Dupuy Urges Unity on CCSD Facilities

RISON - Superintendent Craig Dupuy urged unity among the members of the Cleveland County School Board Monday night as they began discussing school facilities in the wake of its Nov. 7 workshop on that topic. Dupuy's remarks followed what, at times, was a contentious exchange between some of the board members as the topic of "discussion of any follow ups from the November 7 meeting" came up on the agenda. The Nov. 7 meeting was held after Dupuy and School Board President Harrell Wilson met with the Arkansas Division of Public School Academic Facilities and Transportation Commission to discuss the district's plans following the defeat of a 5-mill tax increase in August. Since that millage would have funded some of the projects in the district's Facilities Master Plan, state law requires school districts to meet with the facilities commission to provide a plan as to how the district plans to move forward. During that Nov. 7 meeting, Dupuy gave the school board five different scenarios to consider moving forward. Those scenarios ranged from doing nothing to restructuring the district's existing debt with no millage increase to asking for as many as 6.6 mills to fund all the projects that were previously proposed. There was no discussion of any of those specific proposals during Monday night's school board meeting. Instead, the discussion seemed to focus entirely on what had been done to maintain the district's existing facilities in the past. When that topic came up on Monday night's agenda, board member Helen Browning started the conversation by bringing up a social media page created by a student at Rison High School "trying to get people to pass a millage." While she said the student has the right to create such a page, she said some photos on social media portraying the poor conditions of some of the facilities on the Rison campus prompted some of her constituents to ask her why the facilities were allowed to get ...