Charter School Election Requires Sept. 30 Runoff
Last updated Wednesday, September 17, 2008 11:44 AM CDT in News
By Lana F. Flowers
THE MORNING NEWS
ROGERS — Patrons of the Benton County School of the Arts won’t know until Sept. 30 voting who will take two school board seats.
The school held elections for the two seats Tuesday. Each parent with a child attending the open enrollment charter school in Rogers got one vote in each of the board races.
Incumbent Craig Brown got 30 votes, or 47.6 percent, to challenger David Lewis’ 17 votes, or 27 percent, in a three-way race for Position 1. Lauren Levine got 16 votes, or 25.4 percent.
Brown and Lewis will face each other in the runoff.
Wes Abbott and James Harris were the top two vote-getters in a four-way race for Position 2. Harris got 21 votes, or 35 percent, while Abbott got 18 votes, or 30 percent.
They, too, will face each other in the runoff.
Heather Sutton got 14 votes, or 23 percent, for the Position 2 seat, while Kisha Farrell got seven votes, or 12 percent.
The school has 470 students in kindergarten through eighth grades. The public school accepts students who can provide their own transportation, as the charter school does not provide busing.
Though the charter school is in Rogers, it is not part of the Rogers School District and has students from other cities, including Bentonville, Fayetteville, Springdale and surrounding smaller towns.
The charter school does not charge tuition, but gets state funding of about $5,789 per student, derived from the first 25 mills of property taxes.
Arkansas charter schools cannot raise additional millage, as do other, traditional public schools.
A mill is one-tenth of a cent and generates $1 in tax for each $1,000 of assessed property value. The assessed value is 20 percent of the appraised, or fair market, value.
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