Leslie Bandy knows about school choice in Northwest Arkansas through the experiences of her four children.
Bandy has a sixth-grader in the Fayetteville School District. She has an eighth- and a 10th-grader at Haas Hall Academy, a public charter school. And her oldest child attended The New School and St. Joseph Catholic School — both private schools — before graduating from Fayetteville High School.
“We’re blessed with great schools in Northwest Arkansas,” Bandy said. “So I don’t see one as better or worse, or one as bad or good. I see it as the best option and fitting the best needs of the individual student first, and then of your family.”
School-choice advocates argue one size does not fit all when it comes to education and urge families to explore all of the school options available to their children.
As Benton and Washington counties grow, so too do the educational options. Traditional public schools dominate the K-12 landscape, but the number of charter and private schools is on the rise. Home schooling also is growing increasingly popular.
Patrick Wolf, distinguished professor and endowed chair in school choice at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, said once parents identify schools that could be a good fit for their child, it’s important to visit them and have their child shadow students, if possible.
He said his research has shown parents who visit more than one school before making a choice tend to be much more satisfied with the school they select, because it’s an informed choice.
“Also remember, you are the world’s experts about your child and their educational needs,” Wolf said. “So never surrender that expertise and know you know what’s going to work for them.”
CHARTER SCHOOLS
The biggest misconception people have about charter schools is that they charge tuition, said Mary Ley, chief executive officer of the Arkansas Arts Academy. Charter schools are public schools, authorized by the state.
“It is free. That’s what a lot of people don’t realize,” Ley said.
Arkansas passed a law in 1999 allowing open-enrollment charter schools, a kind of public school that may be started and run by an institution of higher education, a governmental entity or a nonprofit organization. Charters started by school districts are called conversion charter schools.
Arkansas Arts Academy is one of the oldest charter schools in Arkansas. It opened in 2001, when it was called Benton County School of the Arts, with about 300 students in grades kindergarten through seven.
It now operates on two campuses in Rogers, one for grades K-8 and the other for 9-12. The high school campus is undergoing a major renovation and expansion project to accommodate the seventh- and eighth-graders. Overall, the school expects to open the 2018-19 school year with close to its charter-imposed limit of 1,225 students.
Haas Hall Academy, called the best high school in Arkansas by U.S. News & World Report, has expanded from a single campus in Fayetteville to one each in Bentonville, Rogers and Springdale over the past three years.
Total enrollment across the four campuses was 986 as of Oct. 1. Kelly Barnett, director of admissions, said they want to increase enrollment by 150 at each of the three newer campuses next school year. Fayetteville’s campus, with about 360 students, will stay at roughly that number.
Northwest Arkansas Classical Academy in Bentonville opened in 2013 for grades kindergarten through eight and has expanded by one grade level each year since. The first senior class of 10 students will graduate this spring. Six of those 10 have been with the school since it opened.
“The senior class is a really great group of kids,” said Bryce Horswell, a history teacher at the school. “They work together so well. They really celebrate one another.”
The school provides a classical education in the liberal arts with students learning Greek and Latin root words beginning in third grade and studying classical literature. The environment encourages discussion and conversation, according to Susan Provenza, headmaster.
Ozark Montessori Academy, in its third year, is Spring-dale’s first charter school. It is open to grades kindergarten through eight.
The Montessori method is based on the work of the late Italian physician and educator Maria Montessori. It features three-hour student work cycles, multi-age classrooms, small-group presentations, carefully selected learning material, foreign-language instruction and student choice.
A pair of virtual schools — Arkansas Virtual Academy and Arkansas Connections Academy — enroll nearly 3,000 students combined from across the state. Arkansas Connections Academy is based in Bentonville.
PRIVATE SCHOOLS
The private school sector is growing as well.
The Thaden School, in downtown Bentonville, opened in August. It has about 50 seventh- and ninth-graders. Next school year it will include grades seven through
- The Walton Family Foundation-backed school is operating out of temporary buildings while its campus on the old Benton County Fairgrounds is being built.
“We have grade-level meetings where people come together as a faculty to talk about individual students and how they’re doing from all angles,” said Clayton Marsh, founding head of school at Thaden. “As we scale up, one of the key questions is how we can continue to maintain that kind of small learning community feeling we have.”
The New School in Fayetteville can’t exactly be called a new school anymore, given it was founded in 1971. What is new is a major expansion allowing a high school to be added. More than 400 students in preschool through 10th grade are now enrolled. The school will add a grade level each of the next two years.
There are a few Montessori private schools, the largest of which is Fayetteville Montessori School, which has 429 students ranging from 6 weeks old to the sixth grade.
