We dare say that Barbara Warren has the hardest job in Pine Bluff. She was first put in charge of failing Dollarway School District and then when the Pine Bluff School District’s state-appointed caretaker left, she got that job, too. As if overseeing one tumbledown house wasn’t enough, she got two.
How bad was Pine Bluff? Pretty awful. Grades given to district schools by the state Education Department were all Fs except one D. The stories, too, were painful to hear. Teachers weren’t engaged and neither were parents or students. If the district were a country, one would call it a failed state.
On Tuesday night, Warren gave the district’s patrons an annual review of what’s going on in the district. And it was clear that her focus is to get the district out of the deep rut it’s in. Her plan includes a variety of aspects, including teams collaborating to tackle problems with curriculum, instruction, assessment and achievement; schools being aware of best practices; teachers being given regular evaluations based on their effectiveness as educators; making sure the curriculum matches what the state says it should be; and schools managing their “fiscal, operational and technological resources in a way that directly supports teachers to provide a safe, supportive and collaborative culture and increase student achievement.”
There was more text involved in those descriptions, but you get the gist. She’s rebuilding the house from the foundation up. And there hasn’t been anything easy about it.
For one, money is fleeting. Picture a city that is losing population by the thousands. When a person moves away, the city loses various kinds of taxes. That’s one less person buying a car, eating out, etc. That’s Pine Bluff.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
Losing a student is similar, but the loss in revenue happens quicker. Districts get money from the state based on enrollment. So a loss of one student is around $7,000 in general terms. Lose 10 and that’s $70,000. It adds up quickly.
Chief Operation Officer Leroy Harris pointed out just how quickly. He said that during the 2015-2016 school year, there were 4,016 students in the Pine Bluff School District. This year’s enrollment is 2,897. The loss has amounted to $9.4 million.
Can you imagine trying to plan for the future when the ground is falling out from under you a million dollars at a time?
And these comparisons do not show that the loss of students and the hemorrhaging of revenue has been going on for some time. One indicator would be all of the school houses dotted around Pine Bluff that have been empty for years.
“We will need to monitor general operating expenditures closely and fully utilize non-general operating funds to avoid deficit spending,” Harris said. Which is a nice way of saying the district has to watch what it spends unless it wants to go into the red.
Without a quality school system, families decide to move or put their children in other schools, thereby weakening the system further and making it less likely that the district can operate a quality school system.
And yet, there Warren is. Making improvements to both Pine Bluff and Dollarway districts, little by little, gaining respect from those who work for her and from those for whom she works at the state Education Department.
And always the modest one. At the end of her presentation, she applauded her staff for improvement efforts that were underway before she arrived to take over.
“There were a lot of changes and a lot of buzz around several new initiatives and the success of several initiatives that have been going on for quite a long time,” she said. “I saw you and I am very, very happy to be a part of our district.”
That sounds like someone who has answered a calling rather than taken a job.