Last night Fayetteville Superintendent Vicky Thomas made a proposal to school board members which moves the district forward from the failed millage election. The proposal is modest compared to the pre-vote plan which called for large scale demolition and reconstruction. If the school board approves the plan, the district will issue approximately $45.3 million in bonds which will be used to make targeted improvements to the current campus. The new plan still allows the district to take advantage of the Qualified School Construction Bonds allocated to the district by the state Arkansas Department of Education. To service the debt inside the current budget, the district will have to cut spending in other areas. Chief Financial Officer Lisa Morstad hinted that administrative spending would be the first to be cut, and that spending on instruction is safe. We have yet to hear how this new plan affects the decision to add the 9th grade to the high school campus, but I imagine the district will have to stick with the current grade structure at least in the short term.
I would like to applaud Vicky Thomas’ swift action moving forward from the failed millage election. This new plan seems to be both timely and prudent. I look forward to hearing more detail about the plan.
Here are the local news articles:
Vicki Thomas has advanced what seems like a very reasonable proposal, but whatever happened to the postcard survey results? Did results from that survey inform this proposal?
It seems odd to ask for feedback and then propose a Plan B before announcing what feddback they had received.
Plan B has actually not yet been proposed. The flexibility to create Plan B will come if the board votes to accept the administration’s recommendation this Thursday night.
The survey results are being tallied and will be made public as soon as the data entry chore is done. It is a manually intensive effort.
Susan, it seems you are squabbling over minor semantics. Whether the district actually calls it Plan B or not is irrelevant. The fact is, the outline of a new plan was put forward. The board will vote on Thursday whether to pursue this option further or not.
Emmett, I’m not sure I see your point. Timing is important if the district wants to take advantage of the construction bonds. And the survey results can, and I’m assuming will, be used to inform the details of the plan. As a voting citizen of Fayetteville, I am pleased to see our school district’s Super acting both swiftly and prudently in the aftermath of the millage defeat.
If the school district goes with “Plan B”, then several of the choices listed on the postcard survey are no longer relevant (eg. location, trust, construction, quality & no. of high schools). In effect, the district is saying to its patrons: we don’t care what you think and we’re going to do whatever we want. In other words, it’s business as usual.
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New FPS High School Survey – Oct 2, 2009
Did you vote for or against the millage on September 15?
___For ___Against
Please rank the three reasons (1 being the highest) that impacted your decision the most:
___Cost of the plan
___Location
___Addition of 9th grade
___Trust in school system
___Impact on my property taxes
___Construction on campus
___Quality of the current facility
___Current economic climate
___One high school instead of two
___Building new instead of renovating
___Small Learning Communities
Not semantics, just facts. I will continue to inform facts as I acquire them, but you might want to check our web site for more information when it becomes available. http://www.fayar.net
On a fun note, I am reminded of a wonderful comment by my mother of a certain correspondent of hers in a distant city “she just can’t stay written to.”
[...] I am encouraged to see the district working on what seems to be both an ambitious and prudent “Plan B.” Riff [...]