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Mountain Home Public Schools staff would get up to 12 weeks of paid parental leave under policy changes the school board considers Thursday.
The board meets at 6 p.m. Thursday, July 16, in the Administration Building Board Room. Two agenda items update the district’s personnel policies, and both include parental leave language for teachers and for classified staff such as aides, cooks and custodians.
The leave covers the birth of an employee’s child, the adoption of a child under age 1, or the foster placement of an infant under 1. Workers on leave are paid at their normal daily rate. The policy applies to full-time employees who have worked for the district for more than a year.
The district writes the benefit as parental leave, available to both parents, rather than maternity leave alone. Its own notes say that choice guards against sex-discrimination claims, though the state reimburses districts only for maternity leave costs.
The classified version of the policy was recommended by the Arkansas School Boards Association to match state rules. The same Section 8 update also changes the classified salary schedule, a move the district says gives leaders more flexibility to fill high-turnover jobs and sets clearer expectations for when a new employee’s first paycheck arrives.
Campus safety spending
Separately, the district’s most recent financial report shows it has been spending on school safety upgrades through a state grant.
June records show about $49,000 in State School Safety Grant spending, including a camera upgrade at the high school along with network cabling and installation work. The list also includes about $8,000 for microphones tied to “Eli’s Law.”
Eli’s Law, passed by the Arkansas Legislature in 2025 as Act 908, requires public schools to install audio recording devices in locker rooms and changing areas by the 2027-28 school year. Lawmakers passed it in response to reports of bullying and abuse in those unsupervised spaces. Mountain Home appears to be getting ahead of that deadline.
The district also keeps police officers on its campuses. Records show it paid the Mountain Home Police Department more than $53,000 this spring for school resource officers, with an officer assigned to each of its seven buildings over about a two-month span.
