Enrollment will dictate school construction plans in West Fork
Posted on Tuesday, January 15, 2008
WEST FORK - The district will leave building a new junior high school for seventh and eighth grades in its 10-year master facilities plan, though whether the project moves forward depends on enrollment trends.
The West Fork Board of Education held a public hearing Monday on the district's 10-year facilities plan with the Arkansas Department of Education facilities division. Districts are required to file a plan with the division and formally update it every two years.
Part of the plan calls for a new junior high facility to be built between 2012 and 2013.
Superintendent Diane Barrett noted that the district had a flat enrollment year, and current enrollment stands at 1, 244 students.
The department does its own enrollment projections for school districts based on enrollment trends. It predicted the West Fork district would have 1, 265 students this year.
"We're down about 20 students from their projection," Barrett said.
The department's official estimates predict the district will have 1, 371 students for the 2011-12 school year. If that figure is accurate, the elementary school would have 554 students by then and be close to 80 percent of its estimated capacity, she noted.
Barrett indicated she wasn't sure at this point if those projections would come to fruition by then, but a millage increase will likely be needed to pay for the project when or if it becomes necessary.
Board member Tim Helder, also the county sheriff, asked about the land that potentially could be purchased around the current campus. All West Fork schools are on the same property.
Barrett said she didn't have a recommendation to buy a land site around the school and wasn't actively looking. The district would have to find a way to finance any land purchase.
"We don't have money to purchase land," she said.
A current project in the master plan includes adding four classrooms to West Fork High School, The district has already hired the Hight-Jackson and Associates architecture firm to oversee the work. Other plans include a performing arts center to be built between 2012 and 2014, a new elementary school cafeteria, and two restrooms at the middle school.
Barrett said most of the projects besides the current classroom project would require some sort of tax increase or bond restructuring.
In other business, the board approved a request to begin seeking bids for a new school bus and amended its admission policy based on Barrett's recommendation.
The former policy required parents to submit their child's social security number as part of the enrollment process, but Barrett said she did not think that practice complied with state standards.
The new policy states that parents can submit their social security number or the district will assign the child a nine-digit identification number while he or she is enrolled in school, Barrett said.
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