Back to School
Students return to classroom

By Robert Cox

RCox@cherryroad.com

Students across Carroll County returned to school Monday, making for what school administrators called an “exciting time.”

“It’s a new school year and time for a fresh start for everybody,” said Berryville superintendent Owen Powell. “Our students are in another grade level and a lot of them will change campuses because of that. We’ve got a whole new group of kindergarteners coming in and this is their first year of school. And then of course, we’ve got a new group of seniors coming in.

“It’s an exciting time. I know I’m excited about it and the teachers I’ve been in contact with, I think they’re really excited about it. We’re ready for a good school year.”

Eureka Springs superintendent Bryan Pruitt said he looks forward to starting “with a nice, clean slate,” while Green Forest superintendent Matt Summers said he’s expecting “the largest attendance we’ve ever had in the history of the district.”

Classes started Monday, but teachers actually started a bit earlier, with a full week of training, professional development and planning ahead of the new year.

There’s a lot to get ready. Students, parents and staff at all three Carroll County districts — Berryville, Eureka Springs and Green Forest — will be adjusting to several changes this year, ranging from new security measures to new bus routes and changes in school meal programs.

BERRYVILLE

At Berryville, Powell said the early start for teachers was jam-packed “with training, professional development and just getting ready for students.”

Most things, he said, will be familiar to returning students and parents, but there are a few changes this year, including a shift in the bell schedule, changes in the classroom schedules at the middle school and high school and a shift in the district’s meal policy. “On Mondays, one thing that will be different for middle school and high school is we’re going to have a late start,” Powell said. “We’re still having the schools open, but our teachers are going to — from 8 a.m. to, I think, the first 45 minutes — we’re going to have some collaboration time.”

Powell explained that while that was going on, Lillian Dilday gets help finding her classroom the first day of school from Berryville school staff member Allison Tennant. students would have “specific things they’ll be doing” while the teachers are meeting.

In addition, the Berryville district will be returning to business as usual in regard to in-school meals.

For the past two school years, all students were able to eat for free thanks to subsidized funding related to the COVID-19 pandemic. This year, that funding is no longer available, meaning school districts will once again have to charge for meals and qualifying parents will have to fill out forms to take part in free and reduced lunch programs.

Some school districts have been able to chip in to cover the remainder of the reduced meal program, meaning all students would either eat free or pay full price, but Berryville is not one of them — at least not yet.

“That’s something that we haven’t done,” Powell said.

In July, the Berryville School District board voted to raise meal prices by 25 cents “pretty much across the board,” Powell said, adding that the increase was based off a recommendation from the Arkansas Department of Education.

“All of our meal prices, breakfast and lunch,” Powell said after that meeting. “That’s something that we really don’t like to do, but just with the prices and cost of everything going up like they are, it’s just something we have to do.”

Powell called the state’s recommendation to raise prices “kind of a double whammy” for parents in light of the previous years of not having to pay.

“Nobody had to pay for two years and now they have to start paying for it and we have to raise them, too,” Powell said last month, adding that, on the plus side, there have been no changes to qualifications for the free and reduced lunch programs. He encouraged parents to either drop by the school or visit the district’s website to fill out the form to see if they qualify.

Powell said enrollment numbers for the new school year are a little hard to predict.

“Everything we have to go off of is last year’s numbers,” Powell said. “It’s always kind of a guessing game with kindergartners. You know how many seniors that you lost and the number of grade levels coming up, but with kindergartners, parents don’t bring them in and enroll them until that first day of school.”

Powell said that the final enrollment for the 2021-2022 school year stood at 1,752 students and that he expects between 1,750 and 1,800 students this year.

“If you throw in faculty with that — we’ve got about 260, 270 employees — we’ve got over 2,000 people on our campus.”

EUREKA SPRINGS

At Eureka Springs, like many districts, increased campus security is at the top of the list when it comes to changes for the new school year.

“School safety is one of the things that we’re really concerned about,” Pruitt said, adding that security was one of the things his staff focused on during their early start. “We talked about security situations, about lockdowns and keeping doors locked and we have people checking doors. If it’s not locked then they report that to the principal so we can keep an eye on those things.”

Pruitt said that during the summer, the district sent its school resource officer and two of its principals to a school safety seminar in Little Rock and will be looking to them for any additional recommendations or changes to procedure.

“We’re trying to keep our buildings safe,” Pruitt said. “It’s kind of tough, because you almost feel like the school is unwelcoming anymore because we’re so locked down, but we have to do that. We can’t afford not to be locked down, and it’s sad.”

Pruitt said the state also recommends having a school resource officer on every campus. The Eureka Springs district has three campuses but only one SRO.

“That’s not available for us,” Pruitt said. “For one, there’s not enough policemen you can hire to do that, and number 2, we don’t have the money.”

Pruitt explained that the SRO’s salary is split between the district and the local police department, with the district on the hook for 80 percent.

