GF board gives OK on larger C4 building

A larger facility for the Connect Four program is closer to becoming reality.

At a special called meeting on Wednesday, Sept. 25, the Green Forest School Board voted 4-3 to approve spending approximately $233,000 for its one-third share to purchase a building next door to the current C4 building on South Main Street in Berryville.

The 3,540 square-foot building, once home to the Carroll County Chrysler dealership, sits on two acres and was recently put up for sale for $700,000.

“We know we can’t build a new building for that,” Green Forest Superintendent David Gilmore previously said.

School boards in Eureka Springs and Berryville had previously approved their shares of the cost of the purchase.

At the special meeting on Sept. 25, the board went into executive session to discuss the issue, the superintendent said. While all of the board members are in support of the C4 program, making sure district finances are allocated properly is of equal importance, he said.

“That’s an area we can go into executive session, the debate about the purchase of a property,” Gilmore said. “Everyone on the board is all about the Connect Four program and the ability to expand it. It’s just that different schools in the area have different budgets based on their assessments and level of millage. We’re a little bit tighter sometimes over here on the budget, so we’ve just really got to watch those things and make sure we’re putting it where everyone wants to.

“When it comes down to it, a school board, it’s their school and their money for the community and they want to make sure they feel comfortable to allocate that money to the area that they want to to make sure everyone has proper coverage of the programs and what they do.”

Despite the fact that the boards of all three districts have now OK’d the purchase, which was required for the transaction to move forward, there are still steps that have to take place before the acquisition is complete, Gilmore said.

“There are still some things that have to happen,” he said. “There has to be a survey done, an appraisal done, things like that.”

Programs such as HVAC, welding and EMT training could be expanded if the building is purchased. Green Forest currently has 34 students in the C4 program, which has just under 100 students from the three districts combined.

“It’s fantastic for the kids,” Gilmore said previously of C4. “My son went through it and I know that a lot of students go through it and they’re doing very well for themselves for the most part. I think there’s like an 84 percent placement rate for kids to come out of that program, and either go into higher learning and get more certifications and more education, or they go right into a really lucrative job in the area. So, it helps. It helps the community by having those kids trained and getting them into jobs that’ll help out the community in the trades. It also helps that student, obviously, with a lifelong career.”

BUDGET APPROVED

Also during the Sept. 25 special meeting, the board approved the 2024-2025 budget, the first for the district since Gilmore took over for longtime superintendent Matt Summers.

“With our bookkeeper and I both brand-new, we had others that knew look it over that had experience there,” Gilmore said. “Also, there is a company in Arkansas that assists schools with budgeting, things like that, called Arkansas Public School Resource Center, and we had them check it over to make sure things were good. So, I felt really good about the budget and it was approved.”

Gilmore said it will be important for the district to stay on top of its finances, especially considering higher expenditures.

“We’re just going to make sure we’re watching everything real closely,” he said. “With the economy, things cost a lot more for us to purchase, obviously. With the LEARNS Act, our salaries have gone up. Areas that we might have had extra money in the past, we’re a little tighter on and I think that’s across the board in the state.

“We obviously want to be very conscientious of taxpayer dollars and to make sure it’s going absolutely where it needs to go to get the most bang for the buck for our kids. We’re always trying to be competitive with salaries, and we’re just making sure that we’re keeping an eye on things.”

Overall, the district’s financial status is currently good, Gilmore said.

“We are solid financially,” he said. “We have money that Dr. Summers and the board in the past have done a good job of managing. So, we just want to make sure we keep going in the right direction. Overall, things are a little bit tighter with the budget, and we just want to make sure we’re doing what we need to do to stay afloat financially.”