School Daze

Our local public schools will soon be filled with the flower of our youth and with some very dedicated teachers who have the hardest jobs in the world. Some schools will be better than others, even with all the educational reforms and increased state funding required by the Arkansas Supreme Court and enacted by the Arkansas Legislature since 2003.

West Fork High School is facing sanctions by the Arkansas Department of Education later this year because of its past probationary status and failing to comply with all accreditation standards in consecutive years. Yesterday Decatur High School, Gravette High School, Prairie Grove High School, and West Fork High School unsuccessfully appealed the probationary classification assigned to their schools. The schools placed on probation employed several noncertified teachers or did not offer their students the 38 minimum required courses that every high school must teach to be accredited.

“For a school district, what goes in the newspapers, our community looks at that,” Gravette Superintendent Curtis Spann told the state Education Board when asking that his school not be placed on probation. “When you put us on probation, you are telling our community that we aren’t quite good enough. Obviously we made a mistake, but we are trying hard up there to do it right.”

Communities should look at that and should not be pleased that these schools short-changed their students by offering a substandard education. Superintendents of small school districts have fought hard against the improved education standards for the 21st century. Voters and taxpayers need to remind their local school boards that a student's adequate education is more important than a superintendent's big salary, costly athletic programs, and hiring relatives without appropriate qualifications.