Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Upcoming session may have affects on schools

During the Gurdon School Boards meeting on Nov. 21, Supt. Bobby Smithson brought board members up to date on potential legislation which could affect the Gurdon School District should it become law following the upcoming session of the Arkansas General Assembly.

Smithson said he became aware of the potential bills after attending the Arkansas School Boards Association regional meeting in Malvern recently with five members of the Gurdon School Board.

At the meeting, Dan Farley, executive director of ASBA, said that a bill which would form county-wide administrative units for all school districts will be re-introduced. This bill gained the approval of the Senate education committee in 2005 but did not pass in the House.

Theres going to be strong support up there, folks, Smithson said. In my judgement, this would be a preliminary step toward dounty school systems.

Smithson said the biggest problem he sees with the bill is that it would cause local districts to lose control of their schools. He said that if a county wide system were put into place in Clark County, Gurdon would likely see no more than two seats on the school board.

Although Smithson thinks the county-wide administrative units could work in small counties, he sees a problem in counties that are much more heavily populated with multiple schools.

They do that at first, and the next thing youve got one school district, he said.