Paron community seeking approval for charter school

Supporters of the effort to establish a charter school in the Paron community reminisced at the former Paron Elementary School. Carlie Carreon helps her son, Brantley Carreon, 1, and her friend’s son, Jase Rostan, 3, as they look through some books left in the old school library.
Supporters of the effort to establish a charter school in the Paron community reminisced at the former Paron Elementary School. Carlie Carreon helps her son, Brantley Carreon, 1, and her friend’s son, Jase Rostan, 3, as they look through some books left in the old school library.

PARON — The Paron community will go before the state Department of Education later this month for approval of a charter school. Paron consolidated with the Bryant School District about 10 years ago. The last high school class to graduate was in 2006, and until last year, kindergartners through fifth-graders were able to stay in their community and attend the elementary school.

Last spring, Bryant decided to close Paron Elementary School because of a lack of funding, officials reported, saying the vote for the 2-mill tax-rate increase failed.

Following the closure, Bryant Superintendent Tom Kimbrell asked whether there was interest in establishing a charter school. Jamie Mullins, founding member of the Paron Community Trust, founded in 2007, said now that “the dust has settled,” the community would like to have the charter-school option. The PCT is the sponsoring entity of the charter-school application.

“Since it would have not been for the next school year, families were scrambling to figure out what they were going to do, so there was little focus on the charter school at the time the board announced the closure,” Mullins said. “With time to secure the campus, take a breath and look to the future, the charter-school subject surfaced again as a possibility to have the campus used for a school again and avoid long bus rides [for the students].”

When the elementary school closed, parents of the 70 or so students could choose from Bryant and Perryville elementary schools. The bus ride from Paron to Bryant is about 42 minutes; the bus ride from Paron to Perryville is about 20 minutes.

If the charter-school process is approved, K-5 students would return to the school they once knew.

In a rural community like Paron, Mullins said, schools are often the “hub of activity.” It’s easier for parents to participate in their children’s activities when the school is nearby, she noted.

“Parental participation is very important to a child’s education, and having students closer to home makes it easier,” she said.

Mullins pointed out the opportunity for jobs in the community if a charter school is established.

“The charter school, by concept, is a school of innovation, and that is what is being developed to present to the Department of Education and the Paron community,” she said.

The school would focus on providing hands-on learning with internet-accessible virtual classrooms to give children a chance to learn at their pace close to home, Mullins said.

“Many families moved to Paron due to the solid reputation of the school, and the charter school is a way to bring that back.”

There is a concern that if the school is approved, there won’t be enough students to fill it because parents who didn’t want their children to travel on the long bus route have moved from the area, Mullins said.

“The biggest hurdle is going to be having enough students [for the school] to be viable. Families have had to make tough decisions, including moving, to make participating in their child’s education more doable,” she said. “They won’t be coming back. Many still within the community have made other arrangements, and if their children are doing well and they are making it work, they may not want to uproot them yet again. We are looking at catching the kindergartners and growing from there.”

The Paron Community Trust will go before the education department’s Charter

Authorizing Panel on Thursday.

“We have submitted the application and responded to questions and requests for clarification, and after we present on the 18th, we have been told that we will be notified the day after whether we will be approved for the 2017-18 school year,” Mullins said.

There are four open-enrollment charter applicants and five possible spots to fill, but that doesn’t mean all applicants will be approved.

If the application for Paron’s charter school is approved, Mullins said, the next step is to secure enough students to get the classrooms rolling.

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