EROS — Monday night, July 7, 24 patrons of the Bruno-Pyatt portion of the Ozark Mountain School District met in the Eros Community Center.
The group was looking for possible ways to move from OMSD and become part of the Yellville-Summit School District.
“They already have our kids,” said committee chairman Bruce Emerson. “We want to be a part of that school district.”
This is the second meeting of the group. The first was to become organized and to defeat a mileage that was sponsored by OMSD.
Emerson stated that they had named their organization the Committee for the future of the BP School.”
Emerson had done preliminary groundwork about moving to Yellville-Summit. He stated that he had met with Yellville-Summit superintendent Wes Henderson and members of the YS school board.
“They were very receptive to a merger,” he said. “They have a lot of questions and I couldn’t answer some of them.”
Emerson has been in contact with the Arkansas Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. They informed him that this was in uncharted territory.
The Bruno and Pyatt school districts were consolidated in 1976. They later combined with the St. Joe School District and Western Grove School District to form the Ozark Mountain School District nearly two decades ago.
At the time of forming OMSD, the BP schools was the largest and received three of the seven school member positions of OMSD.
A new law was passed in the last state legislation session that allows small school districts to break from parent districts. The districts looking to break away had to be K-12 grade campus.
Three districts in North Central Arkansas area are exploring to break free. Kingston is looking to move from Jasper and Timbo and Rural Special are both looking to move away from Mountain View.
Bruno-Pyatt and St. Joe’s K-12 campuses were dissolved three years ago and all of the seventh-12th grade students were moved to Western Grove High School.
The decision of the town meeting was for the group to find a lawyer to draw up a petition to leave OMSD and move the school district to Yellville-Summit.
Emerson stated that there has been a problem finding a lawyer to draw up the petition. He had been in contact with four lawyers and none of them accepted the job.
Henderson was sending Emerson the name and contact information for a lawyer that his school district had used in Little Rock.
School begins in a month and keeping the Bruno-Pyatt campus open is a question. Emerson stated that they were told that the campus would have 18 students this year. However, preliminary numbers has only nine students attending there this year.
After the leaders of the committee get a petition written by a lawyer, then they will move forward with their next step.
