A proposal to sell the high school
would be controversial in just about any town. In Fayetteville, with a
highly educated and highly opinionated population, it’s even more so.

“Disagreement gets more heated here,”
Fayetteville School Superintendent Bobby C. New says, and he should
know. “This is not a community where people say ‘What was good enough
for me is good enough for my kids.’ ” Even when most residents agree
that improvements in the high school are needed — as they do now, New
said — the details become painful and contentious. Bloggers stay busy.
Competing committees are formed.

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Being home to the main campus of the
University of Arkansas means that Fayetteville schools benefit from
assets like the children of university faculty members, and from
institutions like the Walton Arts Center, New said. But it also means
generous criticism for people like New. “The culture is
university-dominated,” he says. “But that’s part of the beauty of
living here.”

New has enjoyed that beauty abundantly.
He’s still criticized for his part in a book-censorship dispute a
couple of years ago, and many who thought he was insufficiently
anti-censorship then believe he’s insufficiently anti-sprawl now,
supportive of a new high school in a new location even though his
employer, the School Board, hasn’t yet made a decision.

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The decision will not be made easily,
and not just because there are so many argumentative Fayettevillians.
Hard questions are involved — questions about what some call “sprawl”
and others call “growth,” about the proper relationship between the
public schools and the university, about the proper relationship of the
taxpayer to both. The issues divide people who otherwise have much in
common.

Alderman Nancy Allen is a public-school
supporter and former teacher, a graduate of both Fayetteville High
School and the University of Arkansas. She sent a letter to the members
of the school board listing reasons to keep the existing high school:

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“Retaining the current high school near
the center of town will reduce sprawl, the top goal of the city’s 2025
plan. … We have 50 years of students who have graduated from the
current FHS. It is a destination for them when they visit and a
destination for locals. Monuments, awards and memories are there.
Donors are connected to that building. … Gifted students can walk a
block to access the UofA. Even with extensive remodeling, it would cost
less money [than building a new school]. … Routes for parents and
accessibility to their child’s school would be less difficult.”

Allen, who has fought developers before, was also the lead sponsor of a City Council resolution that
says the city’s long-range development plan “urges increased density in
the central area of Fayetteville [where the existing school is located]
and discourages sprawl and moving large traffic-generating facilities
toward the outskirts of Fayetteville [where a new school would be
located],” that the city lacks funds “to build or enlarge city streets
to properly and safely access a distant site of the proposed new or
replacement Fayetteville Senior High,” and that, in conclusion,
“maintaining FHS’s current central location would be advantageous to
the City of Fayetteville … ” The resolution was adopted 7-1.

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Judy McDonald and Laura Underwood are
public-school supporters and former members of the Fayetteville School
Board. Underwood also taught at FHS for eight years. (Coincidentally,
McDonald’s husband is Allen’s ophthalmologist.) They and six other former school board members sent a letter to the current members and superintendent New:

“[W]e encourage you to open
negotiations with the University of Arkansas for the purchase of the
high school site … The sale of the existing campus will allow us to
have a completely new and safe campus, new fine arts facilities, new
athletic fields, closed campus, parking, and nearly half of the cost
will be borne by an entity other than the taxpayers of
Fayetteville. … [W]e believe the current high school facility has
outlived its usefulness. … Investing more money in this building would
be a mistake. We are aware that you have heard from those who want to
keep the high school where it is. We believe that when those who oppose
this [sale of the existing property] see the actual numbers, it will be
difficult for them not to support a $40, $50 or $60 million down
payment on a new high school. There is a tremendous amount of community
support for a new high school built on the 100 [unused] acres the
district currently owns. Additionally, it is supported by the
President’s Council [a PTA group] and the Fayetteville Chamber of
Commerce.”

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They were wrong, however, in believing
that their “actual numbers” would convert opponents of the sale into
supporters. The opponents have “actual numbers” of their own. And for
some of these opponents, the Chamber of Commerce is more part of the
problem than part of the solution. They have similar suspicions about
UA officials.

