New schools, new goals to mark districts' 2016-17

Third-grade teacher Sadie Jenkins meets Taliya Bradley, one of her students, during an open house Aug. 2 at Scott Charter School at 15306 Alexander Road in Scott.
Third-grade teacher Sadie Jenkins meets Taliya Bradley, one of her students, during an open house Aug. 2 at Scott Charter School at 15306 Alexander Road in Scott.

Monday is the first day of the 2016-17 school year for students in most, if not all, of Arkansas' 235 traditional school districts and for many open-enrollment charter schools.

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A worker moves furniture earlier this month inside Pinnacle View Middle School in west Little Rock, a former office building off Cantrell Road that will open to about 250 sixth-graders when school begins.

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Rob McGill, Academics Plus Charter Schools Inc. executive director, stands near the site where a new high school and gym are being built next to Maumelle Charter Elementary School.

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Counselor Melissa Barber helps with preparations earlier this month at Scott Charter School. Scott and Maumelle elementary charter schools will share some staff members.

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Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Information about Pulaski County schools

In Pulaski County, the 2016-17 school year will go down in the history books as the year that the approximately 4,000-student Jacksonville/North Pulaski School District begins operation totally independent of the Pulaski County Special School District, from which it was carved.

Pulaski County has been home to the big three -- Pulaski County Special, Little Rock and North Little Rock systems -- but now has four traditional school districts as well as multiple public charter-school systems.

Also of historical note in Pulaski County this school year are the unusually high number of new, expanded and repurposed campuses.

Pinnacle View Middle School in the Little Rock School District and Sylvan Hills High Freshman Academy in the Pulaski County Special district are new campuses this year. Jacksonville Middle School is newly ensconced in the former North Pulaski High School campus.

Additionally, LISA Academy-Chenal elementary school, part of the LISA Academy charter system, and Scott Charter Elementary in the Academics Plus Charter Schools Inc. system are new schools this year in repurposed buildings.

Academics Plus Charter Schools Inc. also has enlarged significantly its Maumelle elementary campus. And, as previously reported, the Little Rock Preparatory Academy's charter middle school campus is newly located at 6711 W. Markham St.

Only the North Little Rock School District -- which has been building and opening schools for the past three years as part of the state's largest-ever capital construction project for schools -- is not opening a new campus this month. But the district is putting the finishing touches on North Little Rock High School and upgrading North Little Rock Middle School.

Pinnacle View

Pinnacle View is a three-story, angular office building-turned-Little Rock district school at 5701 Ranch Drive that could make a geometry teacher swoon.

The almost pyramidlike building off Cantrell Road features a black-brick and tinted-glass exterior, a central octagonal rotunda anchored with a working water feature and irregularly shaped classrooms. It will open to about 250 sixth-graders coming from Roberts, Fulbright and Terry elementary attendance zones.

Days before the start of classes, the racial makeup of the student body was 40 percent black, 40 percent white, and 20 percent Hispanic and other.

The former headquarters of Leisure Arts, a craft-manual publishing company, is just a temporary home for the middle school. The district is converting the adjoining and almost equally sleek-looking warehouse into a permanent northwest Little Rock school for at least 1,200 sixth- through eighth-graders. That space, which is almost a quarter-mile long, will ultimately be two stories and exceed 200,000 square feet.

Jay Pickering, who until last spring headed Bryant High School, is the Pinnacle View principal. He's excited about what he says will become the "Taj Mahal" of schools but equally enthusiastic about this school year and the assembly of 19 "superstars" for a faculty.

"I've worked with great staffs in my tenure, but I truly believe this is the best faculty in the state of Arkansas," Pickering said of the blend of new and veteran teachers. Among them is the district's current Teacher of the Year Emma Mateo, a special-education teacher who is a native of the Philippines. She previously worked at Otter Creek Elementary.

The school will offer eight, 45-minute class periods a day. Students will take math, English, social studies and science, as well as a semester each of physical education and keyboarding; a "wheel" of exploratory courses in art, music, Spanish, college and career readiness; and two electives.

Those elective choices include Environmental and Spatial Technology or EAST Lab, choir, band, gifted education seminar and a foreign-language course that will include a semester of Spanish and a semester of Latin, French and German.

"We are building the foundation for a liberal-arts education," Pickering said.

Students will have a set of textbooks to keep at home and will make use of classroom sets of textbooks and Chromebook laptops while at school.

