9 file charter-school letters with state

Groups envision 11 new campuses, some in places that districts closed

Current charter school operators, applicants from previous years and some new organizations have notified the Arkansas Department of Education of their tentative plans to open new charter campuses in 2014.

Nine organizations plan 11 new schools in locations that include Little Rock, North Little Rock, Springdale and Marianna, as well as Crittenden and Mississippi counties, according to one-page letters of intent delivered to the Education Department.

All of the charter school planners have until Sept. 3 to submit detailed applications to operate the schools, said Mary Perry, charter school liaison for the state.

If all planners follow through with the applications - and if approved by the Arkansas Department of Education’s Charter School Counsel - the state could have as many as 28 open-enrollment charter schools and charter-school systems in 2014-15. There will be 17 open-enrollment charters operating in the new school year.

Act 509, adopted by lawmakers earlier this year, makes the Department of Education the designated authorizer of charter schools, rather than the state Board of Education. The agency’s decisions, however, may still be reviewed by the Education Board - but only upon request by the charter-school planners, a state board member or an affected school district.

Two of the planned schools would be in Weiner and Redfield, towns where traditional public schools were recently closed by their school districts despite protests from community members.

Among the sponsors proposing additional campuses are: Lighthouse Academies of Central Arkansas, already the operator of charter schools in Jacksonville and Pine Bluff; Exalt Education Inc., which is affiliated with two existing campuses in Little Rock; and Responsive Education Solutions of Lewisville, Texas, which has three schools in the works for August openings in the Little Rock, Dollarway and Bentonville school districts.

Others proposing schools include Frank Holman, the former superintendent of the Cabot and Lincoln school districts, who is reapplying for a charter school based in Northwest Arkansas; and the OCBA Inc., which previously operated a charter school in Osceola and now is seeking to open two schools - one in Crittenden County and the other in Mississippi County.

The OCBA-sponsored schools would contract with the Magic Johnson Bridgescape Academy to manage the two proposed Arkansas schools, said Sally Wilson of Osceola who is president of OCBA Inc.

The Magic Johnson program, which is operating schools in five other states, would recommend directors for the two campuses, do all the teacher training, and provide curriculum and student tests developed by Edison-Learning.

“We are focusing on the young adult population, ages 18 to 21, who are not finishing school,” Wilson said, adding that the need for educational opportunities to overage students is large. In both counties, the numbers of students who graduate from high school can be hundreds of students fewer than the number of ninth-graders who started with each graduating class four years earlier.

The schools, if granted charters, would offer overage students a year-round, day- and evening-education program. Students could enroll either full or part time, depending on their needs. Instruction would be a blend of classroom work and online study. Students also would have the option of enrolling in concurrent-credit college classes and jobs training at the same time they work toward a high school diploma.

OCBA, formerly known as Osceola Communication, Business and Arts Inc., lost its state charter in March 2011 for an already established charter school in Osceola. The state Education Board determined that the dropout-recovery school had veered away from its original mission.

A piece of property between Little Rock and Pine Bluff is the proposed site for Redfield Tri-County Charter Middle School. The land at 1811 Arkansas 365 North was where Little Rock’s KATV, Channel 7, tower stood before it toppled in January 2011.

Amanda Kight, secretary of the Redfield Tri-County Charter School organization, said school planners intend to lease the land and an existing building on the site, as well as move in portable classroom buildings, to attract middle-school students and eventually high school students from the White Hall, Sheridan and Pulaski County Special school districts.

Planners envision a handson, project-based-learning school, Kight said, that would initially enroll as many as 150 pupils in grades six through eight, and expand over time to the 12th grade and 350 students.

The charter plan was conceived in the aftermath of the White Hall School Board’s decision in January to close the district’s 125-pupil Redfield Middle School as a money-saving measure.

“I hope people are excited about it,” Kight said about the charter school. “We’ll know more after we have our public meetings and we can see how many people show up or have questions. I know a lot of people were wanting something when they first closed the school. We had a lot of interest and people asking what we were going to do.But it’s not an easy task to get [a school] going, and it takes a while.”