Something of an outcry arose with the
recent publication of an August memorandum from Donald O. Pederson, UA
vice chancellor for finance and administration, to B. Alan Sugg,
president of the University of Arkansas System. Pederson wrote on the
feasibility of paying for the FHS property by raising tuition and fees
for University students. The increase would be on the order of $9 per
credit hour, he said.

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Asked how he came to write the memo, Pederson told the Arkansas Times by e-mail:

“I may have been asked to keep
President Sugg informed but do not recall if it was Chancellor White or
Dave Gearhart that may have asked me or if there was some other reason.
[John A. White is the outgoing chancellor of UA’s Fayetteville campus.
Vice Chancellor G. David Gearhart will succeed him as chancellor on
July 1.] Since the decision on the property is a Board of
Trustees decision and articles were to be written about it, I may have
wanted to provide the then current thinking on the subject to the
President who has the most interaction with the Board. I don’t believe
I got a response.”

Sugg, whose office is in Little Rock, told the Times
“My response is I don’t want to be involved in the controversy.” But he
added that UA administrators are considering the long-range interests
of the University. UA is presently buying “little pieces of property”
around the Fayetteville campus, he said, and the FHS property, if
available, would probably be UA’s last chance to buy 40 acres of
contiguous land. Whether the property will be available is up to the
Fayetteville School Board, he said. If UA does have a chance to buy, a
tuition increase would be one way to do it, but that decision would be
up to the UA Board of Trustees, he said.

The Fayetteville School District has
received an appraisal that valued the property at $61.2 million. UA has
received an appraisal of $56.5 million.

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That the Fayetteville School District
already owns land on which a new high school could be built is what the
supporters of a new high school have in mind when they say their plan
for a new school would be less expensive than the renovations needed on
the old one. The School Board purchased the 104 acres in two parcels in
2005 and 2006, paying $58,000 an acre for most of it, according to
Superintendent New, who says it’s worth more now. The land is at the
intersection of Deane Solomon Road and West Salem Road, on the
northwestern boundary of the city and the school district. New said the
School Board bought the property for “flexibility,” not specifically as
a site for a new high school. The seller was Tracy Hoskins, a developer
who still owns considerable property in the area. The neighborhood is
comparatively lightly developed, which is what supporters of the old
high school mean when they talk about the expense of new infrastructure
and problems of access. But a Sam’s Club is nearby, and Jim Lindsey, a
developer and chairman of the UA Board of Trustees, is building an
apartment complex not far away. (And new-school supporters say there
are access problems at the old school too.)

Not long after the land was purchased,
conversation began about replacing the existing high school, New said,
and when UA officials heard it, they expressed interest in acquiring
the high school property. At a Board of Trustees meeting last year,
trustee John Tyson, of the Tyson poultry family, advocated buying the
land if it became available, and Chancellor White said the university
should consider paying a premium for the land, in order to support the
Fayetteville education system, which he said was important to the
university. Pederson said that “pretty much all” of the facilities now
on the property could be used by the university in productive ways.

Fayetteville High School is among the
top high schools in Arkansas, as might be expected of a school in a
high-income, high-education area. “We offer the largest number of
advanced- placement classes in the state,” New said. But there are
problems. Advances in technology have created new demands on the
schools. There’s been an explosion of interest in the fine arts,
according to New, and more rehearsal space is needed. Built in 1952,
the school now has an enrollment of 1,900 and a cafeteria that seats
300. The auditorium seats 250. Surrounded by university property and a
state highway, the existing site faces tremendous infrastructure
challenges, New said. Although FHS has not grown significantly in
recent years, its university neighbor has, and traffic problems are
particularly pressing on Razorback game days. Fayetteville has “an
older population driving more cars,” New said.

