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If Sherwood-area schools break away from the Pulaski County Special School District, the new school district would be the state’s 16th-largest by enrollment, according to a feasibility study commissioned by Sherwood public school advocates.
The proposed Sherwood School District would serve roughly 4,600 students and include nine schools: Cato, Clinton, Harris, Oakbrooke, Sherwood and Sylvan Hills elementary schools; Sylvan Hills Middle School; Sylvan Hills Junior High; and Sylvan Hills High School.
The Pulaski County Special School District served about 11,500 students in the 2025-26 school year, according to Arkansas Department of Education data, meaning the proposed Sherwood district would reduce its enrollment by roughly 40%.
Representatives of the Sherwood Public Education Foundation, established more than a decade ago to pursue detachment, announced the borders of the proposed district at a news conference Tuesday at The Venue at Oakdale in North Little Rock.
“The residents deserve this, the kids in this community deserve this, the educators deserve this,” Noah Treat, a foundation board member, said at the news conference.
The foundation says the feasibility study shows the creation of the proposed district “would cause no harm” to the Pulaski County Special School District and would not change its racial composition dramatically.
The new Sherwood School District would be roughly 32.5% white, 49.2% Black and 8.8% Hispanic, according to the study.
The remaining schools in the Pulaski County Special School District would be 31.9% white, 45.9% Black and 12.0% Hispanic if Sherwood exits, it says.
The foundation also says the Sherwood community has the financial means to support the proposed district. The study says the district’s assessed property tax base of more than $960 million would be larger than many Arkansas school districts with comparable enrollment, and nearly three times that of the Jacksonville-North Pulaski School District when it split off from the Pulaski County Special School District about a decade ago.
In 2013, parties in a long-running desegregation lawsuit in Little Rock-area schools were nearing agreement on a plan to phase out state funding that supported desegregation efforts in the Little Rock, North Little Rock and Pulaski County Special school districts. Groups in Sherwood and Jacksonville both were exploring the possibility of splitting off from the Pulaski County district. In 2014, presiding U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall approved a plan that allowed Jacksonville to split off but stopped Sherwood from doing the same as long as the Pulaski County district remained under federal court supervision.
Five months ago, court supervision finally came to an end after 43 years. Marshall declared the Pulaski County Special School District unitary in February, and the Sherwood Public Education Foundation announced plans to push for separation. The group said it had commissioned an update to its study, first completed in 2014, to demonstrate the feasibility of splitting off.
The study says Sherwood is the largest Arkansas city without its own school district and that the Sherwood community first voted to form its own school district in 1926, but failed due to a “petition technicality,” based on county records.
“Neighborhood schools where communities embrace the education of all their children are more efficient and effective,” the study says. “School facilities can be used more easily by the community, and the community can be more easily incorporated into school activities.”
The foundation will hold a public town hall at 6 p.m. July 21 at The Venue at Oakdale to discuss the proposal.