Like the Redfield group, the Friends of Weiner organization is proposing the establishment of a charter school in a community that has lost its traditional public school.

The Harrisburg School District voted in December to close the seventh-through-12th-grade Weiner High to provide a wider range of classes and activities to students at the Harrisburg Middle and High School campuses. The board vote to close the Weiner school was upheld by the state Education Board in March.

The proposed Northeast Arkansas School of Agriculture would provide an instructional program that meshes the teaching of national education standards for college and career readiness with the skills needed by agricultural business enterprises. The school would serve up to 250 students in grades seven through 12.

“The purpose of this school is to meet the needs Arkansas agri-businesses face with an aging workforce and a lack of qualified candidates in a rapidly changing and increasingly sophisticated agriculture economy,” charter-school planners Michelle Cadle of Weiner and Greta Greeno of Fisher wrote in the their letter of intent to start a charter school.

“Currently 17 out of every 100 jobs in Arkansas are agriculture-related,” they wrote. “We will equip Arkansas students with the skills and knowledge necessary to compete for these highly advanced, technical skills jobs that will afford them a career that can help sustain the nation’s food and energy supply and boost Arkansas’ rural economy.”

The Friends of Weiner group formed a few years ago to try to save what was then an entire Weiner School District from the annexation to another district when enrollment fell below the state-mandated minimum of 350 students. The group sued in federal court and took other steps in the state Legislature but has been unsuccessful in stopping or reversing the 2010 merger with the Harrisburg School District

In addition to the OCBA, Weiner and Redfield plans, other charter-school plans forthe 2014-15 school year are: America’s Charter School-Arkansas, which would be based in Lincoln but serve up to 500 students statewide in grades eight through 12. Holman, a retired public school superintendent, is the lead planner for the school that would use online technology and project-based learning to provide customized instruction for students “anytime and anywhere.”

Capitol City Lighthouse Charter School in North Little Rock, sponsored by the Lighthouse Academies of Central Arkansas and Senior Vice President Phillis Nichols-Anderson. The college-preparatory school would initially serve as many as 388 students in grades kindergarten through six and expand up to 763 students in five years.

Ozark College & Career Academy in the inner city of Springdale, sponsored by Ozark Education Inc., and Executive Director Christine Silano. The school would start with 108 students and grow to 245 in kindergarten through 12th grades. The school’s features would include one-toone ratio of student-to-digital device and foreign-language acquisition at the elementary school level, and instruction based on a project-based, service-learning model of instruction taught in a traditional classroom and online at the high school level.

Quest Middle School of Little Rock to be located in either the Little Rock or Pulaski County Special school districts. The school, sponsored by Responsive Education Solutions and that company’s legal counsel Chris Baumann, would be a college preparatory school initially serving up to 220 pupils in grades five through eight and expand to the 12th grade and 460 students.

A Fresh Start Charter School in Marianna. Fredonia Bean is listed as the lead planner for the school that would initially serve up to 75 pupils in fifth and sixth grades and would grow to 200 students in fifth through eighth grades. The school would operate from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily and would hold students to high academic and behavioral standards, using individualized instructional programs to produce students who are critical thinkers and problem solvers.

Exalt Academy of North Little Rock Region, sponsored by Exalt Education Inc. Freddie Scott is the listed contact. The proposed school would serve up to 540 students in kindergarten through eighth-grade, starting with up to 240 in kindergarten through third grades. The school would target “under-served” students in the Baring Cross neighborhood to prepare them for rigorous demands of college and careers.

Exalt Academy of Southwest Little Rock, sponsored by Exalt Education Inc. and listing Scott as the contact. The school plan calls for preparing up to 540 pupils in grades kindergarten through eight from underserved communities for competitive colleges and advanced careers with a rigorous liberal arts instructional program.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 07/06/2013

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