Arkansas Blog

No worries, the lottery will cover those tuition increases. It is after all free money.

Awesome! More tailgate parking!

If the Fayetteville school district has so much money that it can sell it's property for less than it's worth, I say we need to cut their state funding. Of course that will never happen.

It passed, 6-1. Bobbynu would not allow discussion on which remaining properties for development of a NU school. The official Select Committee recommended property on Morningside Dr but bobbynu didn't seem ready to discuss that. There are only two options remaining, Morningside and the developers option, way out on Deane Solomon Rd

They must ask the voters for a tax increase. bobbynu really fuked this one.

Just so you dont think this type of action is limited to the NW Corner. LRSD Board has sold schools welll below market value. Here are minutes from Special Board Meetings to do just that...

II. Offer to Purchase the Mitchell School Building
Dr. Mitchell asked for a report from Stuart Mackey from The Hathaway Group realtors. He addressed the board regarding a request from Dr. George Blevins and the Wright Avenue Neighborhood Association which was presented at the August board meeting. The Mitchell property, valued at $990,000, is listed for sale at $545,000. The Wright Avenue Neighborhood Association has proposed developing and converting the Mitchell School building for commercial and/or residential use.

Dr. Blevins and the WANA presented an offer in the amount of $200,000 for the board's consideration. Under the terms of the agreement, 180 days would be allowed for completion of their proposal and for securing adequate funding through grants, loans, or other financial options.

Ms. Fox asked Mr. Mackey about an offer denied by the board in December for $350,000, and questioned whether the $200,000 was considered a reasonable offer.

Mr. Kurrus asked that a counter offer to the WANA be extended restricting the group from assigning the sale to a third party. Dr. Mitchell expressed support for the efforts of the WANA, and stated it was a good compromise for the district and the Mitchell community.

Dr. Daugherty made a motion to approve and accept the offer as presented. Mr. Armstrong seconded the motion and it carried unanimously.

III. Discussion: Future Use of Rightsell School
Mr. Mackey reported to the board regarding the status of an offer on the Rightsell School building. Education Consortia, Inc. / Learning for Life Academy had submitted a proposal to lease the building with a three year option to purchase. The board considered the request at the August board meeting and requested that representatives of Education Consortia, Inc. be invited to respond to questions regarding the proposed use of the facility. Mr. Mackey reported that the Rightsell property was listed at $975,000 and valued at $1.8 million.

Dr. Watson reported that an application for the Learning for Life Academy charter school is pending approval before the Arkansas Department of Education.

Mr. Hurley Jones, consultant to the Learning for Life Academy, addressed the board. He stated that the Education Consortia, Inc. did not propose a charter school as competition for the LRSD, but as a challenging way to provide innovative educational opportunities for underserved students. Their proposal included serving students who hadn't been successful in the traditional school setting and families of the students who have experienced difficult social circumstances.

Mr. Jones indicated that the initial plan would be to recruit 150 students for the first year, targeting students with "merging abilities." They would strive to provide interventions to decrease criminal behavior and reduce the number of students referred to the correctional system.

R.J. Hampton, chief executive officer, stated that the proposed lease agreement would be with Education Consortia, Inc., with the Learning for Life charter school as one component of the program. The intent would be to go beyond the traditional school environment to provide support for parents and support for the community around the school to provide social services and other options that aren't currently available.

A second offer for purchase of the Rightsell facility was attached to the board's agenda. The 34th Street Baptist Church submitted an offer of $1.00 to purchase Rightsell.

No action was taken on either offer, and The Hathaway Group was directed to continue to seek a buyer for the property.

Who says $59 million is below market value?

There's only one buyer here, folks. It's the U of A. That buyer is also willing to buy the property and then give the city two years to build a new high school before taking possession of the property.

Fayetteville has three options:

1. Stay in the current high school and spend about $50 million to improve it.

2. Build a second high school and keep the current one, leaving the city with two high schools. This would cost about $100 million.

3. Sell the current high school for $59 million and build the new high school for $100 million, leaving Fayetteville with a difference of $41 million.

Which option seems best?

NWASooner, I'm not even agreeing with your accounting, but there should be more to consider than dollars. Economists call these external costs or externalities, and they too are very real costs. For starters, there is no money to count if the voters again turn down a school millage increase because we don't believe the School Board and Nu listen to the public or care about the public interest. They've been closing elementary schools inside the city and building bigger schools in the suburbs against the wishes of voters, and against the wishes of the City Council and Mayor (who won their elections).

The reason we want to keep our schools inside the City of Fayetteville is that we are a progressive community that respects the principles of responsible city planning and sustainability. We have since only hippies did, and we were a hippie town. Today, even Republikkklans admit that we have a problem with wasting energy and polluting too much (pollution is one of those externalities we all share the cost of equally), and counting carbon as a pollutant, all use of energy creates pollution.

With walkable city design we waste a lot less energy. Having neighborhood grade schools and a centrally located campus allows us to use less energy, and less money. Having the high school across the street from the UA not only allows students to participate in what they call concurrency, such as my daughter getting both high school and college credit for English taken at the UA, but many more opportunities for collaboration.

The UA is also the biggest employer in town, and many faculty members who live in nearby cities bring their kids to school here. If we had HOV lanes, they could use them. Also, our transit system is pretty much Razorback Transit, which serves FHS at it's current site, but not at the sprawl sites.

When it comes to sustainability, not building a new building at all is much better than building a green building. Not that the new school would be green, even.

When you consider all of the resources being wasted, it's hard to believe that it would actually cost less, even in simple dollar terms, for so many developers, contractors, suppliers/vendors, architects, engineers and realtors to profit from a new school than it would be to upgrade the existing resource.