Hybrid school proposal wins final state approval
The Arkansas Board of Education on Thursday gave final approval to the LISA Academy’s proposed Arkansas Hybrid School, a semi-virtual school for kindergarten-through-12th graders to operate in the coming 2021-22 school year.
The Arkansas Hybrid School plan, initially approved by the state Charter Authorizing Panel in February, will provide students with virtual instruction but also will require that students report once a week — or at least every other week — for one-half day at a time to a LISA campus or satellite learning center.
Student time on the LISA campus or at a satellite learning center — such as a church, office building, community center or library — will be used for hands-on lessons, taking mandatory tests, tutoring, academic enrichment, special services, sports, clubs and interaction with other students, Necati Sahin told the Education Board.
Sahin is a LISA Academy charter school system assistant superintendent and director of human resources who is the project manager for the hybrid school project.
LISA Academy’s newly approved school is the first of what could be many variations on virtual schooling put before the Education Board in the coming weeks for operating in the 2021-22 school year.
The state has given school systems — many of which offered online instructional options in the current pandemic school year — until May 1 to submit new or refined plans for a digital instructional program in the coming year.
Initially, a LISA hybrid school student’s time onsite would be on the campus of LISA Academy Middle School, 21 Corporate Hill
Drive, in Little Rock, or the LISA Springdale campus, 301 Holcomb St.
Satellite learning centers throughout the state would be added as needed to meet family demand until there are such centers in the northwest, southwest, northeast, southeast and central regions, planners have said.
LISA Academy will provide Chromebooks to the hybrid school students and hot spot devices to the families who need internet connectivity.
The Education Board’s vote Thursday allows for an increase in the LISA charter system’s enrollment by 1,050 students to accommodate the addition of the hybrid school and an additional 200 to the 300-student cap at the LISA Springdale campus.
The enrollment cap for the system would grow from the current 4,382 over time to 5,632.
The hybrid school plan is in the form of an amendment to the LISA Academy’s existing state charter to operate.
The Education Board had the option to accept the authorizing panel’s decision or to review it by conducting its own hearing on the school plan. The Education Board, which had only a few questions about the plan, chose not to conduct its own hearing.
In January, the board authorized staff members at the state Division of Elementary and Secondary Education to establish an application process for use by school districts that want to offer a digital learning option for the 202122 school year.
Interested school districts must submit their applications for digital learning options by May 1.
The application process would require a district to receive from the board waivers of state rules and laws that apply to traditional schools but would hinder a digital learning option. Such waivers of state education rules and laws are allowed by Act 1240 of 2015 on a case-by-case basis.
School districts across the state were all but thrown into the use of online teaching and learning in the weeks and months after Gov. Asa Hutchinson in March 2020 closed schools to on-site instruction as a way to limit the spread of the contagious coronavirus that could lead to the potentially fatal covid-19 disease.
Schools opened this 202021 school year for on-site instruction, but many districts also provided full- and part -time online instruction to students who opted for it.
The state does have two open-enrollment charter schools that provide only virtual instruction to kindergarten-through-12th-grade students. Those are the Arkansas Virtual Academy and Arkansas Connections Academy.