State board sets hearings for 2 charters

3 school districts approved to receive state-law waivers

The Arkansas Board of Education voted Thursday to conduct hearings in July on plans by Little Rock Preparatory Academy to move its middle school to a new location and by Haas Hall Academy to open a new high school in Springdale.

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http://www.arkansas…">State Board of Education notebook

The board agreed to the hearings at a meeting in which it also approved charterlike waivers of some state laws and rules for three traditional school districts -- Clarendon, Malvern and Poyen.

The state Department of Education's Charter Authorizing Panel in May had approved the new location for the academically struggling Little Rock charter middle school and voted down a proposal to replicate Fayetteville's A-graded Haas Hall Academy at the Jones Center for Families in Springdale.

The decisions of the authorizing panel -- made up of top-level Education Department staff -- are sent to the state Education Board. The Education Board can either accept the panel's decision on a charter school or choose to conduct its own hearing on a proposal before making a final decision.

Tina Long, superintendent of the Little Rock Preparatory Academy, said the board's 6-1 vote for a July hearing was disappointing but, if the plan is approved then, school planners can still accomplish the move in time for the start of the school year in August.

"We want the board to be fully comfortable with the decision they make," Long said.

Little Rock Preparatory Academy has focused on serving low-income, academically struggling students at two locations -- a kindergarten-through-fifth-grade school at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral on Spring Street and sixth- through eighth-graders at 4520 S. University Ave.

School leaders are proposing to move grades five through eight to 6711 W. Markham St. to a building that formerly housed Christ Lutheran High School and the short-lived Urban Collegiate Charter School. The new site is in a more affluent part of the city, farther north and west of the current middle school. The new site includes science labs, a gymnasium and green space -- features not available in the current middle school that is shared with Promiseland Church Ministries. The new site would serve up to 180 pupils.

Education Board member Jay Barth of Little Rock made the motion to hold a hearing "because of our unique situation of the state being in control of the Little Rock district and because we recognize that changes in locations can have an impact on student enrollment patterns."

Little Rock Preparatory had requested approval for the move earlier this year, just weeks after the Charter Authorizing Panel and the state Education Board approved the hotly debated multiyear expansion of the eSTEM and LISA Academy charter-school systems in Little Rock by almost 3,000 seats.

Little Rock Superintendent Baker Kurrus and others affiliated with the school district didn't take a stand on the Little Rock Preparatory Academy plan. But, they argued, the LISA Academy and eSTEM expansions would be detrimental to the state-controlled Little Rock district because those particular charter systems draw more affluent, high-performing students, leaving the district with fewer resources to educate larger percentages of high-needs students.

Martin Schoppmeyer Jr., founder and superintendent of the Haas Hall Academy campuses in Fayetteville and Bentonville, had proposed opening a third school at the Jones Center for Families in Springdale.

The Charter Authorizing Panel denied the proposal in May, citing concerns about a lack of student diversity, past lottery selection practices and a tight timeline for opening a new 500-seat school for seventh through 12th graders in August.

On Thursday, Mark Henry, an attorney for the charter organization, said that the charter school planners had received an agreement from the Jones Center to hold the space open for a new school in 2017 rather than this year. Henry asked the Education Board to reconsider the proposal in light of the change in the opening date.

He also asked that the board consider the amended proposal rather than the authorizing panel, saying that the panel's reasons for denying the plan "were not supported by law."

Henry said that Haas Hall Academy's use of the Jones Center site is an effort to increase the racial and ethnic diversity in the Haas Hall Academy system. The center is "a bright, shining beacon in Northwest Arkansas" for a wide array of people of different races and ethnicities, he said.

The Arkansas Board of Education on Thursday approved requests from the Clarendon, Malvern and Poyen school districts for five-year waivers from some state laws and rules pertaining to school operations.

Act 1420 of 2015 permits the Education Board to grant to a school district the same waivers from state laws and rules granted to open-enrollment charter schools that draw one or more students from a school district.

The 510-student Clarendon district requested and received waivers of state laws and rules on teacher licensure, instructional time and student attendance. The waivers, in part, will support the district's plan to add four career-focus programs at the high school, bringing the total to seven. The new programs will be in health sciences, public safety, teaching and sales. The waivers will enable the district to employ instructors for some of those non-core academic courses who have four-year college degrees but do not have state teacher licenses.

Additionally, the waivers on mandatory instructional time and student attendance will enable students to enroll in other educational programs, serve in apprenticeships or seek employment to offset their future educational expenses. The waivers are a preliminary step to converting the high school into a School of Innovation in 2017-18, said Kathy Tanner, the high school's co-principal.

The Malvern district received waivers of state-required instruction time of six hours a day, 30 hours a week for high school students. The waivers will enable the district to offer flexible scheduling for juniors and seniors who have at least a 2.5 grade point average and want to participate in post-secondary courses, job internships or employment in lieu of taking traditional elective courses.

The Poyen district received waivers of laws and rules regarding licensed teachers, student instructional time, student attendance requirements for high school students and counseling services. The waivers will enable the high school to provide personalized learning programs for students by allowing them to complete required course work in less than the standard six hours a day and 30 hours a week and to use the resulting time for college or technical education courses, jobs and internships.

The Poyen district also plans to hire technology experts who are not licensed teachers to assist the district's library/media specialist. The nonlicensed staff would assist students and staff in using technology resources.

All three districts are seeking waivers based on the fact that one or more of their students is enrolled in the Arkansas Virtual Academy.

Approval of the waivers for the three districts brings to 36 the number of Arkansas districts to receive waivers, Mary Perry of the state Department of Education said.

Metro on 06/10/2016

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