The Watson Chapel School Board got some good news and bad news at its meeting this week.
The good news was that the state is going to send more money their way to help with the cost of building a new high school.
If you’ll recall, the district was successful at getting a millage passed, but then the trouble started. As you also recall — or if you don’t, your pocketbook likely does — the price of everything went nuts, particularly building materials. Rather suddenly, the amount of money the district was expecting to receive from its new millage wasn’t nearly enough to pay for the planned construction.
It’s not as if they could go back to the voters and ask for a few more mills. So that left the board with hat in hand hoping the state would help out with the shortfall. In the end, the state did kick in an extra $89 per square foot, even though the district was seeking $75 to $100 more than that.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
But the district has taken what it is getting and has patched together the funding needed, and the project is progressing.
The bad news came later during the meeting. One of the reasons the district sought the millage and is planning a building program is the loss of students. It is hoped that with the shiny new digs, enrollment will stabilize and even increase. The news on Monday night showed what the district is up against in the way of coming and going students. There are currently 161 seniors. But in kindergarten there is only about half that number. And for next year, while 38 students have indicated they plan on transferring into the district, 97 have said they are leaving.
That’s one of the problems that Dollarway and Pine Bluff districts had, which is a reason they were merged. Because state dollars follow the student, every student lost is thousands of dollars in lost revenue from the state. Those numbers can quickly add up and leave a district looking at fixed expenses and a shrinking bottom line for covering those costs.
Watson Chapel’s new high school will open in fall 2025, and the students who were going to school in the junior high will move to the high school. Perhaps that will do the trick. Pine Bluff is looking at its own millage increase request and new facilities. It is all in all a gamble. The districts need new facilities, but Pine Bluff’s population has been dropping faster than any other such area in the country. Hitting such moving targets – like the rising price of steel and concrete – is close to impossible. But in a very real way, the future of these districts depends on keeping students and the revenue that comes with them at home.