School board runoff Tuesday ! Halsell, Odom vying for at-large Position 1
Posted on Sunday, October 5, 2008
Fayetteville School District residents will choose between Jim Halsell and Conrad Odom when they go to the polls to vote Tuesday in the Fayetteville Board of Education run-off election.
Whoever is elected to atlarge Position 1 will serve a three-year term on the school board. The seat became available when former board member John Delap resigned this summer to take a teaching job at Fayetteville High School.
The candidates were the top vote-getters in the September general election, which featured four other candidates.
Odom is a short-term incumbent, having been appointed to the board in July to take over the position until the election is resolved. Halsell would be new to the school board.
Whoever wins will be able to assume office once the results of the run-off are certified by the Washington County Election Commission.
Issues the board is expect-See RUNOFF, page A 6 ed to tackle in the near future include the redevelopment of the FHS campus, possibly redrawing elementary attendance zones within the next two years and hiring a new superintendent.
After negotiations to sell the current FHS campus to the University of Arkansas in order to subsidize new construction did not come to fruition, the board recently voted unanimously to designate the current location as the future site of the high school.
The board has been discussing the possibility of rezoning attendance zones for 2009-2010, but at its September meeting, the board indicated that might be pushed back another year until more research can be done. Superintendent Bobby New is scheduled to retire in the summer of 2009, so whoever is elected will be involved in hiring the next superintendent.
Jim Halsell Halsell, 58, works as a mortgage broke for Arkansas Mortgage Company. He has lived in Fayetteville continuously since the mid-1990 s after coming back to the University of Arkansas as a nontraditional student to earn his bachelor's degree in business.
He previously attended the UA in the late 1960 s, and before coming back to Fayetteville, he worked and lived in several cities over the years, mostly in positions with the television or advertising business, he said.
"I was a cameraman in Little Rock for a while," he noted.
Since his children started attending school in Fayetteville, Halsell has been an active parent with the Washington Elementary PTO. He said he now wants to be active with helping the district.
"I want to be a part of the decisions that must be made to ensure that the Fayetteville Public Schools remain world class," he said.
Halsell said he was pleased with the school board's decision to keep the school where it is.
"Which is something I've been supporting for, gosh, 18 months," he said. "I think the next challenge is to create the 21 st century high school they've been talking about."
With the campus located next to the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville has something no other high school in the region has, he said.
He also wants to "start the conversation "about when Fayetteville should convert to two high schools. Even if that point is still many years away, he thinks it could be discussed now.
"It goes in with long-range planning," he said.
On attendance zones, Halsell said he supports maintaining walkable neighborhoods when configuring zones.
He said he is not disappointed by the decision to delay a major rezoning effort, as it will give the district more time to evaluate the rezoning process.
Conrad Odom Odom, 42, is an attorney based in Fayetteville and a longtime resident. He attended Fayetteville Public Schools from elementary school through high school, graduating from FHS in 1984. He earned a bachelor's degree from Hendrix College and holds a law degree from the UA School of Law. Odom previously served on the Fayetteville City Council, and he was serving as president of the Fayetteville Public Education Foundation Board of Directors when he was appointed to school board. "I've been involved with partnering with the schools and the education foundation for four years," he said.
He said one of his main reasons for running for school board was to help ensure children have the best education possible, noting he has three children of his own in the system.
Odom said with the issue resolved on the location of the high school, he looks forward to supporting a plan to redevelop the current site. The district administration is scheduled to begin presenting options for developing the campus in the coming months.
"I'm looking forward to seeing the plan that they bring to the school board," Odom said.
Odom said he hopes to implement a district-wide prekindergarten program as part of the high school change, which was a recommendation of the administration. The district currently has pre-K programs funded by grants at four of its nine elementary schools.
On rezoning, Odom says he favors options that result in the least amount of time spent on the bus and zones that allow children to attend schools within walking distance.
He also said there should be some flexibility with allowing students to finish at their current schools and be "grandfathered, to a certain extent."
"Children should not be moved around from school to school (frequently )," he said.
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