Planning for the addition of ninth grade at Little Rock School District's Pinnacle View Middle School and for program enhancements at Hall High is underway, Superintendent Mike Poore and his staff said Thursday.
But that work is not expected to produce specific recommendations until February at the earliest or even March, Poore told the district's state-appointed Community Advisory Board at a lengthy meeting that included reports on the district's new interim testing program and changes in teaching literacy.
At Pinnacle View, currently a sixth-through-eighth grade school, students and a sample of parents have so far been surveyed to gauge interest in staying at the campus for ninth grade -- the first grade of high school, Principal Jay Pickering said.
Of the 146 parents questioned, 56 said they would want their children to attend ninth grade at the campus in northwest Little Rock. A total of 38 said they wanted their children to attend Central High; 15 said they prefer Parkview for their children; and 36 stated a preference for private or out-of-district schools. One parent was undecided and one stated a preference for Hall, which is currently the high school for the Pinnacle View attendance zone.
Of the 200 students surveyed, 20 said they would prefer to remain at Pinnacle View for ninth grade and 18 said they were undecided. Others preferred other schools both in and outside the district.
Pickering said he and other district staff members are scheduled to meet today with Department of Education staff to evaluate available space at the school site for ninth-grade classrooms. The campus includes a former three-story office building that is not currently being used for classrooms.
There have been preliminary conversations with the Arkansas Activities Association on the requirements that would have to be met to provide athletics and other extracurricular activities for next year's ninth-graders and for students in higher grades in subsequent years, he said.
Also on the table are discussions about courses and electives to be offered and delivery of instruction, be it traditional, project-based or online -- or a combination of those. Decisions on electives and extracurricular activities in part depend on student enrollment numbers, with greater numbers allowing for establishing more electives.
The discussions of changes at both the 826-student Pinnacle View Middle and the 945-student Hall High are the result of the districtwide facility plan that calls for the closing, consolidating, expanding and/or repurposing of about a dozen of the district's campuses over the next few years.
Arkansas Education Commissioner Johnny Key, who acts as the school board in the state-controlled district, approved the facility plan earlier this month, with special directives that the ninth grade be added at Pinnacle View in the coming school year and that plans be explored for additional high school grades. Key also supported a recommendation from the district's advisory board that delayed a decision on Hall High to create a program proposal that would be attractive to parents and students.
Hall is scheduled to lose about 300 students to the new Southwest High and its attendance zone will be reconfigured, but not until Southwest opens in August 2020.
Mark Roberts, Hall High's principal, described for the advisory board Thursday how the Hall faculty is being trained and is using the High Reliability Schools framework for school improvement. The model advocated by longtime national education researcher Robert Marzano provides a means of assessing how instruction and other practices in a school are working as a system to produce permanent and positive benefits for student achievement.
The components of the framework start with a safe, supportive and collaborative culture and end with competency-based education. In between are effective teaching in every classroom, guaranteed and viable curriculum, and standards-referenced reporting.
The Arkansas Department of Education has just recently began promoting the High Reliability Schools model as a resource for all schools in the state to consider using to provide their students with a challenging and rewarding education.
At the same time as the High Reliability Schools work is underway at Hall, the district is working with the Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce and the national Ford Next Generation Learning program to design academic programs that draw on community businesses to better prepare high school students for college and careers.
In response to questions from advisory board President Jeff Wood, Poore said that the district expects to receive recommendations for Hall in February from a Ford Next Generation Learning team that visited the school earlier this month.
Advisory board member Melanie Fox noted that a redesign of the Hall program was undertaken at the time that Forest Heights Middle School was converted to a kindergarten-through-eighth-grade science and math academy. She asked whether that initial work for Hall could be revisited in light of the success that Forest Heights has had.
Deputy Superintendent Marvin Burton agreed that could be done. He also said he is making contacts with the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences on possible development of an academy in medical professions for Hall.
While Forest Heights STEM Academy started from scratch with its staffing, Poore cautioned against doing that at Hall.
"We don't want to pull the rug out from under the Hall staff while they are working to transform the school," he said.
Metro on 01/25/2019