LISA Academy seeks OK to add site in Springdale

LISA Academy, one of the state’s two largest open-enrollment charter school systems, is seeking state approval to expand its central Arkansas presence into the northwest part of the state.

The charter system leaders are to appear at the state’s Charter Authorizing Panel meeting at 10 a.m. today to ask for an amendment to the academy’s state-issued charter to enable it to absorb Ozark Montessori Charter School in Springdale and increase LISA Academy’s 2,700-student enrollment cap by 600, to 3,300.

If approved first by the authorizing panel and ultimately by the Arkansas Board of Education, the amendment would go into effect for the 2019-20 school year.

The plan calls for converting the Montessori charter school into LISA Academy-Springdale for kindergarten through eighth grade. Both LISA Academy and Ozark Montessori are taxpayer-supported public

schools operated by nonprofit organizations.

The proposal calls for the new LISA school — with its emphasis on math and science instruction, academic competition and parent involvement — to remain at the Ozark Montessori site at 301 Holcomb St. in Springdale.

The LISA system is already providing instructional and operational support to the much smaller Ozark Montessori school through a memorandum of understanding between the two organizations.

The memorandum was agreed to last year, a few months after the January 2018 resignation of Ozark Montessori’s founder and initial leader, Christine Silano.

Fatih Bogrek, chief executive officer and superintendent of LISA Academy, said Friday that the LISA organization has had an interest in expanding in light of its success in central Arkansas. The system’s six schools in four — soon to be five — buildings in Little Rock and Sherwood have a waiting list of about 5,000 students, he said.

“We were looking for another hub,” Bogrek said. He suggested that additional LISA schools — including a high school — might be opened in cities near Springdale in later years. Tentative plans call for campuses in Fayetteville and Rogers, he said.

Northwest Arkansas has a diverse and growing population and fewer charter schools than are now in Pulaski County. LISA Academy has prided itself on its multiracial and ethnic student body in Pulaski County.

The state’s northwest corner is also home to the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, the state’s largest university, and to many businesses — both of which will provide opportunities for students from the college-preparatory LISA Academy, Bogrek said.

The LISA campuses received A’s, B’s, and one C grade from the state in the 2017-18 school year, while the Ozark Montessori school, which in December had 169 students in kindergarten-through-ninth grades, earned a D grade. The Ozark Montessori school was looking for options, Bogrek said.

Any decision by the authorizing panel on the proposal will then be subject to a final decision by the state Board of Education in the next couple of months.

During the course of this school year, LISA has provided the Ozark Montessori with a part-time project manager and part-time leaders for math and English/language arts. A full-time math teacher and part-time, on-site tutors have also been provided, along with curriculum, instructional materials and computing devices. Aid in maintaining a balanced operating budget has also been provided by LISA to Ozark Montessori.

Despite the shift from Montessori program to one that emphasizes the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and math, more than 90 percent of current students are interested in remaining at the Springdale campus, Bogrek said. There is also interest from potential new students, he said.

Ozark Montessori opened in 2015. LISA Academy, sponsored by the nonprofit Little Scholars of Arkansas Foundation, opened its first school in 2004.

The LISA Academy proposal for Springdale comes at a time in which there has been quite a bit of shifting among charter schools in the state.

Earlier this month, the Education Board revoked the charter for Covenant Keepers College Preparatory School and then approved an amendment to the Friendship Aspire charter school to allow it to immediately open for sixththrough-eighth grades at its 3615 W. 25th St. site.

That is to accommodate most, if not all, of the displaced Covenant Keepers pupils. Friendship Aspire’s original charter provides for a kindergarten-through-fifth-grade school that will start with kindergarten and first-graders in August.

Additionally, Rockbridge Montessori Charter School in Little Rock and Quest Academy of Pine Bluff were closed after the 2017-18 school year.

Quest Academy of West Little Rock is giving up its charter at the end of this school year so it can be attached to the charter of the Northwest Arkansas Classical Academy, a school in Bentonville.

The Quest school and the classical academy are both managed by Responsive Education Solutions, a charter management company based in Texas.