Parents of students in the Eureka Springs School District will have a little less to worry about when classes get underway next month for the 2025-2026 school year.
The district will once again purchase basic school supplies for all students, and thanks to programs at the state and federal level, breakfast and lunch will be free for all students starting this coming year.
“I’m just super excited for our community,” superintendent Bryan Pruitt said. “Parents can now know: ‘Hey, we just need to get them ready,’ and then they can just bring them to us and let us feed them and educate them and take care of them.
“We just want to get them prepped and ready for the real world.”
A free breakfast program for all students in public schools in the state was approved during the most recent session of the Arkansas State Legislature.
In addition, the Eureka Springs district recently learned it qualified for a three-year Community Education Program through the United States Department of Agriculture’s nutrition program that will reimburse the district 70 percent of the cost of student lunches if certain free and reduced requirements are met, Pruitt said.
“We had to be at 70 percent on free and reduced students,” the superintendent said. “What they did is, they said if kids are eligible for ARKids [insurance] benefits then that goes toward your free and reduced numbers. That let us become eligible.”
The approval from the USDA program left the district the option of paying the remaining 30 percent of lunches for students throughout the year, which the school board recently approved, meaning students will not have to pay for lunches for at least the next three school years.
“It’s a three-year term that you lock into so you know you’re doing it for three years,” Pruitt said. “… The district will still have to make up that other 30 percent, but we look at that as a good investment for us.”
The 30 percent equates to approximately $30,000 to $35,000 a year, Pruitt said.
“I think it’s worth it to know that everybody will get a free lunch,” he said. “Then, also it frees us up on bad debt, trying to collect people that haven’t paid. There’s a law now in Arkansas that you’ve got to feed kids whether they pay or not, so we rack up some bad debt … and also the labor that’s involved in us racking that up, billing people and plus us filling out all the free and reduced forms and trying to get everybody to do that. It saves us that $35,000 anyway. So, it’s kind of a win-win for us both ways. It helps us a lot on a ton of paperwork and then the students know … and parents know that their kids can eat free, too.”
TRANSPORTATION HONOR
The Eureka Springs School District’s transportation department was recently recognized as one of the safest in the state.
At the annual Arkansas Association for Pupil Transportation conference in Hot Springs in June, Eureka Springs was one of five districts in the state to receive a 2025 Transportation Safety Award.
John Kessler, the district’s former transportation director who recently accepted a job with the Berryville School District, accepted the award at the conference.
“This prestigious award honors school districts that go above and beyond in promoting student safety, maintaining high standards in training, maintenance, and operations,” according to a post on the district’s Facebook page.
Pruitt said the award was a surprise, but recognizes an area that the district prioritizes.
“The state comes in and inspects our transportation department each year,” Pruitt said. “They do a complete inspection of all the buses, inspect drivers’ records, driver files, making sure everything is in accordance to [Department of Transportation] regulations. … It’s a thorough inspection.
“We had a couple of little minor things, like they’re going to find something, but when they did their inspection, they said:‘Oh, you guys may be up for the award this year.’ We’re like ‘yeah, whatever.’ Sure enough, we were one of the five in the state that got the award for best transportation department, safety department award.”
An award that focuses on safety is something for the district to be proud of, Pruitt said.
“It’s about the safety of those buses,” he said. “We’re hauling everybody’s best cargo every day. I’ve got to make sure those buses are safe and secure, that they look good and are clean, and everything works on them.”
The district’s transportation director position is still vacant, Pruitt said, and will be until he finds a candidate he feels is the perfect fit for the role.
“I haven’t hired anybody yet because I haven’t found the right person yet that I know can make sure those buses are safe for our kids to be on. Our parents expect that,” he said. “I want to know, I need to know myself, that I’ve got the best person possible that is making sure those buses are safe for the community.
“Pay is pretty good, too.”
MERIT PAY RECIPIENTS
Ten teachers in the Eureka Springs district were awarded a combined $41,000 by the Arkansas Department of Education as merit pay honorees based on ratings in student test scoring, it was recently announced.
“Two of them got $8,500,” Pruitt said.
Teachers who received merit pay bonuses included Carrie Gay, Kristen Jewell, Eric Hearth, Kyle Farrar, Kevin Campbell, Trina Lindsey, Zachary Rankin, Christy Dowell, Leslie Purdy-Hoyt and Cody Taylor.
With the initiation of the LEARNS Act, the Merit Teacher Incentive Fund Program was established to “recognize and reward Arkansas’s outstanding educators,” according to the Arkansas Department of Education website. “The program’s primary goals are to retain high-performing teachers in the classrooms across the state and enhance teacher recruitment and attention in priority and critical shortage areas.”
The program provides annual bonuses of “up to $10,000 across multiple categories,” according to the ADE website.
