| State Senate To Review School Facilities Report
By Doug Thompson
Arkansas News Bureau dthompson@arkansasnews.com
LITTLE ROCK — The state Senate will go over the school facilities study at 1 p.m. today in a special meeting, called a “committee of the whole.”
The meeting will allow people who compiled the study to be in the Senate chamber while the Senate is in session, where they can answer questions from senators.
“We wanted to find a way to get busy on this issue and decided this was it,” said Sen. Shane Broadway, D-Bryant, Senate chairman of the committee that compiled the study.
Inspectors looked at every public school building in Arkansas as part of the study and compiled a list of suggested repairs, improvements, renovations and future needs.
The study found more than $86 million in immediate needs, $2.8 billion in short-term repairs and as much as $4.5 billion in needs over the next five years.
Local school officials are meeting with task force staff to go over the reports for each district. This will lead to a revised, corrected report that should be available by mid-February. Senators will receive a list tomorrow giving meeting dates between the task force staff and officials from each school district. This will allow senators to attend meetings that involve districts they represent, Broadway said.
The issues raised by the court-ordered study are “very, very complex” to render into legislation. Each district has a variety of building needs to be addressed, and the Legislature will have to come up with guidelines that will be appropriate for all of them, throughout the state.
“Common sense will come into play,” Broadway said. “For instance, we may want to set standards for the future, but we don’t want to say that a school district that has a 2-year-old air conditioner that’s not up to code has to be replaced.”
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