BEEBE — When Badger Academy was first getting its start, it was graduating one, maybe two, students per year. Now the Beebe Public Schools alternative-learning program is on track to graduate 12 seniors, and its director is proud of every single one of them.
“The parents trust me, and the kids trust me,” said Keith Madden, director of alternative learning for the Beebe Public Schools.
Madden has been over Badger Academy for the past seven years. Badger Academy is for seventh- through 12th-graders who are behind in school, were considering dropping out or who need extra help. Some students may get behind because of moving around a lot, mental-health issues or other circumstances relating to their home life, Madden said.
According to the Arkansas Department of Education, alternative education is a “nontraditional opportunity for intervention that some students participate in for ultimate academic, social and emotional success.”
Badger Academy students utilize Virtual Academy Arkansas, an online school, and the academy also offers Second Chance, which allows those who have dropped out an opportunity to go back to school and receive their diplomas. There are 52 students at Badger Academy; when it first began, there were about 20 or so.
Badger Academy students eat together in the morning, have a period on social skills and are still able to participate in school events and activities, such as sports.
“I have students who come in the morning to do their online, and in the afternoon, they have a job,” Madden said. “It allows them to work 30, 32 hours a week, still take care of business at home, maybe help parents or help themselves and still get their high school diploma.”
For a time, Badger Academy was located separately from Beebe High School and now has a wing in the high school building. The academy has four full-time teachers.
“We were off campus, and we had to bring kids up here for lunch and take them back, and we’d leave them up here for the electives and stuff,” Madden said. “So we went before the charter board last summer, and we asked, ‘Could we move over here?’ That’s helped me. I can see more students and catch them up and down the halls way before I could in the past.”
Madden said it’s important to him that every Badger Academy student is treated fairly, which he joked is sometimes good and bad.
“I’m not focused on just the ones that I know will make it; it’s the ones that I feel like are going to fall through the cracks,” he said. “No matter if they were a behavioral problem or life issues or arrested, I feel like it’s my job to come in and be like, ‘It’s going to be OK. You made a mistake. You made a bad choice. Let’s let that go. Don’t do it again, and let’s do better with our life.’”
At any given moment, Madden said, he can expect a phone call from parents or a knock on his door from students. If a student is absent, he said, he or she can also expect the same from him.
“If you don’t wake up and come to school, I’m going to call you. I’m going to call your parents. I’m going to get a resource officer, and we’re going to show up at your door because I want you at school,” Madden said. “I always talk to my parents about things like that. I had one today. I had a new student enrolled, and I said [to his mother], ‘Is that a problem?’ and she said, ‘No, sir.’”
Cari Rector, who has been a special-education teacher with Beebe High School for 12 years, is in her first year of special education at Badger Academy. She said that although she was nervous to join the academy at first, it is like family.
“I was really nervous when I saw it on my schedule, but I was in there for a day and realized that was my home. That’s where I needed to be, and I love it,” said Rector, who also coaches track and cross country. “I’m hoping to be there full time next year, and I told him that, and he knows. The care for the kids is outstanding, and it makes the kids feel wanted because most of our kids, they don’t have the greatest home life, if a home life at all. When they come to us, we’re their family, and we’re the adults that can be role models to them. We’re the adults that care about them.”
Rector said that not having alternative-learning programs would be detrimental to students who need help with their academics and emotional states.
“I just think that if districts didn’t have the alternative-learning environment, that so many kids would be lost, and we would lose those kids to drop out, and then it would just be a vicious cycle where they’re getting in trouble with the law and not having jobs when they get older,” she explained.
Rector also said there aren’t “bad kids” at Badger Academy. The “bad kid” label is also one Madden hopes people will abandon concerning their views of alternative-learning programs.
“Badger Academy is not for bad kids, and that’s what a lot of people think, that ‘Oh, it’s the alternative school; those are the bad kids,’” Rector said. “No, these are the kids that need love. They’re the kids that just need a little help. They need people to care about them, and they need people to realize that they’re not bad kids at all. They just learn differently, and they’re great kids who can be successful.”
Madden said he’d like to share Badger Academy’s model with the state so more schools might implement Badger’s structure.
“When I get to the point where I don’t love coming to school and working with kids and smiling and giving them high-fives and talking to them, that’s when I’ll do something different,” he said.
Staff writer Syd Hayman can be reached at (501) 244-4307 or shayman@arkansasonline.com.