6 new or expanded campuses to open in Pulaski County

Pulaski County has produced a number of new and/ or greatly expanded public school campuses in recent years and the 2019-20 school year will be no different.

In addition to Little Rock’s new Pinnacle View School of Innovation high school, the Jacksonville/North Pulaski School District this week will open a new ninth-through-12th-grade campus on that city’s Main Street, replacing the former school on Linda Lane.

The Pulaski County Special School District is opening a greatly expanded Sylvan Hills High School in Sherwood. The newly constructed three-story academic building with new dining room and media center is next door to the existing high school building, which will remain in service to accommodate student enrollment growth in the area.

Also in Sherwood, the LISA Academy North Middle-High School building is newly constructed this year. It’s to the south of what used to be LISA Academy North’s kindergarten-through-12th-grade school. That original charter school campus will now be home to only elementary grade pupils.

In North Little Rock, charter school operator Responsive Education Solutions of Texas is opening its second Premier High School in Pulaski County at 801 W. 29th St. The first Premier High — a second chance school for those who have dropped out or are otherwise not succeeding in traditional schools — has been in operation for several years on the Arkansas Baptist College campus in Little Rock.

Lastly, Friendship Aspire-Garland Charter School is opening to elementary pupils this week within the Little Rock School District boundaries. The school was scheduled all along to open this month, but school operators had to jump-start that last March when it took in middle-school pupils from Covenant Keepers Charter School, which had shut down in mid school year.