PEA RIDGE — Two contracts between Pea Ridge School District and Head Start were declared null and void after action by Pea Ridge School Board members at a special meeting Saturday.
The cancellation of lease agreements was signed by Jeremy Adair, executive director of Head Start of Northwest Arkansas. The contracts, originally signed in 2008 by then school superintendent Mike Van Dyke and former Head Start executive director Ann Williams, was for a trade of the Head Start building on Black Street and the former Home Economics building on the Intermediate School campus.
When school superintendent Rick Neal began plans to move the Head Start classrooms into other rooms on the campus and raze the building now housingHead Start, it was discovered that Head Start owns the building at the football field.
Neal and former School Board members each expressed surprise that the building belonged to the federal government and not the school district. Initially, no files were found in the school administration office, but contracts were located by Head Start officials.
Weeks of research yielded the contracts signed by Van Dyke and Head Start officials in 2008.
Neal said the hard drive in his computer is new and containedno files from Van Dyke’s tenure.
Dr. Roland Smith, who served as interim school superintendent for the 2011-2012 school year, said the hard drive that had been in Van Dyke’s computer had been removed, a hole drilled through it and was not on school property. Smith said he learned what happened to the hard drive after questioning school personnel about it shortly after taking the interim post. Smith said there was no purchase order for a new hard drive, that hard drives areabout $50 and are kept on the premises in bulk.
Smith, who has served as a superintendent for many years and at many school districts, said he has never seen a former superintendent remove or destroy a hard drive, which is the property of the school district. Van Dyke resigned in 2011 and accepted a position as director of the Northwest Arkansas Educational Cooperative in Farmington.
On Saturday, Neal told School Board members that he hopes Head Start board members will agree to leave the building in Pea Ridge until after football season because it is used for a locker room for visiting teams. Head Start financial officer Michael Thursden had told Neal he intends to move thebuilding to Huntsville.
“They let me know they have nowhere to put it yet,” Neal said.
Neal is examining the financial arrangement between Head Start and the school because the school paid for remodeling of the building now housing Head Start and pays for fire and security services.
“I think we all feel like we’ve been kicked in the gut on this thing,” Neal said, who said the school district spent well over $50,000 in remodeling the building.
“There’s nothing in here that identifies the building on Black Streetwas not ours. It was never mentioned that it wasfederal,” board member Jenny Wood said.
News, Pages 1 on 08/01/2012