New Pine Bluff High School site plans appear to be light at the end of the tunnel for struggling district

PINE BLUFF, Ark. – As the school year wraps up, Pine Bluff High School students are walking the halls of their decades-old buildings for the last time with a new and improved school soon to be in the works.

Back in August, Jefferson County voters passed a millage increase for the district. PBSD is now using the revenue from that increase to build a new high school.

Cracked foundations and run-down buildings are hard to miss as you pull up to the current high school campus which has been in place since the 1960s and 70s and has faced minimal updates ever since.

The new proposed site plan serves as a light at the end of the tunnel for many students and teachers. It shows new school buildings, sports facilities, an auditorium, media center, high-tech rooms for specialty classes and security systems at the entrance.

Students John Thompson and X’Zaveun Sims pushed for new buildings and facilities, meeting with people to receive feedback and advocating prior to the special election for the millage increase.  However, neither will ever actually experience it firsthand.

Both are set to graduate before the project is expected to be done, with Thompson currently a senior and Sims a junior. They feel their efforts will have a lasting impact on not only this community but the next generation.

“We need it,” Sims said. “We need to do it. If we sit here and stay with the status quo and not change it, we’ll never make progress.”

“I will never probably walk the halls of that building, but I advocated for it because I want my community to succeed,” Thompson said. “We deserve to.”

The new school will be built where this old campus is now.

Administrators said demolition will begin in June, and they hope to be done building in 2026.

Until then, the high school students will be in the one building staying in place on campus that appears to be in the best shape.

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