McAfee oversees his final board meeting as superintendent

ROSSTON – There was no fanfare, no celebration. Only a white sheet cake with white icing and blue flowers with the legend “Good Luck” on it.

This is how Rick McAfee’s final school board meeting ended for the Nevada School District Thursday night. McAfee’s last day will be June 30 as he’s retiring after 30 years as the district’s superintendent. He will be replaced by Roy McCoy, whose official start date is July 1. McAfee has been superintendent for 30 years and has been with the district since its inception, starting as principal. He said the “Good Luck” was for him on his retirement and McCoy on assuming duties as superintendent.

The meeting lasted less than 15 minutes as most of the business was easily handled by the board. Jason Arrington, principal, said the district’s alternative learning plan has been adopted by the state for the next five years, and the digital learning plan for Nevada High School has been accepted by the Arkansas Department of Education but needs to be approved by the Board of Education. He told the panel he found a company that will donate large diameter metal pipes the agriculture department can use to make BBQ pits to auction off.

Next year Nevada will be offering volleyball as a sport. The standards are in and McCoy said he got a quote to do the floor work for $1,600.

McCoy asked the board if it wanted to consider changing its meeting dates from the last Thursday in the month as the district will be going to a four-day week next year and basketball games may be played on Thursday, and staff may want to get out of town for the long weekend. The board chose to keep the meetings as they are, changing the date when necessary, such as is the case with the July meeting which will be July 22 as a demographer will be down to discuss the redrawing of board’s zoning boundaries.

McAfee said the district got a good audit with two supplemental findings. One of the findings is something the district always gets hit with – segregation of duties. Auditors want more people involved in the handling of funds, but the district couldn’t afford to hire more people to do this without causing other problems. The other finding concerned a lunchroom grant the district didn’t know how to do. McAfee said state officials were called and gave directions, which were followed. However, the auditors said this was wrong. The district made the required corrections, with McAfee saying someone should tell the state about it.

The board also approved the parent-student family engagement plan for 2021-22, the district policy changes, as suggested by the Arkansas School Board Association, and the student handbook changes. It also approved contract addendums for extra duty and unused sick leave.

A final order of business was McAfee telling the board the district still needs someone to teach biology and chemistry. The position has been advertised, but there have been no applicants.

A vacancy remains on the board following the death of Jerry Bishop. Bishop’s district was gerrymandered to help balance it with other districts, but no viable candidate has been found to replcae him. McAfee told the board if it didn’t approve someone, the Nevada County Quorum Court would appoint a replacement. He said he’ll contact Bishop’s daughter, LaSonya, about filling the remainder of his term – which would be until the next school board election, and if she wanted to, she could run for the post afterwards. The board agreed.

McCoy said the school board zones have to be redrawn because they must now be contiguous and can’t be gerrymandered. Bishop’s district has less than 300 people in it while the rest have roughly 500. The demographer will try and redraw the boundaries so the current board members don’t have to run against one another.

Chris Fore and David Barr were reminded their terms are up this year and they will need to seek reelection again.