Dollarway School District No. 2 (DSD) was a school district headquartered in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, United States.Home page. Dollarway School District. Retrieved on July 31, 2017. "4900 Dollarway Rd. Pine Bluff, AR 71602" With over 1,600 students and employing more than 300 educators and staff, the district had three active school campuses at the end of its life.
It served sections of Pine Bluff as well as the municipalities of Altheimer, Sherrill, and Wabbaseka. It was one of four school districts to serve sections of Pine Bluff. - The map shows Dollarway School District as not yet merged into Pine Bluff School District. It also served the unincorporated areas of Hardin, Lake Dick, New Gascony, - See Lake Dick, New Gascony, and Sweden on the map. Pastoria, Plum Bayou, - Alternate location at the Arkansas Department of Education (PDF page 3/13) Sweden, Tucker,"ConsolidationAnnex_from_1983.xls." Arkansas Department of Education. Retrieved on July 31, 2017. Note that Plum Bayou consolidated into the Wabbaseka Tucker school district in 1983, then the Altheimer-Sherrill and Wabbaseka Tucker school districts consolidated into Altheimer Unified in 1993, which in turn consolidated into Dollarway in 2006. Therefore this district serves Tucker and Plum Bayou. and Wright.
It merged into the Pine Bluff School District effective July 1, 2021.
History
The Beginning It was named after Dollarway Road,Pickhardt, p. 358. with a one-room school for white students opening in 1914. Initially the district only operated elementary and junior high school level education and was racially segregated; religious entities educated black students in the district's beginnings. By the mid-20th century black students were educated in area schools for black children and continued to Pine Bluff School District's Merrill High School, while white students attended the Dollarway School and then had a choice between Pine Bluff High School in the Pine Bluff district, Watson Chapel High School in the Watson Chapel School District, and White Hall High School in the White Hall School District.Pickhardt, p. 359. After World War II African-Americans moved into the district to work at the Pine Bluff Arsenal, prompting the district to build new schools to accommodate them.Pickhardt, p. 360.
Dollarway annexed the Hardin school district in 1948.Pickhardt, p. 385. The four black schools were combined into Townsend Park Elementary School, which opened in 1951.
The Civil Rights Movement In 1954 the district board refused a request to have racially integrated classes made by several black parents and National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) member William Dove.Pickhardt, 361-362.
In 1955 the district opened a high school for black children, Townsend Park High School, and in 1957 it opened Dollarway High School for white children, partly because in 1955 the Pine Bluff district stopped taking Dollarway students. The Dollarway district continued to oppose desegregation, with Dove being refused a second time in 1957, as the Brown II decision in the U.S. Supreme Court allowed Southern school districts to choose their paces of desegregation.Pickhardt, p. 362-363. John B. Pickhardt, an alumnus of the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, stated that the district was already spending less per capita to educate black students than white ones and so "there was little economic incentive to integrate".Pickhardt, p. 361.
In June 1959 black parents sued the district after it kept refusing desegregation requests.Pickhardt, p. 363. Judge Axel J. Beck of the Eastern District of Arkansas ordered the district to allow three black children to attend Dollarway High effective fall 1959, starting anti-integration efforts in the district.Pickhardt, p. 364-365. However Dollarway schools remained segregated for 1959-1960 due to a stay in the courts.Pickhardt, p. 366. The district enacted testing for black students who wished to transfer.Pickhardt, p. 369. Dollarway Elementary began hosting black students on September 7, 1960, with no incidents of violence occurring.Pickhardt, p. 370. The first black student at Dollarway High began attending in January 1963.Pickhardt, p. 377.
Pickhardt stated that in the 1960s the Dollarway district board of directors allowed small numbers of black students to white classes, something area anti-racial integration groups did not oppose, and that such groups did not instigate violence. This meant that little negative press appeared in the newspapers and slowed the rate at which black students appeared in area schools. In 1964 there were two black students in majority white schools, making Dollarway district have the second lowest percentage of black students in mostly white schools of the 21 school districts in the state that already began the integration process. Of those 21 districts it was one of two that had a population of over 30% African-American.Pickhardt, p. 381. As a result of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the district created a new desegregation plan involving "freedom of choice" where parents choose which school their children will attend.Pickhardt, p. 382. Due to still relatively low numbers of black students attending white schools, Pickhardt wrote that the freedom of choice plan effectively kept races separate. Late 1960s court cases however forced districts to change their freedom of choice plans to outright combine schools, and Henley ordered changes to the school system effective 1969.Pickhardt, p. 383.
