PB School Board votes 5-1 to shut 2 campuses

PINE BLUFF -- Two Pine Bluff schools will close at the end of this academic year because of declining enrollment and a lack of district funds to sustain them, Pine Bluff School District officials said Wednesday.

The Pine Bluff School Board met Tuesday night, voting 5-1 in favor of the closures.

Talk of closing Oak Park Elementary School and Southeast Middle School has been circulating for more than a month, as Pine Bluff Superintendent Linda Watson and others in the district have organized meetings with parents and residents about the schools' future.

"Tough decisions had to be made," Watson said Wednesday. "But we are going to take care of the children and provide the same types of programs and courses that they receive now. Nothing should change in that regard, and we want parents to know that."

Under the closure proposal, the district's remaining elementary schools -- Southwood, Broadmoor, Thirty-Fourth Avenue and W.T. Cheney -- will enroll students from kindergarten through fourth grade. Those schools and Oak Park Elementary currently house students up to fifth grade.

Next year, all fifth-graders will be moved to Belair Middle School, which currently enrolls students in sixth and seventh grades. All sixth-graders will remain at Belair next year, but seventh-graders will be moved to Jack Robey Junior High School. That school currently enrolls students in eighth and ninth grades.

Ninth-graders will be moved to Pine Bluff High School starting next year.

District documents show that the Pine Bluff School District has lost 445 students since 2011, resulting in a loss of more than $1.9 million in state funds. Watson has projected that the district will lose an additional 150 students before the end of this year, with a corresponding loss of more than $666,000.

Student losses have mirrored Pine Bluff's decade-long population decline, Watson has said. Since 2000, the city has lost about 10,000 residents, according to census figures. The city's current population estimate is less than 49,000, census officials have said.

Pine Bluff School Board Vice President Phyllis Wilkins, who voted for the closure, said such decisions are never easily made, but the economics of the situation are unavoidable.

"Anytime you are talking about closing a school, it's a very serious decision," Wilkins said. "It's very painful, but we know we are losing students in the district."

Parent James Fulton, who has a third-grader at Oak Park Elementary, called the decision to close the schools "sad but understandable."

"When you are losing people, losing students, there is a lot of money that goes out with them," Fulton said. "You never want to see your child's school close, but I don't think they had any other choices. I am not happy about it, though."

State Desk on 03/05/2015