(A digression: There are many points to
be made in the old-high-school vs. new-high-school debate. Enrollment
is one. New said that when he came to Fayetteville 12 years ago, high
school enrollment was roughly equal in Fayetteville, Springdale, Rogers
and Bentonville. Now, Springdale and Rogers have doubled Fayetteville’s
enrollment, and Bentonville is getting close. Some people want to keep
the existing high school in the existing location precisely because it
couldn’t grow into the kind of “megaschool” that they say serves
students poorly. If enrollment increased significantly, it would be
better to open a second high school, they say. New says the advanced
placement programs would be difficult to manage with two campuses. And,
he says, a second high school would be a second large appetite for tax
dollars. The existing high school takes up about 15 percent of the
school district budget. Springdale’s high school enrollment was large
enough that Springdale could open a second high school and both schools
could compete in the top classification of high school athletics. If
Fayetteville split into two schools, they’d probably have to drop down
a classification. That might upset fans and alums, and it would
probably require more travel. New said he wouldn’t enjoy busing a
volleyball team to Texarkana, but athletics was not a big concern. In
Fayetteville, “The issue is dominated by curriculum, not athletics,” he
said.)

McDonald is unintimidated by the other
side’s warnings against “megaschools.” “We’re in competition with every
school in the Northwest Arkansas corridor,” she said. “All of them have
huge new campuses. We have to compete or we won’t have high-income
people coming in. They’ll want new and better schools. We have to
compete for teachers, coaches and students.”

Nor is McDonald impressed by arguments
about sprawl. “They say we’ll lose our central location. But that
location is not central anymore, it’s south Fayetteville. ‘Central’ as
far as the student population is concerned is far north of the present
high school. Sprawl has already happened. The city has already moved
out.” The 100 acres the school district owns is not the only possible
site for a new school, McDonald said. If necessary, the district could
sell that property and use the proceeds to buy another site that would
better serve a population that has left the downtown area.

McDonald is a leader of a new-school
group called StudentsFirst. Janine Parry is the captain of the opposing
team, BuildSmart. Both groups have established sophisticated web sites.

Parry is an associate professor of
political science at the university as well as director of the
university’s Arkansas Poll, which periodically samples public opinion
on various issues. She says that BuildSmart is a grassroots coalition
of folks who want to see a world-class high school, a combination of
new construction and renovation, at the current location.

“We want to build a castle in the heart of Fayetteville where students can take classes at the flagship university,” Parry said.

She’s dubious of university
administrators’ talk of paying a premium price for the FHS property by
means of raising tuition. “Like all institutions, we’re struggling to
remain affordable,” Parry said. She fears the university’s plan would
alienate students, their parents, and even legislators, and so offend
Fayetteville voters that they’d reject any millage increase needed to
help pay for construction of a school at the new site. “The university
leadership can spend a lot of political capital and in the end not get
the property,” Parry said. She said there appeared to be a division
between top university administrators on one side, and students,
faculty and staff on the other.

The value of the FHS property to the
university is questionable, Parry said. “We need large, technologically
sophisticated lecture halls. The other side is saying that the FHS
building is not technologically adequate for their needs. Why would it
be good for the university?”

Opponents of the proposed sale of the
FHS property frequently suggest there are people on the other side
poised to profit improperly if not illegally from the sale of the
property and the development of a new school site. Parry said her
e-mail is flooded with such communications. But she’s unaware of any
direct sort of hanky-panky involving the new-school movement. As a
political scientist, she said, she knows there are people in every
community who are “pro-growth, or what I’d call pro-sprawl” and who
make money from new development. That’s their business, and it’s not
illegal. She also knows, she said, that there are people who are
“no-growth,” who want to keep things as they’ve always been. “But I
think there are more people who are ‘smart growth,’ and that’s what I
want.”

Fayetteville has experienced “white-hot
school politics” in recent years, fired by school closings and by a
feeling that the school board and superintendent were unresponsive.
(New denies the accusation.) So many voters were mad at the school
board and the superintendent in this educated community that they
soundly rejected the last school millage submitted to them. Parry
predicts that the people will do so again, if the school board offers a
millage increase tied to a new site for the high school. A school board
committee is scheduled to report in April with a recommendation on how
the school board should proceed.

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