LITTLE ROCK — The LISA Academy charter school in west Little Rock cannot add elementary grades to its middle and high school program, the Arkansas Board of Education decided Monday.
The Education Board voted 6-2 against the expansion plan after raising concerns about below-par achievement levels of black and low-income students in high school math.
The state board, whichshut down one Little Rock charter school last month and denied a request to double the enrollment at a charter school in Maumelle in February, voted against the LISA expansion at a time when the state of Arkansas is easing some restrictions on charter schools.
State lawmakers this month passed Act 987 that allows the state cap on the number of charter schools - now 24 - to automatically increase by five each time the number of charters operating in the state approaches the cap.
And the new Act 993 increases the maximum renewal period for charters. Charter schools that successfully complete five years of operation can seek a renewal of the charter for 20 years, up from the 5-year renewal period in the past.
On Monday, LISA leaders asked the state board for permission to expand the sixth- to 12th-grade campus to include fourth- and fifth-grades and to increase the student enrollment cap from 600 to 800.
But the high school program at LISA is on “alert” status right now because black students and students from low-income families have failed, on a three-year average, to meet the state’s minimum achievement requirements on End of Course exams in algebra I and geometry.
If the two subgroups don’t meet the state target after testing this spring, the school will be placed on the state’s list of academically troubled schools in need of improvement.
“We have lots of data that shows our high school education program is a quality program,” Cuneyt Akdemir, superintendent of the public but independently run charter school that opened in 2004, told the Education Board.
As indicators of the school’s quality, Akdemir pointed to the college-placement of the academy’s recent graduates, the above-average student success rate on Advanced Placement exams andthe school’s ACT college-entrance exam scores that are above the state average.
“Using only last year’s [test] data is not a fair way to judge our complete high school program,” Akdemir said, adding that the school is working hard to meet the state requirements, also known as making adequate yearly progress.
That is being done at least in part by increasing tutoring sessions from two to at least three a week in math and in literacy.
Charity Smith, assistant commissioner for academic accountability, told the board that the school had fewer than 40 black students or low-income students in each tested grade a year. Forty is the minimum number of students to constitute a sub-population of students to assess achievement in the group.
To make that assessment, Smith said the state has U.S. Department of Education approval to average the performance of the small groups over a three-year period. That calculation resulted in the identification of the LISA high school program as failing to meet achievement standards.
LISA, which is currently limited to 476 students because of lack of classroom space but is building a new high school building to open in August, has a 30 percent black enrollment. About 26 percent of its students qualify for free or reduced-rate school meals because of their low family incomes.
Board member Ben Mays of Clinton questioned whether the LISA Academy is providing a strong instructional program or is benefiting from a disproportionately high-income student body as compared with the enrollment in surrounding traditional public school districts.
“I’m saying that it’s mostly a difference in socio-economic status,” Mays said. “They have done a good job of going into an urban area and assembling a group of students on the high end of the socio-economic-status scale. If I compare their scores to other schools with similar socio-economic status, there’s not much difference.
“If they say they are making a difference with different sub populations of students, I’m asking for the proof,” he said.
Board members voting against the expansion were Mays, Jim Cooper of Melbourne, Brenda Gullett of Fayetteville, Sam Ledbetter of Little Rock, Alice Mahony of El Dorado and Vicki Saviers of Little Rock. Those who favored the plan were Sherry Burrow of Jonesboro and Toyce Newton of Crossett.
The state board’s vote to hold off expansion at the LISA Academy comes in the wake of its vote in March to immediately shut down the Little Rock Urban Collegiate Public Charter School for Young Men, just about 5 miles east of the LISA Academy, because the Urban Collegiate school was projected to end the year with an illegal quarter-of-amillion dollar deficit.
In February, the Education Board denied a request by the Academics Plus Charter School in Maumelle to double its 650-student enrollment cap to 1,300 because of some academic achievement concerns and the school’s failure to meet racial ratio goals included in its charter with the state.
The state board last month did vote to allow the e-Stem Elementary Public Charter School in downtown Little Rock to grow by more than 25 percent from 360 to 462 pupils beginning with the 2011-12 school year.
The board took the action against the LISA Academy at a meeting Monday where it also accepted the voluntary surrender of the Little Rock School District charter for the Felder Learning Academy.
Morris Holmes, the interim superintendent of the Little Rock district, said the district anticipates saving $1.2 million by discontinuing the operation of the Felder Academy that was started in 2005 as a joint project of all three Pulaski County school districts and the Pulaski County government. The school was designed to serve students who were being adjudicated in the juvenile justice system or had serious behavior problems in regular schools.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 04/12/2011