District To Explore Bentonville Charter School

BENTONVILLE — The School District intends to explore the possibility of opening its own charter school.

Judy Marquess, district director of instruction, is forming a committee that will look into converting one of the district’s buildings into a charter school that emphasizes science, technology, engineering and mathematics — commonly grouped together by the acronym STEM — with an additional focus on the arts.

“STEM education has been a movement across the country for a while,” Marquess said. “As a nation we’ve recognized we are not graduating as many students with those specific skills as we need to. Along with that, in the last few years, there have been schools that have embraced (STEM) through the arts.”

At A Glance

Charter Schools

There are 35 charter schools in Arkansas, including five in Benton and Washington counties. They include:

• Benton County School of the Arts, Rogers

• Haas Hall Academy, Fayetteville

• Lincoln High School New Tech, Lincoln

• New Tech High School, Rogers

• Northwest Arkansas Classical Academy, Bentonville

Source: Staff Report

The committee will consist of about 25 people including district administrators and teachers. This will be the first time the district has seriously considered opening a charter school.

Charter schools are public schools that operate without some of the regulations traditional public schools must follow.

There are two kinds of charter schools in Arkansas.

An open-enrollment charter school is run by a governmental entity, an institution of higher learning or a tax-exempt nonsectarian organization. It can draw students from anywhere in the state.

A conversion charter school is a traditional public school converted to a charter by a school district. It can draw only students from within that school district’s boundaries.

The Rogers School District opened New Tech High School this fall with 300 students. Northwest Arkansas Classical Academy, an open-enrollment charter for grades kindergarten through eight, also opened this fall in Bentonville. The academy, run by a Texas-based organization, had 403 students as of Oct. 1.

Seeing that the community supports such educational options was encouraging, Marquess said.

“We’ve become more aware it’s possible to do this kind of thing,” she said.

Marquess, Mary Ley and Galen Havner initiated the conversation about a conversation charter school, Marquess said. Ley is communications director and Havner is human resources director for the district.

“The freedom that a charter gives to do some different things would make it appealing for a lot of people,” Havner said.

The STEAM concept — that is, STEM with an A added for arts — is “the right thing at the right time,” Havner said.

Paul Stolt, a third-grade teacher at Central Park Elementary School, said he was excited to be asked to serve on the exploratory committee. He said he has long wanted to see Bentonville open a charter school.

“I think we’re at one of those points in education where we have to start creating environments that are more tailored to the needs of the student instead of the people who create assessments,” Stolt said. “Kids are not so easily taught in ways they have to sit, take in the information and regurgitate it.”

If the School District decides to pursue a conversion charter school, the earliest it could open would be the fall of 2015, Marquess said.

The district would be required to submit a letter of intent to the state Department of Education by next August. Its application would be due two months later. Then the state would hold hearings on the application in early 2015.

If the state approved Bentonville’s application, it would provide the district a $10,000 startup grant for the charter.

No school has been identified yet for possible conversion, Marquess said.

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