“That’s quite a bit of money to hire three of them,” Pruitt said. “That being said, we have one good one. He’s constantly moving around from campus to campus, all three buildings.”

As for school lunches, some parents in the Eureka Springs district could be getting a break.

During its July board meeting, the Eureka Springs district board voted to raise meal prices at the school by approximately 15 cents based on a recommendation from the state education department, and encouraged all parents to apply for the state’s free and reduced meal programs. On Aug. 8, they voted to use district funds to make up the difference for those families who qualify for the reduced meal program, meaning all students in the district will either eat free or pay full price.

“Our board always does it,” Pruitt said. “Any of our kids that come back and they qualify as reduced, we’re going to make up the difference. Here at Eureka Springs, our kids are either free or they’re pay. We’re going to make up the difference.

“We do that for our students.”

One exciting change for district students and faculty, Pruitt said, will be starting school in the absence of any elevated COVID-19 protocols. Like schools across the nation, for the past two years, the Eureka Springs district has had to adjust on the fly to changes in pandemic protocols, in addition to localized outbreaks that left many students and teachers in quarantine.

Pruitt said his district did a good job responding to the pandemic, and is continuing to be proactive, even offering vaccine clinics for students and staff.

“That’s where we’re at right now,” Pruitt said. “Hopefully — knock on wood — we’re going to be able to come in here and start school and continue to be ok.”

Green Forest fifth-grader Sophia Mayfield (right) stops to have her picture taken with Green Forest police officer Jake Bradley and Green Forest Elementary counselor Becky Tharp (center) on Monday, the first day of school for students in Carroll County. Submitted photo 

GREEN FOREST

School security also topped the list of concerns for the new school year at Green Forest, where the district recently installed new locks on all campus buildings.

Summers said all exterior doors on the district’s campus will now be locked, requiring access cards for entry.

“From a security and safety standpoint, we installed card readers on all of our campuses so that all of our doors are locked all of the time,” Summers said. “All of the teachers can, obviously, access that, but that funnels everyone to the central office and they have to be buzzed in.”

The board approved the purchase of the card reader system in October with an initial cost of approximately $79,910, paid for by funds the district received under the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund. The computer- controlled system covers all exterior doors on every campus and can be configured to restrict to staff and first responders in case of emergency, or to allow access to certain buildings, like the gymnasium, without distributing keys.

Summers called the change a “nice piece to our security and safety package.”

“If a door is left open, we’ll get a notification within a minute,” Summers said. “Before, on the entirety of our school, if a door was left open or unlocked, we didn’t know about it until they came by and checked the doors at night or even the next day.”

Summers added there was an additional upside to the new locks.

“I won’t have a pocket full of keys,” he said. “I’ll just have one card.”

Possibly the biggest change at Green Forest will be the implementation of new bus routes, a change made necessary, Summers said, by an increase in enrollment coupled with a shortage of qualified bus drivers and an increase in fuel prices.

“In the middle of a bus driver shortage with diesel at $5 a gallon, this freed us up a little,” Summers said.

The new plan — which mainly involves routes in the city limits — will have five student pickup points in Green Forest, one on the north side of U.S. 62 and four on the south side. Outside city limits, drivers will not take buses down any private drives or four-digit county roads.

Parents were informed of the changes, which were approved in April, earlier this year and again before the beginning of the school year.

“We’re just getting bigger and bigger and bigger and we’ve just got to make some changes as they come,” said Summers, speaking after the board’s April decision to approve the changes. “That’s been brought to me by the drivers. We’ve talked about different things over the years and we just can’t continue to do things the way we did eight, 10 years ago because of our growth and where we’re at now.”

That growth is substantial. Last year, Summers said the district’s enrollment and budget were the largest ever. Last week, he said he expects another year of record enrollment.

“I feel like we’ll have the largest attendance we’ve ever had in the history of the district,” Summers said. “I think there are several indicators to that. When you’re graduating 91 students and then enrolling well over 100 in kindergarten, there’s growth. That’s just in the city and people that are already here. I feel like with the second apartment complex opening, that will bring us several students as well. We feel like we’re going to be at or above that [1,400-student] mark again, which would be the largest we’ve ever had.”

Summers said the influx of new students could cause some “hot grades” at the beginning of the year, but nothing his staff couldn’t handle.

“We are definitely meeting standards and we can handle that,” Summers said. “It’s just that growth causes wear and tear. Growth is a problem, but it’s a good problem.

“We just have to make good decisions and make changes as we need to adapt.”

As for in-school meals, the Green Forest district will return to a pre-pandemic plan for lunch prices, including the free and reduced programs.

“What our district has done for many years, if they complete the free and reduced package, anyone who qualifies for reduced lunch price, we cover that in full, just like a,” Summers said.

The Green Forest board approved that move in May, before setting the prices for the 2022-2023 school year.

“We’re going back to the way it was before,” Summers said after that meeting in May. “Our district has always been ‘free and free,’ not ‘free and reduced.’ ”