Lynch Drive Elementary School in the North Little Rock School District will permanently close in June, which is a year earlier than what was originally scheduled in the district’s capital improvement plan.
Most, if not all, of the children now assigned to Lynch Drive on Alpha Street in the Rose City area of North Little Rock will be reassigned to the new Meadow Park Elementary School in August. Many of the Lynch Drive staff members will also move to the new school on Eureka Gardens Road.
The North Little Rock School Board approved closing the campus without discussion Thursday at a meeting in which it also approved leasing War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock for North Little Rock High School home football games, but tabled adecision on converting four of the district’s schools into newly state-authorized “schools of innovation.”
Rosie Coleman, the district’s director of elementary education, told the board that closing Lynch Drive “is a little bit bittersweet” in light of accolades the school has received this year for its academic improvements.
The University of Arkansas at Fayetteville’s Office for Education Policy recently named Lynch Drive as the state’s most improved elementary school for its gains on the Benchmark literacy test and seventh most improved elementary school for its gains on the Benchmark math exam. In literacy, the school went from 21 percent of its pupils scoring at proficient or better in 2006-07 to 74 percent of pupils scoring at proficient or advanced this past school year.
District leaders first raised the possibility of closing Lynch Drive earlier than planned last November and have spent the intervening time planning for that and meeting with school faculty, parents and community members.
Closing the Lynch Drive campus will save the district money in operating costs while filling up what would otherwise be a half-empty, brand new school, Coleman said.
The new Meadow Park school will have the capacity to serve 533 children, including 60 prekindergarten students. The current Meadow Park building - next door to the new building - serves only 192 children. Lynch Drive currently has 309 pupils.
Closing Lynch Drive has been part of the district-wide capital improvement plan, which calls for reducing the district’s 21 campuses to 13 schools, most of which will be newly built or extensively remodeled. Construction of a new Meadow Park was one of the first projects.
The new 67,600-square foot building, which will cost $13.9 million, is 56 percent complete now and is expected to be ready for occupancy in July.
New attendance zones for the elementary schools are being developed and are expected to go to the school board in June for approval. Those new lines will determine whether all Lynch Drive pupils will be assigned to Meadow Park or whether a few will be assigned to Glenview Elementary, said Micheal Stone, the district’s director of student services.
Superintendent Kelly Rodgers said after the board meeting that closing Lynch Drive will save the district several hundred thousand dollars in utilities and other operating costs.
The building will either be sold or repurposed for other use in the district, he said.
The capital improvement plan is also the reason for renting War Memorial Stadium for North Little Rock High School spring football practice and for four “home” games against Pine Bluff, Mountain Home, Marion and Little Rock Central in the 2014-15 season. There are also provisions in the lease for any playoff games at the end of the season.
The district will pay $4,000 a game to rent the stadium, which is also the traditional home field for Little Rock Catholic High School.
The high school’s stadium has been demolished and will be rebuilt as part of the plan for extensive remodeling and additions to the North Little Rock High School, West Campus. The school currently serves grades 11 and 12 but will house grades nine through 12 when the $110 million project is done.
The board tabled a request to authorize applications for Lakewood Middle, Lakewood Elementary, Crestwood Elementary and Indian Hills Elementary to be designated as “schools of innovation” by the Arkansas Education Commissioner Tom Kimbrell for the 2014-15 school year.
The new law permits a committee of teachers, parents, community members and students at a school to seek waivers of state laws and rules for carrying out educational programs that will engage students and promote achievement. The plans must be approved by the school faculty and the local school board before they are submitted to the education commissioner by May 1.
Beth Stewart, the district’s assistant superintendent for learning services, said the general plans would be more fully developed once approved by the commissioner and then be returned to the school board for final approval.
One of the features in each of the plans for the North Little Rock schools calls for native language support and some instruction for new students to the district who are non-English speakers. That support would require a waiver of a state law that makes English the official language for the state.
The district staff got no further in describing other features of the school plans. Board member Dorothy Williams balked at the prospect of voting on the proposed plans handed out to the board Thursday without more time to read and consider them.
And board member Darrell Montgomery argued that based on his reading of the law and rules, once a school-of-innovation plan is submitted to the commissioner and approved, the board would not have another opportunity to consider more fully developed plans.
The district would be obligated for four years to carry out what the state commissioner approved, he said.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 04/18/2014