High school going to campus of UALR in eSTEM alliance

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Chancellor Joel Anderson (left) observes the audience as John Bacon, chief executive officer for eSTEM Public Charter Schools Inc., flips over a sign announcing a new partnership between the two schools Monday afternoon.
University of Arkansas at Little Rock Chancellor Joel Anderson (left) observes the audience as John Bacon, chief executive officer for eSTEM Public Charter Schools Inc., flips over a sign announcing a new partnership between the two schools Monday afternoon.

The University of Arkansas at Little Rock and eSTEM Public Charter Schools Inc. are partnering to create a high school on the university's campus.

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Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

A map shows the location of the land to be sold and leased to eStem Public Charter Schools, Inc.

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An empty lot at the corner of West 28th and South Fillmore streets on the University of Arkansas at Little Rock campus will be the site of a new eStem high school for students in grades 9-10 under the proposal announced Monday afternoon.

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The unoccupied Larson Hall on the University of Arkansas at Little Rock campus will be the site of a new eStem high school for students in grades 11-12 under the proposal announced Monday afternoon.

The university is selling three tracts of land off 28th Street to eSTEM for $50,000 -- less than the appraised value of $130,000 -- and is leasing vacant Larson Hall in the university's quad to the charter school organization, officials announced Monday.

The eSTEM charter school system in downtown Little Rock will move its high school students into the new and renovated facilities on the UALR campus.

The new high school sites are scheduled to open in summer 2017 if the charter organization obtains state approval and funding.

UALR Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Zul­ma Toro, UALR Chancellor Joel E. Anderson and eSTEM Chief Executive Officer John Bacon announced the partnership Monday afternoon, touting it as a way to meet the state's needs and create a stronger economy.

"Arkansas is at a critical juncture," Toro said. "Students around the state achieve below national averages on mathematics and literacy standardized tests; a high percentage of children in the region live below poverty levels; the state has poor rankings in math and science; STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] education is underdeveloped; minorities and women in STEM are underrepresented, and the STEM workforce is underdeveloped. Each of these factors has a significant, negative impact on our state's economy."

"The disconnect between curricula and educators in STEM from pre-K through college must be bridged to change these numbers and the fate of Arkansas," he said.

The University of Arkansas System board of trustees' Buildings and Grounds Committee gave the parties the go-ahead earlier Monday. The UA System's full board, along with the Arkansas Department of Education's Charter Authorizing Panel and the Arkansas Board of Education, will need to signal their approval.

The open-enrollment public charter school has been working on a strategic plan and exploring ways to expand for nearly a year. The relocation will help with the school's expansion plans and allow for more courses for its high school students.

The charter school system -- with its two buildings at Third and Louisiana streets -- is at capacity with 1,462 kindergarten through 12th-grade students, and it has more than 5,200 students on a waiting list to enroll, Bacon said.

As an example of the demand, he said 513 students applied last winter for third grade seats for this year. The school couldn't initially offer any of those students a seat because none of the second-graders moving into the third grade had any plans to leave.

The eSTEM charter school system -- which stands for economics, science, technology, engineering and mathematics -- wants to enroll 5,000 students by 2025.

The high school proposal calls for serving as many as 750 ninth- and 10th-graders in the new facility on 28th Street on vacant property just east of the Jack Stephens Center starting in the 2017-18 school year.

Another 750 students in 11th- and 12th-grades would be housed on the campus' south side in Larson Hall, one of the two original classroom buildings for Little Rock University, UALR's name before its affiliation with the UA System.

The new two-site high school would completely replace the eSTEM High Public Charter School for 500 students, Bacon said. That former Federal Reserve bank building, which officials turned into a high school in 2010, would be used to expand the enrollment of the kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school that is currently across the street in the former Arkansas Gazette newspaper building.

The plan to partner with UALR is not just about increasing seats for the charter system but also fulfilling the broader charter school mission of being innovative, Bacon said.

"We are not trying to take over the school world and make them all charters," he said. "We want to serve more students but we also want to work on new approaches that then become the new norm of how we look at teaching and learning."

Officials with eSTEM began talking to UALR about partnership possibilities at the beginning of the year, Bacon said, adding that the charter school already had "great working relationships" with the university.

