It's a trend that combines ideas in education--higher, elementary and in-between--that need to catch on all over the state. For they would seem to combine the best of the old with the most promising of the new. No, this welcome trend doesn't include some of the best ideas that have been around for ages, like learning a foreign language, preferably a classical one like Greek or Latin. But this trend does recognize that education is a continuing experience, not one that ends with being awarded a diploma, however deserving of respect or not. This time, this good idea is taking physical form in the new eStem Public Charter High school rising on the campus of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
What's eStem stand for? Economics, science, technology, engineering and math, which means it pretty much covers the waterfront where a technical education is concerned. Now if it could only be matched by similar effort in the humanities, the way the old Bronx High School of Science mirrored the offerings of Boston Latin to become the premier combination in an elite American education.
One can understand the pride that John Bacon, the CEO of eStem, takes in showing the press and public around the newest public open-to-all charter high school on an urban public university's campus in this state. At the same time, he, too, must recognize that it's not the buildings that make an education but what goes on inside them. But this structure sounds like a fine blend of 20th-century pumpkin-orange brick and 21st-century shiny black metal and tinted glass.
"To us it's very unusual," Mr. Bacon says. "When we started talking about this, we couldn't find anybody that had this--particularly this setup." But after they'd finished talking and started building, outside walls would become inside ones, just as they did at the Arkansas Arts Center. For eStem's new-old campus' main entrance features long white pendant lights whose glow can be appreciated by the passing traffic, while its spacious classrooms replicate the classrooms in the university's old Larson Hall, one of UALR's original structures.
CEO Bacon says the bricks of the old building "were impossible to match. Pumpkin brick has changed over the years, apparently. I said I didn't want it to look like we tried to match it and didn't." Better to let the new eStem set its own style rather than make a botch of trying to revive an old one.
The new landmark is due to be turned over to its staff and faculty by the end of this month. "We're on pace to get there," says Mr. Bacon. "It's moving fast."
This new campus, built by Eco Construction Inc., is coming in at a cost of some $13.5 million by Mr. Bacon's estimate. Which is a bargain compared to some of the new high schools rising elsewhere in the state's centrally located and most populous county. The new high school at Jacksonville, for example, is costing taxpayers about $63 million to serve 1,400 students. And the Pulaski County Special School District is building a brand new high school (Mills) that is to serve some 750 students, which will cost $50 million. But new eStem High doesn't need a cafeteria, kitchen, and library, not to mention its own athletic fields.
The aginners we will always have with us, and in this case they're typified by the Little Rock School District's dog-in-the-manger politics, for it still objects to the grand plan to bring new hope to central Arkansas students, some of them from the poorest families in the state. Who's putting up the money to make this vision a reality? Much of it will come in the form of a non-interest loan from the always generous and far-sighted Walton Family Foundation of Bentonville, a loan that is to repay that $13.5 million in installments over the next two decades.
Here is an unusual expression of confidence and hope in this state, but scarcely unique to Arkansas. Of course, Arkansas Baptist College, a small private college near downtown Little Rock, sponsors a charter school for students who are having trouble graduating. But LSU in Baton Rouge runs University Laboratory School for kindergartners through high school seniors. Western Kentucky University at Bowling Green has Gatton Academy of Mathematics and Sciences, a residential school for juniors and seniors in high school on its own campus. And so on, all testimony to what the best educators can accomplish if they're allowed to set their minds and hearts on it.
Editorial on 07/26/2017