The Dollarway School District Board of Directors showed signs of discord at a special called meeting Tuesday night that began with verbal sparring between board members over whether to add a proposed sale of district land to the Hardin Volunteer Fire Department to the meeting agenda.
Before a vote was taken to approve the agenda, board member Gene Stewart asked to have the land sale discussion added.
“We are waiting for an appraisal of the land,” board president George Stepps responded.
“The issue raised is getting a certified appraisal,” board member Robert Morehead said. “We must sell it at market value.”
Board member Efrem Elliott said that he couldn’t recall that the board had asked for such an appraisal.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
“Why don’t we wait until the regular board meeting next week to discuss this,” Stepps said.”We will look at this next week and try to get this behind us.”
Morehead made a motion to move the executive session from the end of the agenda up to the beginning of the meeting.
“Can we find out why we are moving the executive session up?” Elliott asked.
“That’s what we decided we wanted to do,” Stepps said. “We just want to discuss some things in executive session and when we come out we will announce what we talked about.”
The board then voted to move the executive session up and subsequently voted to go into executive session to discuss personnel matters.
The board emerged after an hour and 40 minutes.
“Dr. Wright, do you have recommendations as a result of the executive session?” Stepps asked superintendent Bettye Dunn-Wright.
The board approved the retirements of Vera Smith as principal and pre-k director of James Matthews Elementary; Charles Farrow as a Spanish teacher at Dollarway High School; and Lena Williams as a cafeteria employee at James Matthews.
The board approved the rehire of social workers Lisa Bullard, Sheveeka Vickers and Rose Franklin.
The board approved the hiring of staff for the district summer school.
The board approved a motion made by Morehead concerning cheerleaders at the junior high and high school level.
“I move that we expand our policy as relates to cheerleaders to allow alternates to have the same rights and privileges of the cheerleaders, including camp,” Morehead said. “The only things they can’t participate in due to AAA rules are playoff games and tournaments.”
Dunn-Wright informed the board that before new furniture can be ordered for the new high school technology building funds left over from the remodeling of Robert F. Morehead Middle School needed to be classified as construction funds instead of the regular operating funds classification they are currently listed as.
“We haven’t ordered new furniture because we are waiting for approval,” Dunn-Wright said.
Stewart asked Dunn-Wright if an inventory of needed furniture had been taken and she indicated that it had not.
“We are going to do that shortly,” Dunn-Wright said. “Our fallback plan is to use the old furniture we already have for the new building until we can order the new furniture.”
Stewart did not like the idea.
“We didn’t use old furniture when Robert F. Morehead was built and I don’t think we use old furniture in this new building,” Stewart said.
The board approved the use of $20,000 in funds provided by the National School Lunch Act to help the TOPPS summer enrichment program in July.
TOPPS, or Targeting Our People’s Priorities With Service, is a Pine Bluff non-profit dedicated to bettering the lives of children in the city.
“We will have to amend our Arkansas Coordinated School Improvement Plan for July and this is when the TOPPS program will begin,” Dunn-Wright said.