No move, LR's Quest school told

’14 opening put in doubt

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/STATON BREIDENTHAL --5/8/14-- Chris Baumann (left), general consel for Responsive Education Solutions, and Little Rock School District attorney Chris Heller answer questions about a new proposed location for the Quest charter school's Thursday afternoon at a state Board of Education meeting.
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/STATON BREIDENTHAL --5/8/14-- Chris Baumann (left), general consel for Responsive Education Solutions, and Little Rock School District attorney Chris Heller answer questions about a new proposed location for the Quest charter school's Thursday afternoon at a state Board of Education meeting.

The Arkansas Board of Education on Thursday denied a request to relocate a charter middle school near a busy Little Rock intersection, making it doubtful that Quest Middle School of West Little Rock will be able to open this coming school year.

The board's 7-1 vote could leave the 180 students who registered earlier this year to attend the Quest Middle School in August searching for seats in other middle schools.

Chris Baumann, legal counsel for Responsive Education Solutions -- the charter school sponsor -- said after the board vote that his organization will look for "a new location that is equally acceptable to the Education Board and to the parents we are trying to serve."

He said in an interview after the meeting that a new location probably can't be opened until the 2015-16 school year because of the process that requires the sponsor to first get approval from the state's Charter Authorizing Panel and then ratification of that panel's approval by the state Education Board.

"It is almost a certainty that we can't open this fall. We'll be looking for the next school year," Baumann said.

Jennifer Stephens, a parent who had registered her child for the new school, said after the meeting that she was "devastated" by the board's decision. She said she is left without a small school close to home for her daughter to attend.

Stephens said parents had already made car pool and other plans to minimize the traffic snarls around the school.

"They aren't genuinely concerned like we are for our own children," she said of the Education Board. "We aren't going to put our kids in harm's way."

Diane Zook of Melbourne was the only state board member to support the relocation. Zook is the aunt of Gary Newton, a parent who helped lead the effort to attract a charter school organization to the area. Zook said she was not influenced by her relative's involvement.

Kendra Clay, an attorney for the Arkansas Department of Education, said after the board meeting that Responsive Education Solutions continues to hold a state-approved charter that calls for it to open a school at 1815 Rahling Road. The organization would have to return to the Charter Authorizing Panel to request a delay in opening a school. The panel meets next week. However, Education Commissioner Tom Kimbrell would have to waive a 35-day notice requirement to put the school plan on the panel's agenda.

Education Board member Sam Ledbetter of Little Rock told Baumann during the meeting Thursday that he couldn't remember when he was more troubled or had more questions about an issue.

"I don't know why you didn't tell us in January about the location change," Ledbetter said. "We're cast as bad guys, when you had certain knowledge and didn't tell us."

The State Education Board on Jan. 10 approved the application made by Responsive Education Solutions of Lewisville, Texas, to establish a 490-student Quest charter school at the Rahling Road site. Initially the school would serve grades six through eight and expand over time to grade 12. The board approval was made over the objections of the Little Rock and Pulaski County Special school districts.

The charter management organization had been invited to open a school in that area by families, such as Stephens', who wanted a public secondary school in the part of the city close to Don R. Roberts Elementary on LaMarche Drive where there isn't a nearby middle or high school.

The charter school planners returned in February to the state's Charter Authorizing Panel for approval to change the location to 400 Hardin Road, which is a cul de sac off of Financial Centre Parkway and just west of the intersection of Interstate 630 and Shackleford Road. The Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department is in the midst of building a "flyover" at that intersection.

School planners said they had been unable to come to an agreement on the cost of the Rahling site.

Baumann told Ledbetter and the rest of the board that the charter school planners had become aware of the Hardin site four days before the board's January vote and that talk then of a different site would have been "premature at best" and possibly improper. That's because amendments to charter agreements must go to the Charter Authorizing Panel first.

Baumann said Thursday, as he has said before, that the Hardin site would save them $245,000 a year in lease or purchase costs and that savings could be reinvested into the school. Additionally, the Hardin site was more than 4 miles closer to the center of the city and more accessible to feeder elementary schools and families in central Little Rock, points that Baumann said he thought would be appealing to the Education Board.

The Charter Authorizing Panel unanimously approved the location change from Rahling to Hardin at a March 21 meeting, again over the districts' objections and that of a neighboring hotel and the U.S. Geological Survey that is across the street from the building that Responsive Education Solutions has since purchased. The building, which would be shared with other tenants, is planned for 280 sixth- through-eighth graders.

The Education Board, which has the authority to review and overrule the Charter Authorizing Panel's decisions, voted in April to hold a hearing on the relocation request.

Little Rock School District attorney Chris Heller acknowledged Thursday that the district was opposed to the charter application from the beginning, and it lost that challenge.

"Now there is the issue of credibility," Heller said, adding that much of what the Education Board and Charter Authorizing Panel have been told by the school planners that led them to approve the charter was not accurate.

"This process has been characterized by misinformation or lack of information," he said, adding that the organizers knew in January that the Rahling site was not satisfactory. They then proceeded with the purchase of the Hardin site just after they said they needed the state Education Board approval and a city permit before they would close on the sale.

Heller also said the Rahling school site was approved based on an effort to meet a certain need.

The Rahling site was meant to serve students who didn't have a nearby school, he said. That is not the case for the Hardin site. The new site is about 2 miles from the district's Henderson Middle School, which has 150 available seats. Horace Mann Magnet and Dunbar Magnet schools have a combined 200 seats available for students, he said, as a result of a settlement agreement that ends an interdistrict student transfer program with neighboring school systems.

Education Board members said Thursday that Henderson has been identified this week as an academically distressed school. The school and district can appeal that designation. If it is upheld, students assigned to Henderson will have the option of transferring to other public middle schools in the district or even outside the district if space is available.

Heller and others on Thursday raised questions about the traffic around the Hardin site. He said the study that Responsive Education Solutions offered centered on the entrance and exit to the school property, and not on the entrance and exit at the Hardin Road and Financial Centre Parkway traffic light.

David Freiwald, director of the U.S. Geological Survey's Arkansas Water Science Center, told the board that drivers on Hardin have a green light for only 10 seconds every 2 minutes to exit off Hardin onto Financial Centre Parkway.

Baumann said he had received word earlier Thursday that the city of Little Rock had agreed to issue a permit for the operation of the school as long as the school agreed to conditions such as staggering its opening and closing times. Board members questions why they didn't have documentation about it.

He suggested that the Education Board approve the location for the Quest School conditioned on the receipt of the city of Little Rock's traffic permit.

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Quest school WLR

Metro on 05/09/2014

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