Some Hardin parents advocated for re-separating the Hardin school district; on September 11, 1969, they voted to leave the Dollarway district, with the county board of education making a move to change funding. The vote to separate was on a narrow margin. However the US District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas blocked the split on the grounds that it was interfering with desegregation efforts as those were based upon the Hardin staying in the district; the court stated that Hardin could split again once desegregation efforts ended. Pickhardt wrote that opposition to being in Dollarway had built up over decades partly due to the 1964 closure of the Hardin school and partly because the Dollarway board of education chose not to appoint anybody from Hardin to fill a vacancy, even though the perception elsewhere in the district was that Hardin residents did not want racially integrated schools.
Schools were combined for grades 7-12 effective 1969. Judge J. Smith Henley, seeing that the district did not put enough white students in Townsend Park elementary schools, ordered elementary schools combined effective 1970.Pickhardt, p. 386. White flight occurred over several decades.Pickhardt, p. 387.
1970s to 2020 In 1979 the Jefferson County School District dissolved, with a portion of the students going to the Dollarway school district.
In 2006 the Dollarway district was in financial distress."School Case Studies Wonder Elementary School Osceola Middle School Dollarway High School," p. 29 (PDF p. 31/50).
The Altheimer Unified School District consolidated into the Dollarway School District on July 10, 2006. The State of Arkansas had demanded that the Altheimer district merge with another district as the Altheimer district's financial situation had deteriorated. The board of the Dollarway district, the only one to agree to a merger with Altheimer, formally asked the state to give the Altheimer territory to Dollarway the previous May, and the Altheimer board also agreed to the consolidation. This consolidation meant that small towns and rural areas in northern Jefferson County, including Altheimer, Sherrill, Wabbaseka, Tucker, and Plum Bayou, became a part of the district. For a period the consolidated district had two taxation rates, one for the original Dollarway district and one for the former Altheimer Unified."DOLLARWAY PATRONS FOR BETTER SCHOOLS v. DOLLARWAY SCHOOL DISTRICT." At FindLaw. Retrieved on August 2, 2017. In addition the district operated two bus mechanic stops, with the Pine Bluff one serving the majority of the population of the district and the Altheimer one moving children from the Altheimer area to the schools in Pine Bluff. There were two interim board members to represent the Altheimer area. The Dollarway district, in 2007, was no longer in financial distress partly because the State of Arkansas gave the district $1,700,000 to help the district absorb the Altheimer district."School Case Studies Wonder Elementary School Osceola Middle School Dollarway High School," p. 29-30 (PDF p. 31-32/50).
From about 2008 to 2018, the poor economy of Pine Bluff prompted parents to leave the area, and accordingly, Dollarway district officials have an estimate of an enrollment decline of about 900 for the period. A 2011 State of Arkansas legislative research document stated that additionally the Dollarway district lost enrollment while the Watson Chapel and White Hall school districts' enrollment remained constant, and it concluded that Dollarway students were leaving to go to those districts and private schools and charter schools."School Case Studies Wonder Elementary School Osceola Middle School Dollarway High School," p. 28-29 (PDF p. 30-31/50). Superintendent Arthur Tucker stated, as paraphrased by the document, "he believes some of these losses result from the poor reputation the Dollarway School District has in the area and the rundown school facilities." The legislative document stated, in regards to whether to first prioritize academic improvement or repairing the buildings, "there is little consensus about which part of the problem to address first.""School Case Studies Wonder Elementary School Osceola Middle School Dollarway High School," p. 28 (PDF p. 30/50). By 2015 a millage increase had been voted down so the majority of the board was reluctant to put another on the ballot.
The Arkansas Department of Education took control of the school district in 2012 due to failing to meet state education guidelines. In 2014 state control ended and the school board resumed operations. State control resumed in 2015 due to low test scores. The State of Arkansas designated the school district as being in "academic distress" from 2011 until 2016, and after an audit found issues in financial reporting, in April 2016 the Arkansas Board of Education also ruled that the district was in "fiscal distress".
The district held a centennial celebration in 2014 after band director Brandon Shorter read an article in the Arkansas Historical Quarterly that gave the year of establishment in 1914 and he verified that information, prompting him and his colleagues to organize a committee for the centennial.
the Dollarway School Board exempted the district from a state law that normally allows parents in one school district to have their children sent to attend schools in another school district. Parents from seven families, including the president of the Dollarway Parent Teacher Organization, Annie Bryant, argued against the exemption; Bryant stated that due to the large number of students on free or reduced lunch, it was clear that the students had no other choice but to go to public schools, and therefore the district ought to allow transfers. As of that year there were no persons requesting that their children be transferred from another school district to the Dollarway district.
Takeover and closure In 2015 the Arkansas State Board of Education took control of the district. Barbara Warren became superintendent as per the school board naming her to the position. The Pine Bluff Commercial praised the state takeover and criticized the previously elected school boards. In 2020 the district had 921 students.