1st year at GF leaves Gilmore excited about future

Wrapping up his first year as superintendent of the Green Forest School District, the excitement in David Gilmore’s voice was still evident.

In fact, he’s already looking forward to year two.

“I’ve been looking forward to trying to fit into a superintendent role for a long time now, and I’m very pleased that I am able to fit into this role,” Gilmore said on the last day of school, Friday, May 23. “I am very excited to be able to come back next year and have a future at Green Forest and try to accomplish some of the goals that the district has. Extremely excited.”

Gilmore, who was hired to replace longtime superintendent Matt Summers after spending several years as principal of Eureka Springs High School, said his first year in the Green Forest district did have a learning curve at times.

“It’s definitely been a lot of learning experiences,” he said. “Before, I was set to manage one building. I had one group of teachers and staff I was responsible for, and one group of students. Now, I’ve had to take that on at the district level. So whenever a principal has things that they need help with, now I’m doing that with four buildings instead of one building.

“So, it’s been a lot of learning all the ins and outs of school school finance. Honestly, the way we do things now post-LEARNS Act is different budget-wise than superintendents have done over the years. We always try to run schools efficiently as possible and spend taxpayer money as efficiently as possible, but nowadays you really have to do so since the salaries have increased. That’s something we’re looking at, and I know a lot of superintendents across the state are looking at ways to run their schools more efficiently, really looking at staffing numbers and what we purchase.

“We really have to prioritize our goals and make sure we’re putting the right money and the right goals for our future here.”

Gilmore said he’s also had great support from the staff, and is excited about where the district is headed academically.

“I feel like we have a very strong group of employees here,” he said. “Our certified and classified staff have done an amazing job. I can see it on their faces now that they’ve worked extremely hard this year and they’re ready to recharge for the summer. But, just looking back at everything throughout the year, I’ve just seen all the amazing work they put into our kids and how instrumental they’ve been in growing those kids.

“We saw a lot of growth in our … test scores and just students over the year, how well they’re doing in classes, and just all the growth that they’ve been making. So, I know our teachers and staff have worked extremely hard to make that happen. I’ve been very pleased that we have new administrators, some of them are first time like Cody Curtis for example, first-time principal this year. We were talking the other day and he said: ‘Yeah, we made it through our first year in our new roles, and everything’s good.’ We’re both very happy about being in these roles, and I think everybody’s done an amazing job overall. So it’s been a great year, in my opinion.”

With one year under his belt, Gilmore said a lot of things will be a little smoother when the 2025-2026 school year gets underway in

“It will be a whole lot easier of a way to start the year, absolutely,” he said. “A lot deeper understanding of the budgeting and things like that. And sometimes school budgeting, a lot of it, is kind of set the year before by how many employees you hire, things that you purchased then. Like we purchased a bus last year that we just got paid for this year. So, a lot those things, it’s hard to really anticipate a lot of those things as you’re coming into it, but my bookkeeper and I were both in our first year here and we both have a much deeper understanding of how things work and it should be a whole lot easier year next year just due to more experience on our part.”

TESTING IMPROVEMENTS Schools in Green Forest recently received letter grades sent out by the state as the result of state-mandated testing that was done in the 2024-2025 school year.

“Our high school had a D before and they moved up to a C rating, so we definitely made some progress there,” Gilmore said. “Our elementary maintained a B rating and the intermediate and middle school had a C rating.

“Our course, it’s our goal to have all A’s and B’s across the district, so we’re working toward

Students in the district recently completed the second year of the LEARNS Act-mandated testing.

“I feel like our students did very, very well this year, and our teachers did a really good job of teaching the standards that they needed to and up to the highest levels they possibly can,” Gilmore said. “I feel like there were a lot of people working behind the scenes with interventions on students trying to get those students that might be a little bit behind moving up, but you know overall I’m pleased with the academics of the district. Our teachers are moving in the right direction, and have been for quite some time.

“If you look at the demographics of Green Forest, I found out the other day, we’re actually the No. 1 highest percentage of as far as public schools go across the state. … We have very high poverty levels here, which sometimes you’ll see schools that don’t perform as well based on that, but we’re performing very well in Green Forest and that’s attributed to all the work that our teachers and staff put in together.”

Again, Gilmore credits the staff for the strides the campuses are making to improve test scores.

“I have a one-unit philosophy where it doesn’t matter if you’re the bus driver coming to pick those kids up, or you’re that custodian cleaning the building, or you are the cafeteria workers that are feeding them, or the teachers that are teaching them or principals or whatever, it takes all of us working together as one unit to make this happen,” he said. “I feel like that vision is being implemented across the district very well.”

NEW ELL SUMMER PROGRAM

Students in grades 5-8 who need extra work in ELL will have an opportunity this summer as the Green Forest school board recently approved ELL Summer School, Gilmore said.

“It’s something we’ve not done in the past, and we have some teachers that are really going to hone in on our English Language Learners, and any learners basically that are maybe behind, we’re going to kind of catch those kids about fifth grade to eighth grade, somewhere in that ballpark, and try to work with some of those students that that may have missed a few things in elementary, or came to us later on, or just struggling in general with any reading or literacy skills,” he said. “We’re going to try to work with those kids this summer in July for three weeks and try and get them back on track before school starts.”