Eureka Springs High School is ranked 11th best in the state according to a recent survey conducted by U.S. News and World Report.
Eureka Springs Schools superintendent Bryan Pruitt shared the news with the school board during its regular meeting on May 9.
“We were excited to report that to the board,” Pruitt said. “It’s a great recognition. To tell you the truth, out of those top 10, I think half of them are private schools.”
According to the U.S. News rankings, the top 10 was made up of Haas Hall Academy, Northwest Arkansas Classical Academy, Bentonville, LISA Academy North, Rogers New Tech, Greenbrier, Fayetteville, Bentonville West, Bismarck and Maumelle Charter.
“In the private schools over there, they’re academics,” Pruitt said. “Every one of their kids are going to be taking AP exams and things like that, where here in a public school, not all kids take AP courses. And then, of course, their graduation rates will be really high.”
The graduation rate at Eureka Springs, Pruitt said, is 95 percent.
“That’s good,” Pruitt said. “I’d like to see it at 100, but that’s almost impossible because there’s always one that’s going to have a bad day. They’ll be here for 12 years and then all of a sudden, they think, ‘I’m done.’ There’s just nothing we can do about that when it happens.”
The U.S. News and World Report survey used a methodology weighing various indicators including advanced course taking/exam passing, performance on state assessments and graduation rate, which are combined to give each high school an overall score between zero and 100 representing what percentile position a school is in out of the 17,843 ranked schools across the nation. That list is further broken down by state.
Eureka Springs High School principal David Gilmore first learned the news late last month and shared it with district staff in an email.
“We obviously did very well based on the data from last year,” Gilmore wrote. “Some of our highlights were college readiness which is determined by how many students are taking and passing AP courses. Some of the top schools had 100% of their students taking an AP exam which is not practical in my opinion. We actually had a higher percentage of students pass the exams than some of those schools.”
Gilmore said one area that cost ESHS points was test scores.
“Our test scores were strong, but it was an area that if we had just a few more of those bubble students brought up we would easily make the top ten,” he wrote. “All in all we did very well. I attribute that to the hard work our teachers and students do daily. Education has been a tough, or tougher than usual industry the past few years.
“This is proof that our strides are making a difference with our students and school daily.”
In other business, the board voted to adopt policies and procedures relative to children with disabilities, approve the Substitute Staff Placement Agreement with ESS Midwest for July 1, 2022 through June 30, 2025, and adopt several revised salary schedules — ranging from stipends to classified employees and miscellaneous duties — for the 2022-2023 school year.
“We raised the mountain biking team up and then we started an esports program and we’ll get a $750 stipend on that,” Pruitt said. “Our preschool director stipend was $1,000, we raised it up to $1,500. Then our summer school salary schedule was approved. That was $25 an hour to pay our employees that are going to work during summer school in the month of June.”
After meeting in executive session to discuss personnel matters, the board accepted resignations of Terri Cox and Jenny Cimuca, hired Angie Armer as a food service worker, and hired a number of employees for the 2022-2023 school year.
Kynza Capps was hired for special education; Taylor Dannenfelser as Pre-K lead teacher paraprofessional; Justin Saab and Crystal Hutchinson as paraprofessionals; Cheyenne Massey as agriculture teacher; and Arron Oliver as a social studies teacher.
The board’s next meeting is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Monday, June 13, at the school administration building.
