By Rick Harvey
RHarvey@CarrollCoNews.com
The Eureka Springs School Board made it a Carroll County trifecta at its regular meeting, Monday, Feb. 13.
The board approved a one-year extension to Superintendent Bryan Pruitt’s contract, which now will expire on June 30, 2026. The county’s other school boards had recently voted to extend the contracts of Berryville’s Owen Powell and Green Forest’s Matt Summers.
“Owen, Matt and I are all on three-year contracts, and it’s humbling for me [to get the extension] because it’s such a pleasure to serve this district,” said Pruitt, who is in his eighth year leading the district. “I’m very thankful and grateful for our board to have faith in me and in our leadership and how things are going.
“It’s a pleasure to be here where we have great parents that send their great kids up here, and we have an outstanding staff and resources available. With a combination of all of those things, we have outstanding results. I’m just humbled to have the opportunity to be the superintendent.”
SECURITY SYSTEM APPROVED
The board also approved a bid of $250,000 for an expansive security and door monitoring system for all three schools in the district that will regulate who and when someone enters one of 66 doors in the buildings.
“It’s a security issue and we want it for the safety of our students and staff,” Pruitt said.
The school district’s portion of the cost will be approximately $136,000 after receiving $114,300 in state funds.
“Last year Gov. [Asa] Hutchinson appropriated $15 million for school security and safety,” Pruitt said. “Finally, about a week and a half ago, we got our allotment. I was hoping it would be more.”
At Monday’s meeting the board approved using district funds for the remainder of the cost of the system, which will include staff using card keys or fobs to access school buildings, many doors to be monitored by cameras and alarms to sound when doors are left open, Pruitt said.
“This will give us electronic access to our buildings and will include an alarm system,” he said. “Whenever one of our 66 doors on campus are left open it will notify us within seconds that we have a door left open or propped open.
“We also will have about eight different doors that will have a camera so secretaries will be able to look at the camera, identify who it is and buzz somebody into a building.”
That new method will solve a challenge that currently exists at the high school, Pruitt said.
“One of the biggest issues we have right now is at our high school we have our agri kids and our skills kids in different buildings down behind the high school,” he said. “So, when they get out of class, the teacher has to walk up and unlock the building to let them back into the main building.
“Now that it will be electronic, they’ll be able to push a button, the camera will kick on and then they will be buzzed into the building.”
The system will also allow the schools to be locked down, if necessary, the superintendent said.
“Say at 9 p.m. at night we don’t want anybody else in the building if they’re not already in there, we can lock it down and nobody can get in,” he said. “Or if somebody quits and they don’t turn in their fob, we can within seconds turn it off.”
Pruitt said he hopes the new security system is in place by the start of the 2023-2024 school year this fall.
EYE ON EDUCATION BILLS
Ongoing work by the Arkansas Legislature in Little Rock has drawn Pruitt’s daily attention, the superintendent said.
“They’ve introduced 66 education bills in the first five weeks,” Pruitt said. “So, we’re really being proactive on keeping an eye on those things and how we could be affected.”
Two items in particular have caught Pruitt’s attention, and have him a bit concerned.
The first is part of Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ new education reform plan that will include all teachers’ salaries starting at $50,000. With Eureka Springs being one of very few districts in the state that is solely funded by local taxation and get no per-student state funding, that figure is alarming, Pruitt said.
“We’re all in favor for teachers to get raises, but if they raise that beginning salary to $50,000, here in Eureka Springs it’s very concerning for us because we operate on local taxation. Our tax is set. I’m sure there will be some compromise [with the proposed plan], but if they start out at the figure, we’re really going to have to watch what’s going on.
“Financially we have to be careful and pay attention to what’s going on.”
Pruitt said only seven districts in the state rely only on local taxation.
“We’re such a small minority, we don’t get much attention,” he said. “There is only seven of us in the state so they don’t care about us.”
Meanwhile, Pruitt is also against Senate Bill 206, sponsored by Sen. Clint Penzo, who represents parts of Washington County. Penzo’s bill would limit an elected term of a school board member to two years, with a maximum of eight years, and require the person to declare a political affiliation.
“[Penzo] has come in and he wants to restructure the school board to make them two-year terms and cap it at eight years total,” Pruitt said. “My stand is, we have so many different buckets of acronyms and the way we run business, it takes two years for board members to really kind of figure out what’s going on.
“They also want to require them to designate their party, if you’re a ‘D’ or an ‘R.’ Well, for example, one of our board members owns a business here in town and I’m concerned about that because that’s going to cost them money when they have to designate that.
“They’re a board member. It’s community service that’s non-paid. [This bill] is going to cause us hardship in local schools.”