Most Pinnacle View classrooms are not standard rectangles. They are 1,000 square feet or more, and many have rows of large windows that allow in natural light. The carpeted rooms with their new desks and chairs also will be equipped with 60-inch interactive televisions.

The first floor, fronted on the west side of the building, includes administrative offices, the computer laboratory, special-education classrooms, and classes for most of the core academic courses. Dining tables furnish what was the office building's glass-ceiling foyer. School meals will be carried in from the kitchen at nearby Roberts Elementary.

The second floor has rooms for elective courses and social studies. The third floor mostly will be unused except for a particularly large space that is reserved for indoor physical education, and a large conference room with a Shinall Mountain view for faculty meetings. The building has an elevator, but students in general will use two stairways. Like the sun, Pickering said, pupils will "rise" using the east stairway and descend using the stairs on the west side.

As for outdoor recreational space and parking, the school has plenty of room.

"We have more parking than Disney World," Pickering said.

LISA Academy-Chenal

The LISA Academy charter system's first school was a converted doctor's office building.

Its second campus was once a big-box store.

For its new 600-seat kindergarten through sixth-grade elementary school off Bowman Road, system leaders acquired a former multiscreen movie theater that was more recently a private technical college. The school is at 12200 Westhaven Drive in Little Rock.

The fact that the space has been an educational space made this summer's conversion of the building to an elementary school relatively easy, LISA Academy Superintendent Atnan Ekin said. Ilker Fidan, the former LISA Academy High School principal, is the leader of the system's newest school. The school has a staff of 38, consisting of 24 new hires to the charter school system and 14 employees from the other two LISA campuses.

Ekin said LISA-Chenal received more than 1,500 student applications. Just days before Monday's start of school, 618 pupils had been accepted and more than 1,000 were on a waiting list. A sampling of the enrolled students shows, 109 pupils live in the 72204 ZIP code area, which is south-central Little Rock. The next-largest group of 96 comes from the 72211 ZIP code surrounding the school location. There are 62 from the 72205 ZIP code midtown area and 55 from the 72209 ZIP code in southwest Little Rock.

"We are trying to reach out to all communities," Ekin said. "We are a diverse school environment, and we have students from all over central Arkansas," he said.

The student body is 48 percent black, 15 percent Hispanic, 14 percent white and 23 percent other, Fidan said.

LISA Academy emphasizes math and science education, foreign languages, academic competition, and home and school communication. The new elementary will teach Spanish and Turkish in grades four through six. Kindergarten through fifth-grade pupils will have one main teacher all day. Sixth-graders, housed in their own part of the building and provided with lockers, will change teachers and classrooms for the different courses. They will have eight, 45-minute class periods.

The one-level school has 22 classrooms, including four kindergarten rooms and six sixth-grade rooms, plus a computer laboratory, art room, teacher workrooms, library, dining room and offices. More than 200 Chromebook laptops have been purchased for student use, in addition to the 30 computers in the computer lab. The Chromebook numbers will increase over time, Ekin said.

A portion of the ample parking lot has been fenced in for play and physical education. There is space reserved for basketball courts and a soccer-playing area.

Maumelle Charter Elementary

What started in August 2001 as a single, humble campus of portable buildings for fourth and fifth grades in the heart of Maumelle, Academics Plus Charter School has become a newly expanded and restructured school system for 2016-17.

Academics Plus Charter Schools Inc. is now the name of the system that's made up of campuses in Maumelle and in the Scott community in east Pulaski County. The schools no longer bear the Academics Plus name but are labeled Maumelle Charter Elementary School, Maumelle Charter High School and, opening this year, Scott Charter School.

The portable buildings and the one-time strip of businesses that made up the Maumelle charter school in the early days are disappearing to accommodate the 950 students permitted by the state charter for the Maumelle campuses. That number can grow to 1,300 by 2020, said Rob McGill, Academics Plus Charter Schools Inc. executive director. There is a waiting list of about 650.

Since 2011, Maumelle Charter Elementary has been housed in a newly constructed 19-classroom, two-story, rock-brick-veneer building. The school opened last week for the 2016-17 school year with a 16-classroom expansion and a new 300-seat cafeteria at 900 Edgewood Drive in Maumelle. The three-story addition of about 28,000 square feet cost $4.5 million, McGill said.

The new classrooms are housing grades four through eight -- but only until a new matching three-story high school is completed and becomes the home for sixth through 12th grades.

Demolition and site preparation for the new $17 million high school and gymnasium are well underway, with the steel to come out of the ground in November, McGill said. The system sold 25-year bonds to raise the money for its buildings, creating a nearly $2 million-a-year debt payment.