Those seeking a Christian-oriented education have numerous options available to them in Northwest Arkansas. The largest of them are Shiloh Christian School in Springdale and Life Way Christian School in Center-ton. Fayetteville Christian School is marking the 40th anniversary of its founding this year. Each of these three schools offers preschool through 12th grade. They enroll more than 1,500 students combined.
Providence Academy in Rogers applies a college-type schedule to kindergarten through 12th grade. Students get “satellite days,” to work independently or with others at home or at another location. The purpose of the university-model school is to build time-management skills, as well as to encourage students to become independent learners outside the classroom, according to the school’s website.
Two Catholic schools — St. Joseph in Fayetteville and St. Vincent de Paul in Rogers — serve students through the eighth grade. Ozark Catholic Academy, a high school, is set to open this fall in Tontitown. It will begin with grades nine and 10 and add 11th and 12th grades in the following school years. Classes will be at the Father Bandini Parish Education Center at St. Joseph Catholic Church, where the school is leasing space.
HOME SCHOOLING
There were 3,842 students home-schooled in Northwest Arkansas last school year, according to the latest data available from the Arkansas Department of Education. If they were grouped into a single district, it would be the sixth-largest in the region.
Northwest Arkansas’ home-schooled population has grown steadily over the years. It increased 4.5 percent from the 2015-16 school year to the 2016-17 school year, which was three times the rate of the state as a whole. Bentonville School District was home to the most home-schooled students in the state last year with 1,010.
The Social Homeschoolers Network includes more than 300 students in Northwest Arkansas and McDonald County, Mo. Members go on field trips and meet for a social day at the First Baptist Church on Olive Street in Rogers once every two weeks.
On social days, students engage in an educational workshop, a gym class and other activities. The network also holds special events like a science fair, said Cassie Smith, the network’s director.
Smith, who lives in Spring-dale, began home schooling her now 13-year-old son about four years ago. She started the network as a way to meet up with other home-schoolers.
“We continue to see growth,” Smith said. “On our website we get several inquiries a day. I’ve also seen a lot more people just inquiring about how to home-school and how to get started.”
Parents who choose to home-school their children must submit forms notifying their local school districts of their intentions. Districts in turn must submit those forms to the state Department of Education.
The number of home-schooled students in the United States more than doubled from 850,000 in 1999 to about 1.8 million in 2012, according to a 2016 report by the National Center for Education Statistics.
TRADITIONAL PUBLIC
SCHOOLS
The 15 traditional public school districts of Northwest Arkansas serve about 85,000 children, a number that grows every year. Those who work for the districts, however, know there is competition for their students.
“We can no longer afford to operate under the false assumption that because our
FIND DATA on enrollment changes at all public schools in the northwest corner of Arkansas online at nwadg.com.
school is built, (students) will come, said Anne Beaulieu, a Fayetteville High School teacher who spoke at an Arkansas Education Association event last month in Springdale. “They now have options, and those options are aggressively pursuing them.”
Districts have responded by offering options of their own, including conversion charter schools. There are eight in Northwest Arkansas, according to the Arkansas Department of Education.
One of those is the Fayetteville Virtual Academy, an online school which serves more than 200 students in grades four through 12. While most of the academy’s students are from Fayetteville, others live in Springdale, Bentonville and other districts.
Rogers’ New Technology High School, which opened in 2013, emphasizes project-based learning. The state’s Charter Authorizing Panel voted unanimously in December to renew the school’s charter for five years.
The Rogers Honors Academy is not a school, but a program designed to help high-performing students explore career choices and find the best colleges for them. The academy, launched in 2016, has inducted about 400 students. It is available to students at each of the district’s three high schools who have at least a 3.7 grade point average and are taking at least two Advanced Placement, pre-Advanced Placement or college-level courses.
Debbie Jones, superintendent of Benton-ville Schools, recently spoke of the “amazing” opportunities available to Bentonville students, including dozens of clubs at the district’s two high schools.
“Every student can find something, whether that’s robotics, whether that’s tinkering within the school,” Jones said. “We have a place for everyone.”
The Springdale School District’s Don Tyson School of Innovation, another conversion charter school, opened in fall 2014 at The Jones Center. It moved to its Hylton Road facility for the 2016-17 school year.
The School of Innovation began with only eighth-graders and will welcome its first senior class this fall. The Springdale School Board last year approved gradually adding sixth and seventh grades to the school and roughly doubling its size — roughly 143,000 square feet — in a project officials have said will cost at least $35 million.
The school allows students to learn and master required skills at their own pace and delve into their interests with teacher guidance.
Jim Rollins, Springdale’s superintendent, said the district emphasizes a culture where every one of the district’s 23,000 children is important.
“It doesn’t matter to us whether a child comes from across the street or across the ocean. When they get to the school house door, they are one thing: They are our children,” Rollins said.
Dave Perozek can be reached at dperozek@ nwadg.com or on Twitter @NWADaveP.