The Little Rock School District's reconfigured Hall STEAM Magnet High School will open in August without a ninth grade class, just grades 10 through 12, Superintendent Mike Poore has announced.
Poore called the decision to pass on a ninth grade class, which was made last week, a difficult one and not at all a reflection of the school's staff and Principal Mark Roberts.
"It's really a reflection of the timing of the decision and then the pandemic," he said. "As hard as they worked to do the recruiting effort and to highlight what we are going to become at Hall, we just could never get that traction to move forward.
"Bottom line, at last count, we had about 24 students," Poore said.
Those students will be given the option to attend other high schools in the district, he said.
In January, the district announced it would offer courses, internships and related opportunities to students starting in the coming school year in computer applications development, medical practices/health care and media arts.
That announcement of the three magnet themes came after decisions were made in late 2019 to reconstitute the nearly 65-year-old Hall High into a special-program magnet school -- with a focus on science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics, or STEAM subjects.
As a result of the reconstitution, Hall no longer has an attendance zone. It is open to students throughout the district. Pupils completing Forest Heights STEM Academy for grades kindergarten through eight were given first priority to enroll at Hall for the ninth grade.
Current students at Hall have the option to remain at Hall until they graduate.
Roberts, the principal, described for the district's Community Advisory Board last week that he and the school's "all-star staff" of teachers and coaches have surveyed a wide variety of Hall High constituents on what to focus on to promote the school and its offerings to students and their families.
"We want to hit them head on and let families know how their students will flourish at Hall," he said.
The areas of focus include academics, safety and security, athletics -- including e-sports -- and the condition of the building.
"We are going to be putting out an exceptional plan," Roberts said.
Jeff Wood, the chairman of the district's advisory board, said that Hall can't continue to struggle.
"How can we almost guarantee ourselves that we can overcompensate for the setbacks we suffered this spring, and know that we absorbed this hit and be stronger in the 2021-22 school year?" Wood asked.
Roberts said that an improved building, academic rigor and the choices to be offered to students in activities and internships will be attractive.
He noted that the school is only going to use certain parts of the building "to give students exceptional spaces to learn."
He also acknowledged that there will be some difficulty for the school in having to recruit both ninth and 10th graders for the 2021-22 school year.
Wood and Melanie Fox, another member of the advisory board, urged that planning for building support for Hall use the steps taken in converting Forest Heights Middle School into a STEM academy for kindergarten through eighth grades. That included "big parent" meetings, Fox said, adding that the parents were involved in every step of the planning for Forest Heights.
"They truly helped developed and bought into the school," she said. "We have to figure out a way to get parents engaged and we may have to tweak some things based on what they are looking for and what students are looking for."
The school currently last received an F grade from the state based on student scores on state tests, but it has shown some academic growth in the past couple of years. The state will not apply letter grades to schools for the just-ended 2019-20 school year. That's because students did not take the ACT Aspire this spring due to campuses being closed to contain the spread of the coronavirus.