New middle school ready for Monday
Quest Middle School of West Little Rock, a state-approved, open-enrollment public charter school, is ready for the school year to begin.
About 180 sixth- through eighth-graders are signed up to attend classes at 1815 Rahling Road.
The school operators were scrambling last week to finish and furnish the building that was an empty shell this past spring.
"We're a go for Monday," Chris Stevens, the founding campus director, said Friday.
The school is asking parents to send lunches with their children for the first two weeks of class so that the lunchroom space can be completed.
Campuses waitingfor Chromebooks
The Forest Heights and Geyer Springs school campuses in the Little Rock School District are opening Monday with new purpose but without Chromebook computers for pupils in third through fifth grades.
Forest Heights, a former middle school, has been converted to a kindergarten through eighth-grade school that will emphasize instruction in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
Geyer Springs, a former traditional elementary school in the district, is being converted to a gifted and talented education academy.
The programs at both schools feature one-to-one student-to-computing device ratios, or they will once the backlog of Chromebook orders is resolved.
Judge OKs closedoffice's spending
U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. last week did a final bit of business regarding the Pulaski County Magnet Review Committee, approving expenditures for the office that permanently closed this summer.
"No party has objected to the Magnet Review Committee's 2013-14 expenditures and proposed distribution of its remaining funds. The court approves both," Marshall said.
The committee was made up of representatives of the three Pulaski County school districts, the state Department of Education and the Joshua intervenors who represent black students in a 31-year-old school desegregation lawsuit. Donna Creer was the executive director for the committee until her death in 2013.
The committee and its staff set policy and did student recruiting for the six original magnet schools in the Little Rock School District. The schools offer special academic programs that are intended to attract black and white students from across Pulaski County to voluntarily desegregate schools that would otherwise be difficult to desegregate.
A January settlement in the long-running case calls for the interdistrict student transfers to the magnet schools to be phased out. The Magnet Review Committee has been disbanded as a result.
"The Committee has shepherded the interdistrict magnet school program since its implementation in 1987," Marshall wrote. "The various Committee members and staff have worked hard and well. The Court extends its thanks and appreciation."
Metro on 08/17/2014