Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Board Discusses Reassessment

It was a tense meeting for the Prescott School Board Tuesday, Sept. 21.

Along with conducting business for the district, the board members were waiting anxiously for the outcome of the millage vote, as the annual school elections were underway.

The biggest topic of the meeting concerned the reassessment of property taxes in Nevada County. The district's take dropped about 20 percent from last year to this year, causing concern for the board.

Superintendent Ron Wright told the board he has met with Nevada County Judge James Roy Brown as well as Pam Box, the Nevada County Assessor.

Wright was informed the county has hired a firm to assess each and every parcel of land in the county. This, he said, will take about two years and cost some $400,000.

However, those entities receiving funds from property taxes, he said, will also be responsible for picking up the tab. The three school districts in the county are the largest recipients of the tax money and will have to foot about 75 percent of the bill.

Once the property in the county has been reassessed, a formula will be used to determine exactly how much all involved will owe.

But, Wright told the board, it will be about 2004 before the district sees any money from the new assessments.

Overall, he said, all three districts are down in the amount of millage tax received. This is partially because the county has lost population.

Prescott, though, has not and the size of loss is a puzzle for the board. Wright said the city did lose two major businesses, Piggly Wiggly and the Ford dealership, and these were major contributors in taxes paid.

Still, Wright plans on contacting Box again to get more specific answers and get them in writing.

In other business, Wright said the student count is holding its own. But, he added, if the kindergarten classes continue to be in the 70s, and the district keeps having graduating classes or 80 or 90, the student population will decrease unless there is growth in the area.

The board was thanked by a representative of Prescott Elementary School for getting to go to Little Rock recently for an award.

The Arkansas Department of Education recognized district with improvements in standardized test scores, with Prescott being one of the ones so noted.

The teachers in the district have worked hard to bring the scores up, beginning with the desegregation of information on the SAT-9 tests. The teachers examined the trends, seeing where the weak areas were and where the district was strongest.

Prescott is ahead of many schools in preparation for the Smart Start program, which must be implemented in the next year or so.

Howard Austin, PES principal, said it was important for all grades in k-4 to be recognized at the ADE meeting, so representatives from all grade levels went.

Prescott, he said, was the only district to have teachers on hand for the award presentation, as most other districts were represented by their superintendents.

"It felt good for us as a district," Austin said. "It means we're doing something right. We'll continue working, because this didn't happen overnight."

He said PES has the curriculum in place for what children should learn in grades K-4 from a minimum standards list developed.

Judy Barfield informed the board on the success of the elementary audio enhancement program.

She said a Soundfield amplifier system has been used at PES to help with the learning environment in classrooms.

The system consists of an amplifier, microphone the teacher wears, and speakers strategically placed in the room. This allows the teacher to speak in a normal tone of voice, yet be heard equally well in all parts of the room.

Part of the problem has been, Barfield said, the teachers have had to try and talk over general classroom noise, heating and air conditioning units going on and off and noises from the hallway and street.

The average noise level in a classroom, she said, is 55-60 decibels, while normal conversational speech is 40-60 decibels.

The problem, she continued, is teachers couldn't speak at the necessary level for an entire day, and when they did speak as loudly as needed, their speech was distorted somewhat.

With this system, Barfield said, studies show students can hear better, and are better able to get the instructions given by the teacher. An added benefit is the classroom discipline improves as well.

At this time the district has 14 Soundfield systems in place. Barfield said several areas of funding have been found to pay for them, and intentions are to have one in every classroom eventually.

The board also discussed the sick leave bank, which began in 1997 with the development of a policy for certified staff members to donate one day of sick leave per year to a pool for times of emergencies.

The idea is to keep the bank at a minimum of 20 days, and keep the certified people aware of it on an annual basis.

This, though, hasn't been done, Wright said, and the window of donating a day needs to be extended to Oct. 1 for those interested. The board agreed and approved this.

Wright said the non-certified personnel are also interested in a similar bank, which will be examined for the future.

The board accepted the resignation of Roger Sharp as PMS special education teacher and hired Linda Stewart in his place.

Rachel Wright was hired to teach English as a second language and a teacher's aide for PES.