The eSTEM's high school students currently enrolled in college-level course work with UALR are paying $50 a semester, he said. The relocation of the high school will facilitate concurrent credit offerings, though it won't be required for eSTEM students, he said.

It's not the only school to partner with UALR. The university earlier this year began an arrangement with the Greenbrier School District to award associate degrees to students who had acquired as many as 60 college credit hours by taking concurrent credit courses while still in high school.

While the plan hinges on state approval, Bacon said he doesn't anticipate it being denied. He said the 8-year-old eSTEM school system has a record of success.

In academic year 2014, eSTEM tallied 114 high school graduates, with 71 first-time students -- or 62.3 percent -- going to a college or university that fall, according to Arkansas Department of Higher Education data. The charter school had higher marks than the statewide average of 50.1 percent of the 30,800 public high school graduates going to college for the first time.

Of the 71 students, 44 went to four-year universities and the rest to two-year colleges, data show.

The location of the proposed high school would open up the school to students who live in the south and southwest parts of the city, he added.

At the same time that the charter school organization asks for state approval of the new high school -- or soon after -- its leaders plan to get another OK from the state for one to two more kindergarten-through-eighth-grade schools at locations not yet identified, Bacon said. The elementary/middle schools would feed students into the proposed high school.

Once the high school project is approved by the state, the school leaders would like to have about 18 months to design and complete the construction.

The plan calls for spending about $3.5 million on renovating Larson Hall. Bacon said planning is still under way on how the eSTEM system would pay for that renovation and the construction of a new building on 28th Street. He said there are different options available and the final plan is likely to be made up of a combination of revenue sources.

He did not estimate how much a new high school building would cost. The Pulaski County Special School District is planning for the construction of a new Mills University Studies High School for for approximately 700 students at a cost of about $50 million.

Many other details of the partnership -- including tuition and fees for eSTEM students taking college-level coursework and most of the financial agreements -- were not settled Monday.

A memorandum of understanding between the parties says UALR would provide parking for employees and students of eSTEM "upon financial arrangements to be agreed upon between the parties."

UALR would also provide campus security, janitorial, regular maintenance, landscaping and internet availability to eSTEM students after working out financial agreements.

The university has also agreed to let eSTEM use Ross Hall, also in the quad, should it need additional room, the memo states.

To hash out those details, the memo says an advisory committee made up of an equal number of representatives from UALR and eSTEM will "facilitate the cooperation between the parties to foster a cooperative relationship."

For UALR, the partnership will allow faculty, staff and graduate students to use the high school as a "laboratory school," said Toro, the UALR provost. UALR students studying STEM, education, social work, health sciences and psychology and other fields can receive student teaching opportunities, internships and other learning experiences through the partnership, she said.

The UALR faculty completed a study in February on the potential partnership, which noted advantages and challenges to it. The benefits included enrollment growth for UALR, which has had a declining student count in recent years.

Officials are hoping the partnership will help close the gap between college degree attainment and career readiness.

"Over the last 10 years, 20 years maybe, our national leaders -- and in turn, our state leaders -- have been pushing for more graduates in the STEM disciplines," Anderson, UALR's chancellor, said. "This is widely viewed at the national level as something that's critical for our economic competitiveness today in the global economy, and it's also critical for the national defense tomorrow around the world."

Arkansas has continuously lagged in the nation in the number of residents holding a degree. Some 350,000 Arkansans are estimated to have some college but no degree.

That, in part, is because many of the state's high school students aren't prepared for college, Toro said. The percentage of students entering the state's public colleges and universities unprepared for college-level coursework has fallen over the years. Still, some 43.2 percent of 20,064 students needed college preparatory noncredit coursework in 2014.

Officials want to identify best practices from the partnership that they can use to expand to programs with other school districts and even throughout the state, Toro said.

Earlier Monday, school leaders notified the eSTEM staff of the proposal and were beginning to get the word to parents of students currently enrolled at eSTEM elementary, middle and high schools.

"The parents that have heard about it have been overwhelmingly positive because they see the opportunities," Bacon said. "I think people are so proud of what we have accomplished to this point. They know we are not looking for just any opportunity -- we could have opened a new school years ago -- it's about the right opportunity for our families and for offering something different than what we have been able to do."

A Section on 08/18/2015

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