A Little Rock charter school has been operating in violation of a city zoning permit since the beginning of the school year, according to the Planning Department.
The LISA Academy in west Little Rock opened its doors in 2004 and has been increasing its enrollment ever since. Little Rock officials say the increase of more than 190 students last fall put the school over the limit set by the city’s Planning Commission.
The fate of those 190 students is in the hands of the Little Rock Board of Directors as it schedules a public hearing to rule on an appeal from the school’s leadership to increase the enrollment cap to 800 students. The board will vote May 7 to schedule a hearing date for May 21.
If the board votes to deny the appeal, Little Rock City Attorney Tom Carpenter said, the school will be left with few options - move to another location or decrease enrollment to the 600-student cap.
“The city has the power to say we do not approve your site plan. If we do that, they’re going to have to not have more than 600 students, or they’ll have to move,” he said. “What we would hope is that any institution that calls itself an educational institution would have no issues obeying the law.”
School officials and an attorney representing the school declined to comment Wednesday.
LISA Academy, which enrolls students in grades six through 12, is in two buildings at 21 Corporate Hill Drive, near Interstates 430 and 630 off West Markham Street.
The school’s leadership got approval in April 2012 from the state Board of Education to increase the enrollment cap from 600 to 800 students. The school then began accepting additional applications and increased its enrollment to 790 as of the beginning of this school year.
According to a special zoning permit, which allowed the school to build and open in a commercially zoned district in 2004, the city capped the enrollment at 600 in 2011 because of concerns for traffic on neighboring streets.
School leaders have appeared before the Planning Commission several times since 2004 to update the stipulations of the conditional-use zoning permit, including a request for a temporary classroom building, approval for construction of a building for middle-school grades, and approval to increase the height of that building from 40 feet to 70 feet, according to Planning Commission records.
During the 2011 request to enlarge the middle-school building, the Planning Commission added the enrollment cap of 600 because of traffic concerns.
The Planning Department said this week that on some days, during after-school pickup times, cars are backed up for several blocks to West Markham Street and access to residential side streets or businesses is blocked.
School officials returned to the Planning Commission in March, after several deferrals, to ask for an amendment to the zoning requirements that would allow 800 students at the facility.
The Planning Department recommended the allowance, saying that the school must:
Stagger dismissal times for the high school and middle schools by about 30 minutes.
Notify parents of the staggered times and request their compliance.
Use the front and rear parking lots to line up additional vehicles
Maintain a travel lane wide enough for emergency vehicles on Corporate Hill and Executive Center drives.
Provide employees to monitor and implement the traffic plan.
Several area business owners spoke in March against allowing the increase, saying they had lost business and were inconvenienced by the traffic. One business owner said a courier service would not stop at his office between 2:45 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. because the employees felt it was unsafe.
The commission voted 7-3 to deny the school’s request.
Atnan Ekin, the chief executive officer of the LISA Foundation, told the commission that the decision to add more students came down to money and the school would be in a tough financial position without the increase, according to the March 7 commission meeting minutes. Ekin said the school would have asked permission before the increase if the school had known it was a requirement.
Under Little Rock zoning rules, the city can’t cap enrollment at a school in an area zoned for schools. But because the charter school wanted to build its facilities in a commercially zoned neighborhood, the conditional-use permit allows the commission to set some restrictions.
“This hearing is really an appeal of the Planning Commission decision, which has a limited scope. If they have new ideas on how to handle the traffic concerns, it may be that it would be sent back to the Planning Commission or it could be denied,” Carpenter said.
Tony Wood, the deputy commissioner of the Arkansas Department of Education, said the contention seemed to be between the city and the school. He said his department was not aware of the details of the dispute.
“I’m carefully stating my opinion that those are two separate issues,” he said. “I don’t think there is anything that would allow the state Board of Education decision [allowing the enrollment increase] to take precedence over the local zoning issues.”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 04/25/2013