Pine Bluff School District No. 3 (PBSD) is a school district headquartered in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. The district has 10 schools with over 3,800 students and 500 employees. The headquarters are the Jordan-Chanay Administrative Center in Pine Bluff. It is one of the largest school districts in the Pine Bluff Metropolitan Statistical Area.

History

Previously the district served both black and white high school students from the Dollarway School District (DSD) as that district only went up to junior high school, with Merrill High and Pine Bluff High taking each group, respectively. This ended for black students in 1955 with the opening of Townsend Park High School and for white students the same year as the Pine Bluff district stopped accepting white Dollarway high school students due to overcrowding. Due to the Civil Rights Movement, Pine Bluff schools desegregated. On July 1, 1984, the Linwood School District consolidated into the Pine Bluff school district. From 1988 to 2008 the school district's student population declined every year except for the period from 2006 to 2007. This reflected an economic turbulence in the Arkansas Delta region. In one period the student population decreased by 300. From 2007 to 2008 the student population decreased by 150. From 2011 to 2015 the enrollment of the school district declined by 445, mirroring a decrease in population in the City of Pine Bluff, and that meant the State of Arkansas no longer sent over $1,900,000 to the district on a yearly basis. In 2015 the district board voted 5-1 to close two campuses: Southeast Middle School and Oak Park Elementary School. Accordingly the district changed the grade alignment, with Belair Middle becoming a grade 5-6 school, and Jack Robey Junior High being a grade 7-8 school. Previously the two schools had grades 6-7 and 8-9. Michael Robinson, previously an employee at Prince George's County Public Schools in Maryland, became superintendent on June 6, 2016 and served in that capacity until June 30, 2018, when the board of directors bought out his contract. Monica King-McMurray, previously the executive director of learning services, became interim superintendent. The district, in August 2018, offered her a one-year contract. However the State of Arkansas took control of the school district in September of that year, so King-McMurray was forced out of her position and the board was dissolved. The State of Arkansas appointed Jeremy Owoh as superintendent. Once he left to join the Little Rock School District, the state appointed Barbara Warren, effective July 1, 2020, to be superintendent of the Pine Bluff district; she already also served as superintendent of the DSD. In December 2020 the Arkansas State Board of Education ruled that DSD should merge into the Pine Bluff School District as of July 1, 2021; all seven board members approved this. The post-merger Pine Bluff school district is to operate all existing schools from both districts. Accordingly the attendance boundary maps of the respective schools remained the same for the 2021-2022 school year, and all DSD territory became a part of the territory of the PBSD. PBSD took possession of all DSD schools. The Arkansas Board of Education mandated PBSD to keep the Dollarway schools in operation as a condition of the merger. In Spring 2022 the district chose to convert the two middle schools into a grade 7-9 configuration, though previously the plans were to merge them into a single middle school. In 2023, the district consolidated Dollarway High into Pine Bluff High and all middle school capacity into Moorhead Middle.

Boundaries

Effective July 1, 2021, the district's service area includes sections of Pine Bluff, as well as Altheimer, Sherrill, and Wabbaseka. It also includes various unincorporated areas including Hardin, Lake Dick, Linwood, Moscow, New Gascony, Noble Lake, Pastoria, Plum Bayou, Sweden, Tucker, and Wright.

Demographics

In 2002 it had about 6,600 students. In 2012 it had more than 4,279 students, with 84% being classified as low income, 96.77% being African-American, 2.13% being non-Hispanic white, and other racial identities at below 1%. Circa 2015-2016 it had over 4,300 students. In May 2020 the district had 2,921 students, and then in December that year the figure was down to 2,799.

Schools

Secondary schools: Elementary schools: Pre-K schools: Alternative schools:

Closed schools