The Arkansas Charter Authorizing Panel on Tuesday endorsed plans for a fifth Haas Hall Academy charter school campus, this one in Fort Smith and affiliated with the private Arkansas Colleges of Health Education.
The state charter panel favored the plan for up to 500 seventh-through-12th grade students at a meeting in which it also supported:
• The five-year renewal of the state-issued charter for the Haas Hall campuses in Fayetteville, Springdale, Bentonville and Rogers, including an increase in the overall enrollment cap from 2,000 to 2,500.
• A location change for the Premier High School of Fort Smith that will open next August.
• Merging the existing Premier High School of Little Rock and Premier High School of Fort Smith under the same state-issued charter, adding a new Premier High satellite campus in Texarkana to the charter, and calling the three-campus system the Premier High Schools of Arkansas.
The decisions by the Charter Authorizing Panel are subject to review by the Arkansas Board of Education before they can be considered final.
More details will be in Wednesday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.