LR district examines options for 2 schools with low enrollment
Two Little Rock high schools, including Hall STEAM Magnet High, have early enrollment numbers for next school year that are smaller than those at some elementary schools, prompting district leaders to propose adjustments.
Enrollment at the newly restructured Hall High for the coming 2021-22 school year stands at 268 students in grades nine through 12. Hall’s midtown campus has previously housed about 1,000 students.
West High School of Innovation, at 5619 Ranch Drive, has a projected enrollment of 235 for grades nine through 11, but that includes 125 who want to attend ninth grade there next school year — about double the current ninth grade count and the approximate capacity for that grade.
Those numbers are in contrast to the 2,455 students at Central High, 2,090 students at the new Southwest High and 985 students at Parkview High.
Little Rock School District Superintendent Mike Poore presented options for Hall and West to the district’s School Board at a four-hour work
session late last week.
At the same session, administrators reported to the board on the district’s multipronged marketing efforts — including its work with the MHP/Team SI communications firm — and on early plans for cutting personnel costs at elementary and secondary schools next year.
Hall, which just this school year became a Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics — or STEAM — magnet school, has no attendance zone from which to draw students. The school can enroll students who apply from across the district.
Poore recommended that the Hall specialty programs in computer science, engineering and health care continue, but that the school be more strongly linked to Forest Heights STEM Academy, which serves prekindergarten through eighth grade. Forest Heights pupils would be automatically accepted at Hall. The two schools would share some staff members and similarities in how they operate or in their culture.
“That would not mean … a change in the delivery of the instructional program because the work that has been done on the instructional program by the staff at Hall is sound,” Poore told the board in the online meeting that was broadcast on Facebook Live.
“There is really good programming — good courses — that are ready to be offered to the families that choose to come into Hall,” he said. “But we have to do some things differently. The combo would allow us to staff in a tighter fashion. We will have to make some staff reductions at Hall.”
Administrative, teaching and support staff positions would be reduced.
The new academic programs have so far attracted 50 ninth graders for the coming school year, Poore said. He predicted that forthcoming announcements of new business and industry partners for both Hall and West will generate additional student and family interest in those schools.
The Little Rock district — in cooperation with neighboring school districts and the Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce — has adopted the Ford Next Generation Learning model for its high schools. The model calls for the districts to partner with community businesses to establish career academies at each high school.
“When those announcements come, on what the partnerships will be for Hall and for West School of Innovation, they will [create] more of a draw,” he said, adding that the partnerships are being finalized and are not quite ready to be announced.
HALL’S STRUGGLES
Other options for Hall include leaving the school as it is, closing it, creating a different instructional model, or making it a ninth grade school to serve all freshmen in the 21,000-student district. Hall has an enrollment this year of 360 students at a projected cost of $20,800 per student.
The decision to transform the once traditional Hall High into a magnet school with specialty courses came during the 2019-20 school year. That included vacating all staff positions and filling the vacancies with new hires and rehires.
Student recruitment to the school was hindered last spring by the covid-19 pandemic, to the point that student registration was insufficient and a decision was made to forego a ninth grade class at the school this current school year.
Gov. Asa Hutchinson closed all public schools in the state to in-person instruction from midMarch through August to try to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
“Why is it that we are still struggling?” Poore said about Hall. “A part of it is the pandemic, but some people still don’t realize how great the program is that is being developed at Hall.”
School Board member Jeff Wood questioned what the district can do to regain the trust of families in Hall.
“What messaging have we missed?” he asked, wondering if a name change for the school would help.
“The only thing Hall’s success is missing is students in the building,” Wood said.
He praised what he said were very dramatic improvements at the school. He referred to Joel Spencer, who is directing the magnet program, as “one of the best science minds in the city” and said some of the city’s best science teachers have been hired away from the district’s long-established Parkview Arts and Science Magnet High to work at Hall.
School Board member Leigh Ann Wilson, a parent of a Forest Heights pupil and spouse of a teacher, was amenable to making Forest Heights and Hall a more unified program for prekindergarten through 12th grade. She said the relationships among parents and faculty members developed at Forest Heights could be continued at Hall.
But Wilson also said some Forest Heights families are reluctant to be among the first to send their students to the high school. She also said she gets questions she can’t answer regarding what the differences will be in the courses taught at Hall and Parkview.
School Board President Vicki Hatter said the Hall STEAM program is not fully developed and that parents don’t want to gamble the last four years of their students’ school careers on hope and possibility.
“It’s not about a name change. It’s not about demonizing” past operations at the school, Hatter said. She questioned whether recruiting for the school was targeted to white middle-income families and said that such a focus hurts recruiting.
School Board member Evelyn Callaway said time, stability and publicity are needed to build up the population at Hall.
“If you do it, they will come,” she said. “I think we have some good ideas.”
WEST HIGH
Poore recommended that the West High School of Innovation be expanded to include a headquarters for a district virtual school.
West High is in a building adjoining Pinnacle View Middle School. It is in its second year of serving high school students but in its first year of operating as a separate high school with its own principal. The enrollment this year is 126 in grades nine and 10, and the cost per pupil is $15,853.
While the enrollment for next school year now stands at 235, Poore said the capacity is at least 400 and as many as 500, with 100 to 125 students per grade.
Those numbers could grow with the addition of a virtual school, Executive Director of Secondary Schools Randy Rutherford said.
“There is flexibility in the model. If we do this right as part of our innovation plan, not all students would be on the campus at the same time,” Poore said.
Hatter questioned why West has a dual or multiple-layer attendance zone, in which students in the Pinnacle View Middle School attendance zone can choose to attend West High or Central High. Using a lens of equity, that’s not equitable for other parts of the district, Hatter said.
Wood responded that students living throughout the district have multiple high school options from which to choose.
Hatter said several times during Thursday’s online meeting that she was surprised and disappointed by what she saw as the board’s lack of questions about the proposed options for attracting families to the high schools. She said the board focused instead on “hypotheticals and past history.”
“I really thought this conversation would be centered around the options the district proposed, but it’s not, which is a little concerning,” she said. “I am concerned that we are not having a more robust and colorful conversation about these options.”
School Board member Ali Noland responded at one point that she and other board members still had questions but were waiting their turns to ask.
“Go ahead and ask your questions … but it is approaching 9 o’clock,” Hatter responded.
The School Board, which took no votes last week, will meet for its regular monthly business meeting at 5:30 p.m. Thursday.