Art Charter Seeks Grant for Curriculum Showpiece

ROGERS -- Changes contingent on a new grant, a move for school offices and names for the school's empty positions filled the agenda for Arkansas Arts Academy during Monday's School Board meeting.

Mary Ley, chief executive officer, reviewed a grant application with school board members that will be the foundation for a partnership between the art charter school, the Walton Family Foundation and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. The preliminary details will allow the charter to add two positions dedicated to creating an art-infused curriculum and a grant administrator. Board members created the three positions during Monday's meeting and voted to fill them along with 15 other employee changes.

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Arkansas Arts Academy

Arkansas Arts Academy, formerly Benton County School of the Arts, is an arts charter school based in Rogers. For more information visit www.arkansasartsaca…

The board also approved moving offices to 1110 W. Poplar St. in September. There will be no increase in monthly rent, Ley said. One-time moving and cabling costs will be about $11,000, Ley said. The move will make the office more parent-friendly and more central, she said. It also will relocate offices to suite A with a green door, the image and logo color adopted by the board in July.

The board reviewed a parent survey lauding teachers and small class sizes. The parent wish list included better communication, retaining teachers, more college track classes and more art.

Many of those parent wishes will be granted as part of a grant from the Walton Family Foundation, Ley said.

Any grant goals should be reasonable, achievable and measurable, said David Russell, school board president.

The grant's goals include development of an arts-integrated curriculum to serve as a national model. It calls for test scores that outperform local school districts in reading and math in kindergarten through eighth grades and end-of-course exams at the high school level. Half the parents will visit Crystal Bridges with their children. A couple of graduates each year will enter top 100 schools and 89 percent will go to college. It would require four partnerships by Jan. 1 with at least one being with Crystal Bridges.

Ley told board members that the University of Arkansas, Trike Theatre, and Arkansas A+ are partnerships in development now. There will be others, she said, and more grant applications.

"Watch out everybody, here we come," she said.

The award is still unofficial, said Galen Havner, who the board hired Monday to oversee the grant.

Teachers need a coach too, he said. The two other positions that are part of the grant will coach teachers. That curriculum will build off the success of other top art focused schools, Havner said.

"It's a lot easier to copy a great idea than to invent one," he said.

He used an arts-infused approach during his time as a principal, he said. The goal of the Walton Family Foundation grant is to see students prepared academically, culturally, to strengthen their creativity and, ultimately, to see them as productive citizens in Northwest Arkansas, he said.

Board members applauded the grant and Ley's efforts since being hired as chief executive officer July 1.

"Sounds great. I'm impressed," said Tony Beardsley, board member.

Russell called a partnership between the art charter school and Crystal Bridges a "match made in heaven."

"There's just no way we'll fail," Ley said.

NW News on 08/12/2014

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