Rogers School Board to make millage rollback official
Posted on Wednesday, November 19, 2008
ROGERS — The Rogers School Board will meet within the next few weeks to make a millage rollback official, treasurer Kathy Hanlon said at the board’s regular meeting Tuesday. Although the Quorum Court has not yet provided the official numbers, she believes a rollback of two-tenths or three-tenths of 1 mill will be required.
The rollback, required by Amendments 74 and 59, will be based on the increase in the assessed value of property in the county, Hanlon explained after the meeting. The Quorum Court is still dealing with the appeals of property owners who are protesting increased valuations, so the exact figures are not yet available. A special meeting may be required so the board can pass the new millage by the December deadline.
Hanlon reported that the district did not need a cashflow loan that had been discussed at the October meeting. County tax funds were received “ in the nick of time, ” she said.
In other business, the board approved a recommendation from the Curriculum Committee to change several courses to correspond with the district’s change in grade configurations. This year, the district’s two high schools have added ninth-graders. Both Student Council and Library / Media Aid courses will be extended for a fourth year. Debate and Competitive Speech will become two separate classes, pending approval by the state Department of Education. Those two courses were combined when the district moved sophomores to their own campus. Machine Tool I and Lab will be limited to ninth through 11 th grades, rather than 10 th through 12 th grades. None of the changes will require staff changes, Executive Director of Secondary Education Phil Eickstaedt told the board.
Two courses were dropped because faculty members that had been provided by Northwest Arkansas Community College are no longer available. Those two courses are Principles of Engineering and Intro to Engineering Design.
Eickstaedt and Assistant Superintendent for Elementary Education Virginia Abernathy reported on recent parent-teacher conferences. In elementary schools, all but three of the district’s 6, 610 families were reached for a conference. About 110 of those conferences were by phone, and another 10 were by home visits.
It’s more difficult to track secondary conferences, Eickstaedt explained, because parents must meet with multiple teachers. Close to half of the families of secondary students, some 3, 607, picked up report cards at the school during conference times.
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