Following more than two years of state monitoring, the Watson Chapel School District has completed its corrective action plan for maintaining special education records.
Traci Holland, the district’s executive director of curriculum and instruction, informed the board of the development during this week’s board meeting. The Special Education Unit at the Arkansas Division of Elementary and Secondary Education sent a letter of noncompliance to the district on July 22, 2024, two weeks after Keith McGee was hired as district superintendent, after monitoring the district during the 2023-24 school year.
“We had a couple of meetings in the spring of 2025 with officials from the Division of Elementary and Secondary Education, and they were making us aware that progress was stalling,” Holland said. “That’s when we made some changes with personnel.”
The Special Education Unit sent a letter of longstanding to the district last Aug. 18 due to a lack of progress, according to Holland’s presentation. But since then, she said, a special education procedure manual was approved Nov. 3, all special education staff were trained on the procedure manual on Jan. 7 and Feb. 3, and all 270 item corrections in 18 reviewed student files were cleared Jan. 15.
An additional file review resulted in 237 corrections to be made, 232 of which Holland said were cleared by the Special Education Unit. The other five corrections were made but are expected to be cleared Feb. 18, Holland said.
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“Quite honestly, we had personnel retire and resign, and we had different personnel taking over the work,” Holland said. “Once we had different personnel taking over the work, I was designated as special education director for this year, hired Dr. Tashiba Banks as a special education lead teacher over the summer, and when she came in over the summer, she and I worked together to be able to make all the corrections that had been neglected.”
Board members gave Banks a standing ovation for her work in correcting the student records.
The district could have faced stipulations including federal and state budget restrictions had it not complied with state orders, Holland said. Watson Chapel receives a majority of its funding for special education from Title VI-B funding, she added.
It was not immediately clear if the special education records were among those that were not kept accurately, leading to one of three standards violations that landed Watson Chapel in accreditation probation for the 2023-24 school year.
DISTRICT FINANCES
The ending balance for the Watson Chapel School District through the seventh of 26 financial periods was $387,559.10, after the district totaled $2,380,047.38 in expenses. The district received $1,889,991.58 in tax revenue for the period, on top of the beginning balance of $877,614.90.
PERSONNEL MOVES
The district approved new salary ranges for elementary and secondary principals. Elementary principals will now make $85,000 to $100,000 annually, and secondary principals will make $95,000 to $110,000 annually.
The district will retain Jevon Barnes as junior high interim assistant principal and Reginald Forte as interim Coleman Elementary principal for the rest of the school year. Coleman Principal Marcia Merritt tendered her retirement.
The district also hired Camry Gardner and Teryka Holloway as secretaries and accepted letters of resignation from high school secretary Nadiya Bowman and math teacher Jamie Gordon.