School Board approves new Springdale zones, name for School of Innovation

Jordan Weaver (left) and Cesar Moradel look at course work on a computer Tuesday at Springdale’s School of Innovation at The Jones Center. The pair were both working on getting caught up in their history class. The school will move to its new campus in east Springdale in August.
Jordan Weaver (left) and Cesar Moradel look at course work on a computer Tuesday at Springdale’s School of Innovation at The Jones Center. The pair were both working on getting caught up in their history class. The school will move to its new campus in east Springdale in August.

SPRINGDALE -- The anticipation of new campuses opening in a few months led the School Board on Tuesday to approve new elementary zones and name the School of Innovation after the late Don Tyson.

"It's a big push right now," School Board President Randy Hutchinson said. "We want to get them online."

The new Linda Childers Knapp Elementary School is a $16.9 million campus opening for the 2016-17 school year on Oriole Street, south of Robinson Avenue in Springdale. The campus is expected to have about 600 students in kindergarten through fifth grade and will house a separate pre-kindegarten center for up to 300 children.

The School of Innovation is a high school in its second year at The Jones Center. The school next year is expected to have about 600 eighth-, ninth- and 10th-graders who will move to a new $24 million campus under construction on Hylton Road.

Knapp Elementary will draw students largely from Harp, Monitor and Sonora elementary schools and small numbers of children from the George and Parson Hills elementary school. The rezoning also moves some students out of the Turnbow Elementary School zone into the school zones for Harp and Sonora for the 2016-17 school year.

The changes are expected to impact more than 800 children.

Adjusting attendance zone boundaries is one of the hardest, but necessary actions for a district, School Board member Danny Dotson said.

"A lot of work is done on that to inconvenience as few people as possible," Dotson said.

The rezoning plan relieves the district's three largest elementary schools and will bring enrollment in all of the district's elementary schools east of Thompson Street to between 570 and 640 children, said Gary Compton, assistant superintendent for support services.

The School of Innovation is designed to focus on teaching science, technology, engineering and math in an environment that blends with career and technical education, Superintendent Jim Rollins said. The new campus will house six major career labs, including one for agriculture.

Rollins talked to the Tyson family about naming the school after Don Tyson, former chairman and chief executive officer of Tyson Foods who died at the age of 80 in 2011. He was the son of the company's founder John W. Tyson.

"It is an honor for me to see this school named after him," Rollins said. "Just as he was a vision setter for his industry, this school will prepare young people to be visionaries for whatever careers they choose."

Tyson's son John H. Tyson said he's pleased to have the School Board honor his father and his family's many years of support for public schools in his home town.

"The Springdale public schools do an outstanding job educating the young people of our community, and this particular school is designed to take that to a new level of innovation and excellence," Tyson said in a statement. "Having Don Tyson's name on the school we hope will reinforce those goals and help them be achieved."

The School of Innovation campus will remain under construction when the school year starts, but is expected to finish in January.

Rollins also announced to the School Board the Tyson family will contribute $1.5 million to the School of Innovation project, money Rollins plans to put toward further developing and enhancing the project.

School Board Secretary-Treasurer Kevin Ownbey said naming the campus after Don Tyson is special. He remembers Tyson knowing him by his first name early in his career.

"Everybody was important," said Ownbey, who spent 23 years at Tyson Foods. "That's how he treated this community because everybody was important."

NW News on 04/13/2016

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