Schools' building projects unabated

Construction continues Thursday, Jan. 28, 2021 for the new Friendship Aspire Middle School building across the playground from the elementary school in Little Rock.
(Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/Staci Vandagriff)
Construction continues Thursday, Jan. 28, 2021 for the new Friendship Aspire Middle School building across the playground from the elementary school in Little Rock. (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/Staci Vandagriff)

LITTLE ROCK -- The school construction that marked the first 20 years of the 21st century in Central Arkansas is continuing into a third decade, with three charter school projects in different stages of planning and construction.

Academics Plus Charter Schools Inc., one of the state's oldest charter systems, broke ground in late 2019 on what will be the $32 million Maumelle Charter High School at 9701 White Oak Crossing.

Friendship Aspire Academy in Little Rock that has been operating since March 2019 in the extensively renovated Garland School at 3615 W. 25th St., in south-central Little Rock, is building an eight-classroom annex on the property to accommodate its expanding grades -- while simultaneously looking at a southwest Little Rock site for a middle school to open in about 2023.

And the Jacksonville/North Pulaski district's replacement middle school and adjoining elementary school -- on the site of the old high school -- are up and out of the ground with the middle school on target to open to students in August.

The construction updates from the systems were provided at a time of the year when registrations and applications are being solicited from families for enrollment in the coming, 2020-21 school year.

The new Maumelle Charter High is being built on previously undeveloped land, and that resulted in a construction delay, Rob McGill, chief executive for Academics Plus Charter Schools, said in an interview.

"We started construction in November and we're scheduled to begin classes in August of 2022," he said.

That's a year later than originally planned because of the time it took to certify that the 32-acre building site did not qualify for environmental protection.

A cafeteria, an 850-seat auditorium and a gymnasium with seating for 1,560 -- along with 39 classrooms -- will make up the new school that will serve grades eight through 12.

Academics Plus Elementary and Academics Plus Middle schools will remain at the Edgewood Drive site in the heart of Maumelle -- where all three schools now operate -- when the new high school opens.

Friendship Aspire Academy, operated by the Washington-based Friendship Education Foundation, is overseeing the building of an eight-classroom annex across the playground from the school.

The existing building is where kindergarten- through-second graders are on the first floor and sixth- through-eighth graders are on the second floor.

That will change for the coming year. Joe Harris, the national executive director of the nonprofit Friendship Education Foundation charter management organization, said last week.

The new annex will house the middle-school grades -- allowing the elementary school to add third grade in the coming year and grades four and five in the years to follow, Harris said.

Harris said the annex -- to be ready for occupation in August -- is coming in the nick of time.

"We have in our design four classes per grade level in our kindergarten- through- five program," Harris said. "And so next year we will run out of room in the existing building. We are excited about the new annex that will accommodate our middle school."

The single-story annex -- with its classrooms, science laboratory, restrooms and office space -- is being built to match the original building at a cost for everything of almost $3 million.

Sixth-, seventh and eighth graders will go the main building for meals and if library/computer lab time is needed, although pupils will have access to library-type resources on their Chromebook laptop devices in the classrooms.

In all, the Garland campus will have a capacity of about 480.

The Garland School property -- once part of the Little Rock School District -- is owned by KLS LLC and leased to the charter school organization. KLS is affiliated with the Walton Family Foundation of Bentonville.

Plans over time are to move the middle-school grades to a new campus to be built in the vicinity of Baseline and Chicot Roads, Harris said last week.

A separate middle-school campus on spacious acreage will permit greater access to outdoor recreation -- including a soccer field and surrounding track for students who are likely to live in nearby neighborhoods, he said.

Friendship Education Foundation has moved and morphed as the situation called for in opening schools in Arkansas. The foundation received approval in 2017 to open an elementary school in Pine Bluff in the 2018-19 school year and another elementary in Little Rock in 2019-20.

But, when one charter school organization backed out of plans to use the Garland campus in 2018-19, Friendship Aspire stepped in to make use of the space starting with the 2019-20 school year plan. Before that could happen, Covenant Keepers Charter School in southwest Little Rock -- which Aspire was managing -- lost its state charter. Friendship Aspire opened the Garland campus in midsemester to those former Covenant Keeper middle-school students, The school has since been serving middle-school pupils on the second floor and a growing number of elementary pupils on the first floor.

Plans are to ultimately serve four classes per grade level or 80 pupils in each of grades kindergarten through five and 100 pupils in each grade at a new middle school.

As for a third charter school project, Responsive Education Solutions of Texas obtained a Little Rock permit for construction of a 31,000- square foot, single-story charter school building at 3800 Rahling Road. The work is valued at more than $10 million.

That permit was obtained after the state Board of Education's approval in November 2018 on plans to alter the instructional program and expand the grades at what is now the organization's 145-student Quest Academy of West Little Rock, 1815 Rahling Road.

The Quest Academy plan allowed for the addition of kindergarten-through-fifth grades and a gradual transition to a classical liberal arts instructional program at what is currently the sixth-through-12th-grade school with a technology and career-education focus.

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