Cite as 351 Ark. 31 (2002)
plete set of uniforms, while its band has no uniforms at all. The college remediation rate for Lake View students is 100 percent.
The Holly Grove School District has only a basic curriculum and no advanced courses or programs. The starting salary for its teachers is $21,000. Science lab equipment, computers, the bus fleet, and the heating and air conditioning systems need replacing. The buildings have leaking roofs and restrooms in need of repair. Because millage increases are difficult to win in the school district, Holly Grove must borrow against next year's revenues to repair a falling library roof and leaking gas line.
The Barton Elementary School in Phillips County has two bathrooms with four stalls for over one hundred students.
Lee County schools do not have advanced placement courses and suffer also from little or no science lab equipment, school buildings in need of repair, school buses that fail to meet state standards, and only thirty computers for six hundred students. Some buildings have asbestos problems and little or no heating or air conditioning.
These are just a few examples of deficiencies in buildings, equipment, and supplies that plague the State's school districts. School districts experiencing fast-growing student populations such as Rogers and Bentonville in Northwest Arkansas need additional buildings. Buildings in disrepair are rampant in Eastern Arkansas. And qualification for debt-service-funding supplements from the State depends on how much debt can be incurred by the school districts. Poorer districts with deteriorating physical plants are unable to incur much debt.
The Rogers School District has mushroomed by 4,300 students in the last decade. Since 1987, the enrollment in the Bentonville School District has increased 83.57 percent. About $432 of the revenue available per student in Rogers goes to debt. With the influx of the Latino population, an English-as-a-second-language program is a critical need. In 1991, eighty-four students were enrolled in the program. In 2000, there were 2,615 students enrolled. Rogers received $743,000 for the program from the State and spent $1,013,000.
