to suspend the expulsion of a student for the remainder of the 2023-2024 school year for breaking rule 10 of the GCT Junior High Handbook. Rule 10 prohibits students from possessing, receiving, huffing/inhaling or dispensing a controlled substance.
According to Tony Boyd, assistant principal of GCT Junior High School, he caught the student in question with a controlled substance Jan. 19. Once Boyd and the Student Resource Officer on duty confiscated the substance and had it tested, the substance came back positive for Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). The Junior High School recommended the school board consider the student for suspended expulsion. Boyd said alternative school for one semester may be the best option for the student.
“I think that is going to be his best avenue. He deserves to at least have that shot,” Boyd said.
Suspended expulsion allows the student to still attend school but in a location of the school board’s choice. This option will stand as long as both the student and guardian comply with the rules set for suspended expulsion, which may include but are not limited to receiving school-based mental health counseling services, referral to Narcotics Anonymous or Alcoholics Anonymous programs, drug testing, passing classes and so on.
Christi Sims, GCT administrative assistant, said, “Not all schools do the suspended expulsion. It’s just something we do to give our students another chance.”
The guardian of the student initially intended to read an apology letter the student wrote to the school board but was unable to attend the meeting due to personal reasons.
In other business:
The board read the first revisions of Licensed and Classified Personnel Policies, which did not require the board to take action.
The board also approved an annual trip to St. Louis, Missouri, for GCT’s gifted and talented program, PACE.
The board approved outgoing student transfer petitions and a personnel list.
Delta Digital News Service 