LITTLE ROCK — Nonprofit groups have applied for seven new charter schools to open in six Arkansas cities in the 2012-13 school year.
The Arkansas Board of Education must now decide whether to approve the proposals for open-enrollment charter schools in Little Rock, Jonesboro, West Memphis, Texarkana and Marianna, as well as in Osceola where two new schools are envisioned.
Five of the proposed schools would serve high school students. Two would serve either elementary or elementary and middle school pupils.
Three of the proposed schools — high school dropout recovery programs planned for Jonesboro, West Memphis and Osceola — are sponsored by Osceola Communication, Business and Arts Inc., which in March lost its state charter for an already established charter school in Osceola.
Sen. Jack Crumbly, D-Widener, a sitting legislator who is also a former superintendent of the Earle School District, is listed as the founder of another of the schools — one planned for 200 high school students in Marianna.
A Texas charter-school organization proposes one of the seven schools.
The other six are homegrown.
If all seven of the new applications are approved by the state Education Board at meetings later in the academic year, the number of state-issued charters — or contracts — for the publicly financed, independently operated schools would grow from 17 this year to 24 in 2012-13.
The number of charters has been capped at 24 for several years. But Act 987, passed by lawmakers earlier this year, removes the “hard” cap on the charter numbers and puts a governor, or a check, on it, said Scott Smith, director of the Arkansas Public School Resource Center.
The new law states that once the number of state-issued charters is within two of the charter cap — be it the current 24 or another number — the cap automatically increases by five.
The applications for new schools come at a time when the Little Rock School District is accusing the state Board of Education in federal court of approving charter schools in Pulaski County without taking into account the effects the charter schools have on racial-desegregation efforts in the three Pulaski County school districts.
State lawyers have asked that the legal challenge be dismissed. Legal briefs on the issue are due in February and a preliminary hearing is set for March.
ADJUDICATED YOUTHS
Crumbly proposes a charter school that would serve students ages 14-19 from St. Francis, Lee, Phillips and Monroe counties who have been in legal trouble and are assigned to the school by juvenile justice judges.
The proposed title of the school is the STRIVE Institute of Technology, with STRIVE being short for Special Training in Remedial Instruction and Vocational Education.
“This would give them a second chance to get their lives back — an opportunity for skills training and a job,” Crumbly said about the targeted students for the school. “That’s what this school is about. Once we put them in a smaller classroom environment and show them some tough love — the operative word there is love — I think they will respond, and we can save a lot of them.”
The school would offer a morning academic program in which students would work toward either a high school diploma or a General Educational Development equivalency certificate. In the afternoons, students would learn marketable skills through an “intense” career and technical skills development program.
The school would be located in the former Anna Strong Elementary School building in the Lee County School District based in Marianna.
Plans call for the superintendents of the nine traditional school districts in the four counties to serve in an advisory role to the charter school.
Crumbly is not a member of the board of directors for the proposed school and he said he would not be the school’s administrator.
THREE DIPLOMA SCHOOLS
Osceola Communication, Business and Arts Inc. is proposing three charter “Diploma Schools.” The campuses in Jonesboro and West Memphis would serve up to 300 students each in grades 11 and 12. The Osceola campus would serve up to 200 students in grades 10 through 12.
The organization previously established a charter school in Osceola, but the state Education Board revoked the charter, effective at the end of the 2010-11 school year, after determining that the 3-year-old school had veered away from its stated mission.
“We changed the organizational arrangement for the Diploma Schools to keep that from happening again,” Sally Wilson, the organization’s spokesman and a board member, said last week.
“Four years ago we planned for each charter school in what was to be a charter-school system to have its own governing board. That didn’t work. We turned the school over to a new governing board and the nonprofit board stepped aside to begin working on a statewide model. We let go too quick,” she said.
“The nonprofit board still needs to oversee what is going on at each campus. There will be an advisory council at each site, but the council won’t make decisions about the direction of each school. That will stay with the nonprofit, as it should.”
The purpose of the proposed diploma schools would be to provide educational services to young people not now on track to graduate, including those who have already dropped out. The application points to the state’s high school class of 2010 as an example of the need for the diploma schools. The 2010 class had 28,845 graduates but started the ninth grade with 38,937 members, a difference of about 10,000.
