The following story was printed on January 7, 2023
STAFF REPORT
The Harmony Grove School District Board will hold its regularly scheduled meeting on January 12, 2023 and one of the items on the agenda is a discussion of the closure of Sparkman K-6 School.
At a November 2022 report Mr. Larry Knight, Sparkman Principal K-6 began by saying Sparkman currently has 27 students enrolled on the campus. Six certified staff members, two certified staff work one period a day on the Sparkman campus and four classified on campus. They have one set of combined classes this year K-2 graders due to the fact they only have one Kindergarten student and one First grade student, three Second grade students.
In July 2022, the state Board of Education voted to support the Harmony Grove School District's decision to close Sparkman High School due to declining enrollment.
Seventh through 12th grade Sparkman students now attend Harmony Grove High School, about 25 miles away. The Sparkman campus, which includes an elementary school and a high school, is part of the Harmony Grove School District in Ouachita County, the result of a 2005 voluntary annexation. Sparkman residents have fought efforts by the Harmony Grove School Board to transfer Sparkman students to Harmony Grove at least twice since 2020.
During the hearing, Harmony Grove School District argued in favor of closing the high school. Superintendent Albert Snow and Harmony Grove High School Principal Jeff Mock said Sparkman's enrollment has declined in recent years.
Only 40 students attended Sparkman High School in the 2021-2022 academic year.
In the district's opening remarks, Snow said that when he learned there were no kindergartners enrolled at Sparkman for the upcoming school year, he immediately understood this would be a large problem not just for this year, but for the next 13 years.
He said that at the end of the school year, Sparkman's campus had 97 students enrolled in grades kindergarten through 12th. Since then, some of the 40 students in seventh through 12th grades have already volunteered to transfer to Harmony Grove High School and other districts, he said.
Snow argued closing Sparkman High School will help the district financially and academically.
The cost of operating the Sparkman campus is $1,127,426.52 annually, Snow and Harmony Grove School Board President Matthew Nutt wrote in the district's petition to close the school. The cost of operations per pupil at Sparkman is $11,622.95, a number "well over" the state's per pupil allotment, the petition said.
Snow also said that no one will lose a job due to Sparkman High School's closure.
The Harmony Grove school board voted 5-2 for school closure on April 26.
Despite this, Sparkman residents filed in opposition to the school district's petition and begged the state Board of Education to allow Sparkman High School to remain open.
"Every rural school district in Arkansas faces challenges," the opposition statement said. "Other districts implement creative solutions to provide a quality education to their students instead of focusing their efforts on shutting the school down."
At the hearing, attorney Jess Askew III said that Harmony Grove wishes to close the Sparkman School campus entirely, and closing the high school would be a first step on this path.
The Harmony Grove School District on May 25 sent a letter to surrounding districts stating that it plans to close Sparkman School in approximately one year.
"This is not closing seven to 12," Askew said. "This is closing Sparkman School."
In March 2020, the state board voted against closing Sparkman, a decision which the school community saw as giving Harmony Grove School District and Sparkman a chance to bring creative solutions to the issues facing an isolated school.
Olivia Alexander of the
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette contributed to this story)