Twelve organizations have submitted letters of intent to the state to open 17 charter schools -- plus some satellite campuses -- in 2016-17 in communities including Little Rock, Bentonville, Scott and Lockesburg.
As many as six of the schools would open in Little Rock if all plans come to fruition. Three schools are envisioned for Pine Bluff, as are two each in North Little Rock and Fayetteville.
The one-page letters of intent to apply for state charters -- recently submitted to the Arkansas Department of Education -- are an early step in the process of establishing a publicly funded, independently operated open-enrollment charter school.
The organizations must now submit detailed applications by July 28, although past history indicates that not all organizations will follow up with full applications.
The applications will be evaluated and acted on by the Education Department's Charter Authorizing Panel. Charter school planners and school districts can appeal the panel's decisions to the state Board of Education, which also can review a charter panel decision on its own initiative.
Ultimately, this year's applicant organizations are competing for seven available state charters in a year in which the maximum number of open-enrollment charter schools permitted by state law increased from the long-standing cap of 24 charters to a new high of 29.
Since there are already 22 charter schools or charter school systems approved for operation in the coming 2015-16 school year, there will be seven charters available for new schools, Kimberly Friedman, a spokesman for the Education Department, said Tuesday.
"Arkansas law established the original cap for open-enrollment charters at 24. Current law ... allows for an automatic increase in the number of charters by five each time the number of open-enrollment charters is within two of meeting the existing limitation or cap," Friedman said.
"Currently, there are 18 active open-enrollment charters, and four more charters have been approved to open for the 2015-2016 school year," she continued. "The limitation on the number of charters available for open-enrollment public charter schools is now 29 charters. As many as seven charters could be approved during the 2015 open-enrollment charter application cycle."
Scott Smith, executive director of the Arkansas Public School Resource Center that provides support to charter schools and rural school districts, said Tuesday that some organizations won't follow through with applications, and other organizations that are already operating charter campuses may decide instead to seek amendments to their existing charters for new campuses.
"It's kind of hard to read a whole lot into the letters of intent," Smith said.
There are as many as three organizations affiliated with existing charter schools that submitted letters. Those are:
• Responsive Education Solutions of Lewisville, Texas, operator of four charters is Arkansas, which is planning to establish the Classical Academy of Fayetteville, for 614 students in kindergarten through 12th grade.
• Exalt Education Inc. of Little Rock, which operates a kindergarten through second-grade school in the city, is proposing a new kindergarten-through-fifth-grade campus for 360 children and a sixth-grade through eighth-grade middle school campus for 720, both in Little Rock.
• Academics Plus Charter School based in Maumelle is spearheading a plan to establish the Scott Charter School in eastern Pulaski County or western Lonoke County for up to 975 students in kindergarten through 12th grades.
Several of the organizations submitting letters of intent have applied in the past but didn't follow through with an application or did not receive initial approval. Those include:
• Arkansas Connections Academy Inc., which sent in four letters of intent for virtual schools to be based in Bentonville, Fayetteville, North Little Rock and the Sherwood-Jacksonville area. Each of the proposed schools would ultimately serve as many as 3,000 in kindergarten through grade 12.
• Kennedy Preparatory Academy for Young Men in Little Rock, which would serve up to 400 students, starting with pre-kindergarten through eighth grade.
• Redfield Tri-County Charter School in Redfield, which would provide a curriculum that emphasizes science, technology and character education for up to 400 students in grades five through 12.
• The Partners of Academics, Leadership and Services would operate a main Highly Involved Technology, Experiential, Collegiate High Charter School, or Hi-TEC-Hi, for 768 students in Little Rock. It also would host satellite campuses in DeWitt and Stuttgart for 192 students in Arkansas County and in Pine Bluff and Dollarway for 384 students in Jefferson County. The program would be for fifth through 12th grades.
Vonnie Beasley of Little Rock, president of the organization, said the organization withdrew its school model last year but decided to submit it again after further development.
"We feel there really needs to be an alternative choice in public school education," Beasley said Tuesday. "Our targeted population is students who are underrepresented and underprepared for college and for life."
Among the new proposals this year are the Friendship Aspire and Friendship Lead academies, each proposed for 450 students in Little Rock, by the Friendship Public Charter Schools of Washington, D.C., and the Friendship Education Foundation of Baton Rouge.
"Friendship Public Charter Schools has been around for almost 15 years, doing work in inner-city schools, helping to turn around and re-create environments where students who are often served in low-performing environments are given the opportunity to thrive," Kimberly Williams, executive director of the foundation, said. "They are given the opportunity to get to, and through, college," she said.
Other new schools proposed in the recent letters of intent are:
• The Foundation for High Performing Schools in Pine Bluff for up to 500 students who are at risk of school failure in prekindergarten through 12th grades.
• Future School in Fort Smith for up to 300 in 10th through 12th grades. The school would enable students to graduate with college credit and three years of real-world workforce experience.
• JBH Collegiate Academy Public Charter School in Lockesburg, which would serve up to 360 in kindergarten through eighth grades. The program would emphasize science, technology engineering, mathematics and liberal arts.
• Love Letters A Universal Sound School of Performing Arts Charter School at 5301 Summer Tree Drive in North Little Rock for about 50 first- through fifth-graders. The program would integrate academics with performance, speaking, playwriting, and leadership skills.
Metro on 06/17/2015