School to assist dropouts gains state panel nod

Springdale charter-high bid now up to Education Board

LITTLE ROCK — The Arkansas Charter Authorizing Panel on Tuesday gave preliminary approval to a charter high school for the Springdale area focusing on giving a second chance at graduation to students who have dropped out or are at risk of dropping out of school.

The panel voted 4-0 in support of the charter application for the Premier High School of Springdale to serve to as many as 300 freshmen through seniors starting with the 2021-22 school year.

The charter panel decision is now subject to review by the Arkansas Board of Education, possibly as soon as next month. The Education Board can opt to accept the panel recommendations or choose to hold a hearing of its own before making a final decision on any application.

Also Tuesday, the panel tabled until its next regular meeting a decision on the proposed Arkansas AgSTEM Academy for seventh-graders through seniors school planners hope to locate in the former Weiner High School building in the Harrisburg School District.

A third application, for the Southwest Innovation Leadership Academy to serve up to 300 sixth-through-eighth graders in Little Rock, was initially on the panel’s meeting agenda but was withdrawn before the meeting.

Premier High School of Springdale is on track to join the Premier High School of Little Rock, opened in 2013, and Premier High North Little Rock that opened in 2019. Together those schools have awarded 144 high school diplomas since first opening to students who weren’t otherwise expected to finish their high school educations, school planners said.

All three schools — including the proposed Springdale campus — are or would be operated by the Texas-based Responsive Education Solutions charter management organization that also operates the Northwest Classical Academy in Bentonville, the Quest School of West Little Rock and just received final approval last week to open a kindergartners through seniors classical academy in Rogers.

Dennis Felton, Responsive Education’s state director of school innovation and expansion, said Northwest Arkansas was selected as the site for a new Premier High in part because of student need. The Springdale School District had 1,354 graduates in 2019, but there were some 283 students who didn’t graduate despite having started with the cohort in ninth grade.

Premier High Schools feature personalized learning and graduation plans that include goal-setting and mastery learning. There is direct instruction between students and educators, as well as independent instruction with assistance from teachers and accelerated technology-based instruction, Felton said.

Flexible course scheduling, tutoring, project learning, advisory and college/career coaches, employment internships, extracurricular activities, and character education are other elements of the high schools that give students the opportunity to return to their home high schools or remain at Premier High for graduation and diplomas.

“We want to be the avenue from no-hope to hope,” Steve Gast, superintendent of Responsive Education schools in Arkansas, told the charter panel about the plan for the Premier High in Springdale.

AGSTEM ACADEMY

Regarding the Arkansas AgSTEM Academy, panel members tabled the proposal to give school planners time to adjust the proposed budget, tighten the curriculum, enhance counseling and other student support systems, and confer with the Harrisburg School District. The district owns the Weiner High School Building.

“I’m thinking this is a great idea,” panel member Phil Baldwin told school planners Shannon Mirus, Greta Greeno, Carroll Thetford, Mary Norris and others about the charter proposal that intends to make agriculture and science central themes in the curriculum.

“I love this grassroots effort,” Baldwin said. “I think you are on to something.”

But he also said he wished that the school planners had a better operating and construction budget, and that the planners and Harrisburg School District Superintendent Chris Ferrell — who spoke in opposition to the proposed charter school — had talked together about a possible cooperative effort.

The Harrisburg district encompasses the Weiner community and what was once the Weiner School District until the district fell under the 350-minimum student enrollment that is required to operate a district. A group of Weiner residents have tried multiple times and multiple ways — including a lawsuit — to reestablish a secondary school in the town.

Ferrell told the panel he intends to propose the Harrisburg district become a

conversion charter school system with an agriculture emphasis. Ferrell said the proposed open-enrollment charter school would jeopardize the finances of the Harrisburg system if it attracts as few as 30 students away from the traditional school system.

Panel member Naccaman Williams said he struggled with the sponsoring ASSET Foundation’s school budget and curriculum that lacked specificity.

Tracy Webb, who heads the charter school office for the Arkansas Division of Elementary and Secondary Education, said the division had concerns about the proposal’s reliance on grants not yet awarded by the Arkansas Public School Resource Center. Without the grants, the school faces a deficit of $500,000 in its first year of operation, Webb said, and that could worsen based if student numbers fall below projections.

The panel is to hear presentations on more charter schools when it resumes its meeting at 9 a.m. today. Those are for open-enrollment charter schools in Little Rock and Maumelle.

There are 25 active, open-enrollment charters with one more to be opened in this new school year, for a total of 26. The state cap on open-enrollment charter schools is 34.