Most classes at the diploma schools would be held in the afternoons, evenings and on Saturdays. The schools would feature a 40-week calendar made up of seven semesters of up to six weeks each.
Students could earn a halfcredit toward graduation in each of three courses in a sixweek session, and up to 10 full units of credit in one year. At least 22 credits are needed for high school graduation in Arkansas.
The academic program would be a blend of live teaching and lessons delivered via different kinds of technology. “Flipped classrooms” would be a feature of the school. Students would watch prerecorded video of course lectures in labs with a facilitator. Classroom time with the teacher would be reserved for discussion of the video content and solving questions and problems.
The diploma schools also would partner with area secondary career and technical schools and colleges to provide tuition-free training in workplace skills and concurrent college credit to the students. Character education, civility and good discipline would be another feature of the schools.
A SECOND OSCEOLA PLAN
The proposed Arkansas Academy of High Learning, sponsored by Arkansas Academics Inc., would serve as many as 400 pupils in kindergarten through eighth grade at a site next to the Mississippi County Courthouse in Osceola.
Earnest L. Frye Jr. of Blytheville is the operating officer for the organization that is proposing a school that would place an emphasis on literacy, writing and foreign language.
Pupils would spend up to an hour a day studying a foreign language through the use of Rosetta Stone computerized instruction materials. Cursive handwriting would be taught starting in the first grade. Journal-writing, quick writing, creative writing, and paragraph and essay writing would also be emphasized
The proposed academy would partner with the Civil Air Patrol, which is a civilian arm of the U.S. Air Force, to provide pupils with training in leadership, physical fitness, aviation, technology and community service.
ENGLISH AND SPANISH
The KidSmart Bilingual Education Academy would serve pupils in kindergarten through fifth grades in southwest Little Rock, starting with 200 in kindergarten through third grades and ultimately growing to an enrollment of 600.
The school is being planned for what is now used as a day-care center at 3516 Base Line Road.
Tiffany Pettus, a former public school teacher and now a language interpreter, will be the director of the school that would teach literacy and numeracy in both English and Spanish, and would place an additional emphasis on health, physical education and character education.
The school would serve children whose first language is Spanish as well as those who speak English.
“In our schedule, students will have reading classes in both languages, and rotate academic units in English and Spanish,” the application states. “Students will be taught to master both languages while also learning new curricular material.
“For example, secondgrade students might begin learning about how multiplication is a form of grouping in math one week in English and, the next week, they will add to that concept by matching math problems to manipulatives while discussing it with their groups in Spanish.”
The school would feature a longer-than-typical instructional day of 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., and a school year of four 10-week quarters. The school year would begin in July.
TEXAS SUCCESS
The Premier High School of Texarkana is being proposed for up to 200 students in grades nine through 12 by Responsive Education Solutions of Arkansas and Charles Cook of Lewisville, Texas.
The school would target young people who have dropped out of school or are at risk of dropping out to help them achieve a high school diploma.
The organization is a branch of the ResponsiveEd organization that operates the largest system of independently run charter schools in Texas, with about 50 schools serving 9,000 students, according to the application.
The proposed Arkansas school, to be located on the third floor of the Legacy Building on State Line Avenue, would feature personalized, self-directed and accelerated curriculum options. Instruction will include the use of emerging technology and there would be a 1-to-1 ratio of students to computers.
The application cites the organization’s success in Texas where 81 percent of Hispanic students in ResponsiveEd schools met state standards compared with 74 percent of Hispanic students statewide. And 78 percent of black students in ResponsiveEd schools met standards as measured on state exams compared with 67 percent of black students statewide.
In its application, the Premier High School organizers request a waiver of state requirements for teachers and administrators to be given annual contracts.
“Premier High School of Texarkana will employ all employees on an at-will basis,” the application said. “This means that employment with Premier High ... is voluntarily entered into, and the employee is free to resign at will, at any time, with or without notice or cause,” the application said. “Similarly, Premier High ... may terminate the employment relationship at will, at any time with or without notice or cause, as long as there is no violation of applicable federal or state law.”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 09/05/2011