District chief says 2 schools in works
Southwest, west LR plans laid out
Little Rock Superintendent Baker Kurrus announced Monday that all systems are on “go” for the planning, design and construction of two new public schools — a middle school in northwest Little Rock and a high school in the southwest part of the city.
The sixth grade at a middle school in the former Leisure Arts office building on Ranch Drive just off Cantrell Road will open next August. Seventh and eighth grades will open on the site in subsequent years.
A new high school on more than 50 district-owned acres on Richsmith Lane — and which could replace McClellan and J.A. Fair high schools — will take four or five years to plan and build, putting the opening date for that campus in 2020 or 2021.
Kurrus’ announcement, made in his latest “Straight Talk” post on the Little Rock School District’s website, follows several weeks of discussion and study by him and others on the feasibility and affordability of opening the two state-of the art schools.
The superintendent said Monday that he has concluded that the projects are affordable using the district’s existing revenue. He and his staff have identified at least $75 million in operational savings, state aid and refinanced bonds that can be used to accomplish much of the two projects.
“These projects can be the beginning of a new and more fulfilling era for our district if we can work together,” he wrote on the website. “We will put each project on a fast track.”
Melissa Muse, a west Little Rock resident who organized a community meeting earlier this year in support of a new middle school, on Monday found the decision
to be bittersweet because she is the parent of a current sixth-grader at Quest Middle School, a charter school.
“I think it’s wonderful,” she said about the district’s new middle school. “It’s way overdue. And while it won’t help us, it will help our property values.”
be assured of having three years of middle school education that is of the same quality now available at Roberts Elementary is invaluable, Muse said.
WER Architects of Little Rock has been commissioned to make about $500,000 in renovations to the former Leisure Arts office building to accommodate as many as 300 sixth-graders in August.
The pupils in the new middle school will come from the Roberts, Fulbright and Terry elementary school attendance zones, Kurrus said. Current fifth-graders in Roberts, Fulbright and Terry elementary schools will automatically be assigned to the new Ranch Drive middle school for the 2016-17 school year without any action required of their parents or guardians, Kurrus said.
Families in the Roberts, Fulbright and Terry school zones have tended to move their sixth-graders out of the Little Rock school system and into private schools and independently run charter schools rather than have them attend Henderson Middle School, which is the attendance zone middle school for much of west Little Rock.
Henderson at 988 students this year is the district’s largest middle school. It is one of six schools in the district that is labeled by the state as academically distressed because of chronically low scores on state math and literacy tests.
Kurrus said Monday that if Roberts, Fulbright and Terry fifth-graders have already applied to attend the district’s magnet or specialty schools elsewhere in the city — such as Horace Mann, Dunbar and Forest Heights middle schools — they may rescind their applications. Or they may wait to find out if they get the alternate assignment, at which point they can choose between that assignment or the new middle school.
Parents who decide to withdraw their children’s applications for the magnet and specialty schools in favor of the new school should do so during the week of Jan. 5-8 to assist the district in its planning.
Historically, pupils from the three elementary attendance zones typically get their choice assignments to Horace Mann and Dunbar, Kurrus said. Applicants aren’t as successful in getting seats at Forest Heights Academy, where seats are more limited. Forest Heights is a kindergarten-through-eighth-grade campus that emphasizes science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
Kurrus also said that children who live in the attendance zone for the new middle school but do not attend Little Rock district schools may register for the new school after the holidays.
“We will have an open-enrollment period on Jan. 5 through Jan. 8, 2016, for nonLRSD students living in the zone who wish to attend the new school as sixth-graders in the fall of 2016,” Kurrus said.
While the middle school will initially be housed in the 75,000-square feet former Leisure Arts office building, the school will ultimately be located in the adjacent 175,000-square-foot warehouse that Kurrus estimates will cost between $15 million and $19 million to convert into a middle school, including the addition of a gymnasium as well as furnishings and equipment.
The cost of converting the building will be on top of the $11.5 million cost of the property from Baptist Health.
In October, Kurrus signed a conditional contract for the purchase of the property, which is about 23 acres and adjacent to about 43.5 undeveloped acres that the district had purchased for $4.2 million in 2013 on North Katillus Road for a middle school. The October contract gave the district 180 days to consider the feasibility of the office building and warehouse for the use of a school before the sale is finalized.
Residents of northwest Little Rock have pleaded and aggressively lobbied school district leaders for several years for a middle school and a high school to serve a part of the city that is growing rapidly in population but is a significant distance from the district’s middle and high schools, all of which are in the more central part of the city, east of Interstate 430.
Private schools have opened and expanded dramatically in the northwest area where there are no Little Rock district middle and high schools.. The Quest Middle School of Little Rock, an independently operated public charter that will eventually serve middle and high school grades, opened in the 2014-15 school year on nearby Rahling Road.
Kurrus said the reasons for two school projects are “compelling.” The elementary school zones to be served by the middle school have a population of about 38,000 people.
He said residents of southwest Little Rock do not dispute the need for a modern campus, although there have been differing opinions about the location for a high school. Some residents have lobbied to use the current McClellan location for a new high school.
The district, however, owns undeveloped land that could be used. The district in 2013 purchased about 56 acres on Richsmith Lane — behind the Home Depot on Baseline Road — for $1,372,000.
Pam Adcock, president of the Southwest United for Progress organization that advocates for that part of the city, said Monday night she was surprised by Kurrus’ announcement.
“What happened to community involvement?” Adcock asked although she also said that Kurrus had met with her group earlier this month. She had missed the meeting because of illness but believed there would be more discussion. She also said that the existing McClellan campus has room for new construction. She called a new school on a new site a waste of money.
“I think it is done and settled,” Adcock said about the Richsmith Lane site. “I guess we’ll wait and see what they do to us next.”
A total of 2,700 high school students live in the two attendance zones that are served by McClellan and Fair, but only about 1,600 attend those two schools.
Kurrus noted that the Little Rock School Board committed to build both the middle and high schools earlier this year, prior to the state Board of Education’s vote to take control of the district. The state took over the Little Rock district because six of 48 schools are labeled as academically distressed. The local school board was dismissed and the superintendent at the time was made an interim leader under the of supervision of the education commissioner.
Arkansas Education Commissioner Johnny Key appointed Kurrus, a lawyer, to the superintendent’s job in May.
Kurrus said Monday that the plans for opening two schools will go to Key, who acts as the school board for the district, in January. Kurrus said he has no reason to expect that Key would reject the plans.
The superintendent has created a committee of top-level staff members, including the deputy and associate superintendents and chief financial officer, to evaluate and recommend architects for both projects. Cathy Koehler, president of the Little Rock Education Association employee union, and Kathy Webb, a member of the Little Rock Board of Directors and a member of the district’s Citizens Advisory Committee, will also serve on the architects selection committee.
Kurrus also has begun forming planning committees to help identify the desired academic, student service and athletic features of the two schools.
To help pay for the projects without seeking a tax increase, Kurrus said the district will save about $13 million this school year and $15 million next year. That money combines with three other accounts: $2 million in savings from last year, $37,347,000 in state desegregation aid that can only be used for facilities and almost $6 million from refinanced bond issues. Additionally, Kurrus expects the district’s tax base to grow, which will produce more local tax revenue.
Unlike most Arkansas school districts, the Little Rock district is ineligible for any significant state aid to help build academic buildings. That’s because of the district’s local tax wealth.