The little strip of businesses, including the old Lolita's TexMex restaurant that was behind the original charter school's cluster of portable buildings, is being chipped away to make room for the new high school.

A portion of the business strip and a few of the tan-colored portables with their awnings are still being used to house this year's high schoolers. But several of the old portables -- 10 classrooms -- have been moved to Scott for use in future years.

Scott Charter School

The new Scott Charter School, to serve about 162 pupils in one class per each grade, kindergarten through six, is housed in a 1950s-era single-story, flat-roofed school at 15306 Alexander Road in Scott. It's a 20-acre campus that the Pulaski County Special School District closed after the 2014-15 school year because of low enrollment and the expense.

Diane Gross, formerly the principal at the Maumelle Charter Elementary, is the principal at the Scott campus. The school will add grades -- some to be housed in portable buildings -- over time. The state-approved enrollment cap is 975.

The school will feature an agricultural-science theme, starting this year with classroom gardens, and will work in partnership with area organizations, some of which are close by, Gross said. The school is across the street from the Scott Plantation Settlement and around the corner from the Plantation Agriculture Museum.

"Innovation is what we are supposed to do in charter schools," Gross said. "We are to explore what we can do differently. The focus of the school is one way, and another way is curriculum and making changes and having the teachers being involved in those changes. I want to explore the ways to improve the learning of children."

Gross was able to hire an experienced staff last spring. Sadie Jenkins, for example, joined the staff after previously working in Hawaii schools, although she is an Arkansas native. Fourth-grade teacher Elizabeth Peper moved from El Dorado to work at the Scott school.

Scott and Maumelle elementary charter schools will share some staff members -- particularly in art, music, physical education and Spanish. There is no shortage of grassy fields for outdoor recreation -- traces of an ancient football field can be made out in the back of the school. One end of the cafeteria features a spacious and elevated wooden-floor stage framed by a deep-red curtain. That's where music will be taught. Elvira Paschal will teach Spanish at both campuses.

The school, which started classes last week, is open from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. as a way to accommodate working parents, Gross said. There is no charge for the before- and after-school-care programs.

Parent Constance Dodson lives in England. She enrolled her first- and third-grade daughters at the Scott school, which is on her way to work.

"I saw the sign, and I thought 'Maybe we should try it. Maybe we can get some advanced learning,'" Dodson said about her interest in the new school. Her children, she said, often would return home and say "'It is boring at school.' I don't think they were being challenged."

Sylvan Hills Freshman Academy

The Sylvan Hills Freshman Academy enrollment of up to 500 ninth-graders at 10020 Bamboo Lane in North Little Rock is the result of an ever-growing enrollment at Sylvan Hills High School in the Pulaski County Special district.

The Freshman Academy will ease overcrowding at the high school, which now will serve grades 10 through 12.

District leaders spent the summer refreshing what was once Northwood Middle School and most recently a one-year home to Jacksonville Middle School.

Derek Scott, executive director of operations, said about $750,000 has been spent so far to demolish a small stage to expand the cafeteria, lower hallway ceilings, install LED lighting, install luxury vinyl tile flooring in common areas, paint inside and out, strip the gym floor and add a parking lot.

"It's a complete metamorphosis for a building that was about to die," Scott said about the school, adding that there are plans for further improvements to classrooms and a new roof.

Jacksonville Middle School

Jacksonville Middle School, a campus of the new Jacksonville/North Pulaski School District, has a new home in the former North Pulaski High School.

Last school year, the Jacksonville Middle School was temporarily in the Pulaski County Special's old Northwood Middle School after it was determined that the long-standing Jacksonville Middle School at 1300 School Drive in Jacksonville was no longer satisfactory. That School Drive campus is to be torn down to make room for a new Jacksonville High School.

Phyllis Stewart, chief of staff in the new Jacksonville district, said district employees worked this summer to move high school teachers, supplies and furnishings out of what had been North Pulaski High and move in the teachers, supplies and equipment for the middle school at 718 Harris Road in Jacksonville.

"We didn't get to complete a lot of freshening-up projects that we wanted to do," Stewart said.

"But it's been cleaned up. There's a lot of things we want to do. We want to paint and other things that we just haven't had time to do yet."

She said the middle school's open house last week was well attended.

"I think the middle school parents are just glad that they are where they are going to be for a while," Stewart said.

A Section on 08/14/2016

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