Friendship Aspire’s campus is approved
Friendship Aspire Academy has been given the green light to establish a campus in downtown Pine Bluff to house prekindergartners through third graders.
The Arkansas Board of Education approved Friendship’s request Thursday. The public charter school system asked officials for a change to its charter that would increase the enrollment cap from 480 to 880 for its elementary grade levels, by allowing up to 450 students for the campus at 3911 S. Hazel St. for the upcoming school year and increasing that to 580 for the 2022-23 school year.
The other 300 or so students would attend the proposed campus at 700 S. Main St. Friendship officials hope to open the new campus by the start of 2022-23.
Virginia Perry, assistant superintendent of the Friendship Aspire Academy system, said school officials have seen an increase in the number of students on the elementary campus’s waiting list. The downtown campus would alleviate the student population growth at Hazel Street.
Under the downtown campus’s rollout plan, preK and kindergarten students would attend in 2022-23, first grade would be added for 2023-24,
second grade would be welcomed in 2024-25 and third grade would be included in 2025-26. The Hazel Street site would house kindergartners through fifth graders.
Friendship’s Southeast Campus is open to high school juniors and seniors for this school year and will house only juniors in 2022-23 to phase out the classes that enrolled under the former Southeast Arkansas Preparatory School, which Friendship took over at the start of last school year. The secondary campus, however, will begin a different rollout plan with sixth grade in 202324 and add on a grade each following year.
The state Education Board also approved Friendship’s digital learning plan to offer asynchronous and synchronous instruction.
The Pine Bluff School District was granted a three-year extension of teacher licensure waivers under Act 1240 during Thursday’s state board meeting.
District Superintendent Barbara Warren said the extension positions the district “to hire, groom and support individuals who would like to teach but would have to secure a waiver to do so while they complete a pathway to licensure.”