The 2019-20 school year will go down as a milestone year of big changes for the 15-year-old LISA Academy charter school system.
Not only is the Little Rock-based system authorized for the first time by the state to serve 3,000 kindergarten-through-12th graders, but it's also opening its first campus in the northwest part of the state and is just weeks away from occupying a newly constructed, 60,000-square foot middle and high school in Sherwood. With the purchase of land, technology and furnishings, the secondary-school building project is valued at $15 million.
"We call it a 'smart school,'" Fatih Bogrek, charter system superintendent, said recently of the facility that has risen in the era of electronically intuitive "smart" phones, watches, televisions and refrigerators. "We are going to use the highest technologies and innovations," he said.
The new LISA Academy-North campus is part of a school building boom in Pulaski County, including in Sherwood.
The Pulaski County Special School District is completing a greatly expanded Sylvan Hills High School academic building that will open to Sherwood-area students in August. Pulaski County Special's new Wilbur Mills High and Robinson Middle schools, along with a repurposed Mills Middle School, opened this just-ended school year.
The Jacksonville/North Pulaski School District, which is just north of Sherwood, is nearing completion of its new Jacksonville High and will start soon on a new middle school. To the south, the Little Rock School District will open the new Southwest High School in 2020 on Richsmith Lane and Mabelvale Pike. Little Rock is home to the 3-year-old Pinnacle View Middle School, which is in a remodeled warehouse. North Little Rock High's almost all new campus is less than 5 years old.
Then there is eSTEM Public Charter Schools Inc., which has opened three new schools in the past two years in Little Rock. Academics Plus Charter School has also constructed new academic buildings in Maumelle.
The new two-story LISA Academy-North middle and high school with its electronic wall boards; computer, medical, chemistry and engineering labs; and its full-sized gymnasium stands in contrast to the current campus, which is a former big-box electronics store on Landers Road.
The former shopping center space has, up until now, served 800 students in kindergarten through 12th grades. It will undergo about $600,000 in renovations this summer to better serve 700 kindergarten-through-fifth-graders in the coming years, Bogrek said.
The new L-shaped middle and high school for 550 students is on LISA Academy Way, formerly Briley Road. The building with its exterior of gray brick and gray metal panels all trimmed in red is to the south of the existing campus.
"Expansion was inevitable," Bogrek said, noting what has been limited space for the combined elementary, middle and high school programs and a yearly waiting list for student enrollment of about 2,000.
The two-story-high cafeteria that features a north wall of floor-to-ceiling windows makes up the corner of the building's L-shaped footprint.
The school spaces that will be used for "loud" activities -- a two-story-tall gymnasium and the art, music and engineering laboratories -- also two stories high -- make up the short section of the L shape, Muammer Guven, director of technology and facilities, said about the building design.
The gymnasium with a row of windows near the ceiling of red rafters and one side of permanent bleachers for 520-student capacity will do double duty as an assembly room or auditorium thanks to a portable stage and a large pull-down screen.
The long leg of the L includes the school's two-story-tall glass-fronted entry. There is a wide central stairway and an elevator to the second floor there, as well as access to the first-floor administrative offices.
Most middle school grade classrooms with their projectors and sensors that turn a length of wall into an electronic interactive screen for teaching lessons are on the school's first floor.
The second-floor classrooms are primarily for the high school students, Guven said. The counselors' offices and the teachers' workroom are also on the second floor.
The classroom hallways are lined with red student lockers. All but one classroom have windows for natural light.
Teachers -- particularly English teachers -- will have classroom libraries, and students will have access to digital materials, Bogrek said. While the elementary campus has a designated library/media center, the new building does not, he said.
The school will feature a half-size outdoor soccer field. The new campus also will feature the national Project Lead The Way programs in engineering, medical fields and computer science with the goal of ultimately offering four courses in each of those three fields.
LISA Academy schools emphasize the STEM subjects of science, technology, engineering and mathematics along with academic competitions.
"STEM is a shortage area in the nation so we want to attract more young people to engage in STEM activities and to go into these kinds of majors when they go to college," Bogrek said.
LISA Academy's approach has had success in terms of state-issued grades that are based largely on ACT Aspire exams from the spring of 2018 and 2017. The LISA Academy-North middle and high schools have A grades, and the elementary has a B.
Bogrek said the state letter grades, higher-than-average salaries for teachers and enough computer devices for every student have come despite the charter system spending about $8,000 per student, less than many of the traditional schools in Pulaski County spend. In 2017-18, the average per-student expenditure in Pulaski County's four traditional public schools was $11,553.50 compared with the LISA Academy's $7,824, according to the state's Annual Statistical Report on school districts.
The LISA charter school system pays a base salary of $41,000 a year to teachers in the hard-to-find, critical-need subject areas of math, English/language arts, science, special education, and computer science, Bogrek said. For teachers in other fields, the starting salary is about $37,000 for a 190-day contract, he said.
As for the funding for new school building, the LISA system issued bonds that will be paid off over 20 years and acquired two $500,000 grants -- one from the Arkansas Public School Resource Center and the other from the Walton Family Foundation of Bentonville, Bogrek said. WER Architects/Planners of Little Rock designed the building. Clark Contractors is the builder.
Metro on 05/28/2019
CORRECTION: The LISA Academy-North school campus at 5410 Landers Road will undergo about $600,000 in renovations this summer. The Little Rock School District’s new Southwest High School will open in 2020. The remodeling cost and the opening date for the two schools were incorrect in an earlier version of this story.