The Pine Bluff School District turned down the opportunity to apply for school improvement grants from the Arkansas Department of Education last month intended for Pine Bluff High School and Oak Park Elementary that could have brought as much as $12 million into the district.
The opportunity was turned down after members of the teaching staff took issue with the amount of time they were given to make the decision.
PBHS art instructor Virginia Hymes was involved in the debate over whether to apply for the grant and had two primary concerns.
“One of the red flags for me was the lack of a principal at the high school because we were told that having the principal and staff on board is critical to the successful implementation of the grant,” Hymes said, referring to the fact that interim principal Robert Handley was near the end of his service and no successor had been chosen at the time of the grant discussion.
“We had very little time from when we were first presented with the information about the grant from Mia Meadows [district director of curriculum, instruction and professional development] until the application deadline. When you look at anything with the government you can’t rush through it. During the grant writing session we talked about the trouble that Dollarway had run into with their SIG grant. You don’t make major decisions that would impact the children in a rushed manner.”
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
Hymes said that the vast majority of teachers who attended the meeting with Meadows opposed applying for the grant due to the insufficient amount of time available to consider it as well as the lack of a principal at the high school.
Ryan Roberts, who was president of the Pine Bluff Education Association until May 31, said that a teaching staff vote was held and that the majority voted to forego the grant.
Seth Blomeley, the director of communications for the Arkansas Department of Education, said that the ADE formally notified the school district of the availability of the grant money April 12 and that Meadows notified the ADE May 18 that the district would be forgoing the opportunity for the grant money.
“While Pine Bluff High School and Oak Park Elementary School were eligible to apply for the SIG grant, the Pine Bluff School District chose not to,” Blomeley said. “Had they applied they potentially could have received $2 million per year for three years for each school, or a total of $12 million. The school district sent us a notice to the effect that they were turning it down. The ADE did not require them to give a reason for their decision and the district did not provide a reason.”
Roberts reiterated the concerns expressed by Hymes over the amount of time the teachers had to decide on whether to apply for the money.
“The school improvement grant as a whole is designed to help schools improve but you cannot just jump into something like that,” Roberts said. “When you buy a car you have to do your research and know what you are doing. When the grant was presented that didn’t happen. We were given a week and a half and told we had to make it work.”
“There is no such thing as free money,” Ryan said. “There are strings that go with anything. If you want to improve test scores in literacy then you have to make sure your English teachers are here for more than a year and if you want math scores to go up then you need your math teachers to stay. Money from a SIG grant will not do that. It is not long term money. There is a lot more that goes into it.”
“One of the requirements of the grant is an additional 300 hours of instructional time,” Ryan said. “You would have an extra hour for each school day and you would add 17 more days to the school year. How many students will stay at a school where they have to go that much longer when they can go to any of the other three Jefferson County school districts and get the same diploma with less hours?”
“If we get $2 million now but continue to lose students how will that affect the school when the money is gone?” Roberts asked. “I believe that is what the teachers are objecting to.”
Pine Bluff School Board vice president Donna Barnes said that the board was never officially notified of the SIG grant opportunity.
“Nothing was formally presented to the board by the superintendent,” Barnes said, referring to former district superintendent Jerry O. Payne. “It was never put before the board to take action on. We heard it talked about informally but it was mostly rumors. We had nothing formal to act on.”