The growing interest among parents wanting to enroll their children in Friendship Aspire Academy Pine Bluff campus led school officials to draw up plans for a second elementary campus in the city.
The first hurdle toward establishing a second campus was cleared, Friendship Aspire Schools Deputy Superintendent Virginia Henry said, when the Charter Authorizing Panel of the Arkansas Department of Education approved the charter school system's proposal earlier this week. The state Board of Education must give final approval before the Friendship system can proceed with adding a campus at 700 S. Main St., and Henry said that a vote could take place in the middle of August.
"With the school on Hazel Street, we have a waiting list of 91 students, so we're seeing an increase in the number of students," Henry said. "By adding a campus for prekindergarten through third grade in downtown Pine Bluff, we just thought it would be good to have a school close to the library to give parents who work downtown or plan to work downtown, or close to it, an opportunity to give their children a first-class education in the middle of downtown Pine Bluff."
That waiting list has grown within a month's time. When Friendship first presented its proposal to the panel in June, Henry said there were 72 students on it.
Panel members tabled Friendship's request in June and asked system officials to submit the amendment request to Pine Bluff School District Superintendent Barbara Warren, since the campuses are located in that zone.
The Friendship system operates charter schools in Little Rock and Pine Bluff, including the Pine Bluff elementary campus at 3911 S. Hazel St. and Friendship Aspire Academy Southeast Campus (formerly Southeast Arkansas Preparatory School) at 1501 W. 73rd Ave. The system is seeking an amendment to its charter by increasing the enrollment cap from 480 to 880 for its elementary grade levels, increasing the cap at the Hazel Street school from 400 to 450 for the 2021-22 school year and increasing it again to 580 for 2022-23.
The new campus, which would open in time for the 2022-23 school year, would house up to 300 students, reaching the total of 880.
Under the proposal, Friendship would institute a "slow growth" rollout plan for the Main Street campus, educating prekindergartners and kindergartners in 2022-23, and then adding first grade in 2023-24, second grade in 2024-25 and third grade in 2025-26. That would enable students in kindergarten through fifth grade to attend the Hazel Street campus.
The Southeast Campus will be open to high school juniors and seniors for 2021-22 and seniors only in 2022-23, but it will begin another rollout plan with sixth grade in 2023-24 and add on a grade each following year.
"We agreed to acquire the Southeast Campus so that those who attended Southeast Arkansas Prep had a chance to graduate," Henry said. The state Board of Education revoked Southeast Arkansas Prep's charter at the end of the 2019-20 school year, citing financial problems, lack of transparency and failure to provide special education services, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. The school had opened in time for the 2018-19 school year.