FAYETTEVILLE — Owl Creek School could become the Fayetteville School District’s fifth open enrollment school.
John L Colbert, assistant superintendent, presented the proposal to the Fayetteville School Board Thursday, suggesting it was a way to ease crowding at the district’s other schools on the west side as well as increase capacity at Owl Creek.
Washington and Leverett elementary schools were the first schools in the district to initiate open enrollment plans as a way to bolster enrollment. Both schools had a low enrollment at that time, about five years ago.
Since, Happy Hollow and Asbell elementaries have been added as open enrollment schools, meaning students can attend those schools even if they don’t live in those attendance zones as long as the open school has room.
The proposal will be voted on at the Aug. 22 meeting of the school board, which occurs three days after the start of the new school year. Colbert said the proposal would take affect this school year, if it is approved.
Owl Creek has an enrollment of 821 students in prekindergarten through seventh grade. As an open enrollment school, it would help relieve crowding at Holt Middle School and Holcomb Elementary School.
All three schools are on the west side of the district.
Owl Creek, at 375 N. Rupple Road, was built with a capacity for 950 students, 600 on the elementary school and 350 on the middle school side.
Justin Eichmann, a board member, said the extension of Rupple Road south to Martin Luther King Boulevard could open up a large area for development which could change the school’s population over the next few years.
Chris Brown, Fayetteville’s city engineer, has said the extension is planned to begin in late 2014. The street now dead-ends on the south side of the school building.
The board also approved an application to the Arkansas Department of Education for a $60,000 grant to support the district’s program to assist homeless students, under the McKinney-Vento Act. Generally, homeless students are considered to be those who don’t have a fixed or regular nighttime residence.
Christy Jay, the district’s federal programs coordinator, said the district applies for the federal grant every three years and supplements that money with federal poverty funding and local revenue. The grant is administered by the state Education Department.
The district served some 285 students and their families identified as homeless last school year, Jay said. The district spent $102,722 on the program, including grant and other funding.