An Arkansas Department of Education charter school panel on Wednesday rejected applications for charter schools that were proposed for opening in 2017-18 in Farmington and in Lockesburg.
The Charter Authorizing Panel, made up of top-level Education Department staff members, voted against the proposed Lockesburg STEM Academy after leaders of the sponsoring organization -- JBH Collegiate Academy of Suffolk, Va. -- failed to attend the panel's hearing on the school proposed for Sevier County.
The authorizing panel also turned down the application by Responsive Education Solutions of Lewisville, Texas, for what would be this state's second Classical Academy, in Farmington, the first being Northwest Arkansas Classical Academy in Bentonville.
That proposed school for 688 students in kindergarten through 12th grade called for "a mix of Socratic questioning, inquiry-based instruction, project-based learning, technology-assisted learning and direct teaching," according to the application. Elementary pupils would study Latin and Greek root words. Latin would be taught to middle school students.
State panel members said they were uncomfortable with last-minute changes both in the school's location from Fayetteville to 271 W. Main St. in nearby Farmington and to its list of requested waivers of state laws and rules for operating the school.
That revised list of waivers was distributed at Wednesday's hearing as a means of clarifying what was introduced earlier, a representative of the charter organization said. But Education Department attorney Jennifer Davis told the panel that, after a quick review of the list, she had concerns or lacked clarity about more than a dozen of the requested waivers.
Charter-panel members also had concerns about the Classical Academy application at a time when three of the Responsive Education Solutions' four existing Arkansas schools -- the others being two in Little Rock and one in Pine Bluff -- are underperforming as compared with other schools with similar student populations.
"You have had four charters granted since 2013, so I'm really looking for a piece of data that shows that we are making progress in those," Stacy Smith, the Education Department's assistant commissioner of curriculum and instruction, told Responsive Education Solutions' leaders, who included Superintendent Mary Ann Duncan. Duncan is a former charter-school program manager at the Arkansas Education Department.
"The data that I'm looking at doesn't show that," Smith continued. "Now, it does for the Northwest academy [in Bentonville]. That actually looks very impressive on paper, the scores there. That probably means there are lots of things going in the right direction. On the other three -- you compare their students to schools with the same demographics, all three are struggling -- especially two of them," she said about Premier High School, which is a dropout recovery school in Little Rock, and Quest Middle School of Pine Bluff. The third school, which Smith acknowledged is higher-performing than the first two, is the 3-year-old Quest School of West Little Rock.
Smith said she is looking for Responsive Education Solutions to make its case for a new school on the basis of its Arkansas record and on what it has identified as working and replicable for students at a new campus.
Ivy Pfeffer, assistant commissioner for licensure and teacher effectiveness, said she liked the concept of the classical academy. But Pfeffer said she would prefer that the school planners had conferred with the Arkansas Department of Career Education to develop "solid plans" for career education for high school students. She also said she would feel more comfortable if the Farmington School District had been given more direct notice and time to respond to the plans for placing the charter school within that district.
"I felt there were a lot of surprises here and a lot of uncertainty," Pfeffer said.
Duncan said the planners selected the Farmington location, a vacant grocery store, after failing to find a Fayetteville site that a landlord would reserve until the school charter is approved and the school is opened in August 2017. She said it is difficult to find and hold on to a facility for some 16 months between when a charter school is proposed for approval and when it opens. She told the panel that planners would continue to look for a Fayetteville location if they could be assured that they would be granted a charter.
In regard to the career education, Duncan noted that the school would grow slowly, starting with kindergarten through fifth grades and that it would be about five years before the high school program-- including career education -- would be initiated.
Deputy Education Commissioner Mark Gotcher moved that a decision on the application be tabled until the panel's September meeting. That was defeated.
Greg Rogers, assistant commissioner for administrative and fiscal services, said the organization's application generated a lot of questions from the Education Department staff and a lot of discussion from the panel -- despite the organization's familiarity with the state and the charter-school process.
"They already have the Northwest Classical Academy," he said. "Why isn't this application tailored more to that? Why do we still have all these questions?"
"Why do we have these waivers that were just brought to us today? I feel like they already had their chance," he said, asking what difference would a month make.
The Charter Authorizing Panel's unanimous votes on the proposed Classical Academy in Farmington and the Lockesburg STEM Academy will now go to the Arkansas Board of Education for final action.
The planners for the schools can appeal the panel's decisions to the Education Board. Regardless of whether the planners appeal, the Education Board can choose to uphold the authorizing panel's decisions or elect to conduct its own hearings on one or both of the proposals before making a final decision.
Planners for the two schools also have the option of reapplying next year for opening schools a year later, in the 2018-19 school year. Alternatively, Responsive Education Solutions, which is a large charter school management organization, could apply later this year to open the Classical Academy on the basis of a "license" or addition to the state charter issued earlier for the Northwest Arkansas Classical Academy in Bentonville. That Bentonville campus is beginning its fourth year of operation.
The plan for the Lockesburg STEM Academy -- which would be in the boundaries of the De Queen School District -- called for integrating science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics, according to the application. Other listed features included inquiry-based instruction and an emphasis on design and problem solving. The school would serve 360 kindergartners through eighth-graders and gradually add high school students.
Panel members denied the application, in part because of the absent planners for the school. Additionally, panel members said there were passages within the school's application that appeared to have been copied from applications for schools in one or more other states.
Phone and email messages sent to Michelle Burgess, the chief executive officer and president of JBH Collegiate Academy Public Charter School, were not returned Wednesday.
Metro on 08/18/2016