Green Forest board extends Summers’ contract

The Green Forest School Board has continued to give superintendent Matt Summers its stamp of approval.

At its monthly regular meeting held Thursday, Jan. 18, the school board voted 6-0 to extend Summer’s contract by one year, to June 30, 2027.

“I had a very thorough and very good evaluation that the board took very seriously,” Summers said. “The board created some goals of their own and then voted to extend my contract another year. So that will bring me to June 2027.”

Summers said that during the executive session of the meeting, when his contract was discussed, the board asked questions and offered feedback.

“I had some really good conversations with the board,” Summers said. “There’s always that feeling about being evaluated. As long as it’s not a devaluation, I think it’s something good. The analogy that I use with the board is that if I take the time to go to the doctor for a checkup, I don’t want to hear the doctor come out and say, ‘ah, you’re alright.’ I want to hear this was up, this was down, this was good or here’s something to work on and we will see you in six weeks and see where we are at.”

During the evaluation the board pointed out the positives of the district’s performance under Summers’ leadership, but also shared ideas of areas that could be stronger, the superintendent said.

“They were positive in some areas and some areas they pointed out that they’d like to see further growth and improvement,” Summers said. “To me, that’s completely fair and a completely appropriate situation. The only way to get better is to continue to grow and continue to reach new heights for the district is to have that check-up and that’s what it was.”

Superintendents in Arkansas can have a maximum three-year contract.

“I have no plans of being anywhere else,” Summers said. “Again, the process was a good thing. Long, but very good and very thorough. Again, that’s how you grow.”

Summers is in his 12th year leading the district.

“It doesn’t seem like it’s been that long, but time flies when you’re having fun,” he said.

OTHER BOARD ACTION Also at the meeting, the board heard the district’s discipline report for the first semester, again showing improvements, Summers said.

“The discipline report must be brought to the board and to the public annually and we tend to do it twice a year at the end of each semester,” he said. “We talk about how many discipline cases we had, but we are solely focused on how many bullying cases and what the ramifications were.”

Green Forest’s number of discipline cases was again down, the board was told.

“Just like in the first nine weeks we are down about 10 to 11 percent from where we were this time last year. Again, I attribute that to the four-day calendar. We’re not on campus one day of the week, a lot of different things, but those are positive numbers.”

The board also approved a purchase of “a little over $11,000” to renew the district’s Microsoft 365 license and approved the transfer of two students out of the district and one student into the district.

Other approvals were the resignation of Megan Walker at the end of the current school year and the hiring of Caitlin Branaman as a long-term substitute teacher.

FUNDING REQUEST NEARS With the Feb. 1 deadline for districts to submit request for facility funding for the state nearing, the board recently received an update from the architect putting together initial plans for new buildings for grades 7 through 12.

Josh Siebert, a Green Forest native and an architect with Modus Studio in Fayetteville, presented to the board at a special meeting on Thursday, Jan. 11, generic drawings of two buildings that could be built on existing property across the street from the current high school, Summers said.

“The board got a look at [Siebert’s] conceptual ideas, all in time for the Feb. 1 submission for state funding,” the superintendent said. “There wasn’t detailed drawings but boxes to show how big buildings would be and how it would look on the piece of property we have.”

Siebert’s plan is for a new building for grades 7 and 8 and another for 9-12, Summers said.

“We talked about other properties we have or acquiring others if they become available,” he said.

The district should learn sometime in November if they are approved for any funds, and in May 2025 the amount of whatever is approved.

“If a millage is needed it would be in the fall of 2025,” Summers said.

In the meantime, Summers said the district will have an assessment to see if new facilities are needed.

“Part of this process is that the state facilities people will come look at your campus and say, ‘yes, that’s exactly what you need, this old one needs to go, this structure needs to be remodeled,’ ” he said. “It’s not really a new building project but really a facilities assessment. Because, if you’ve got the square footage that’s adequate, they’re not going to fund new square footage.”