Review of charters on panel’s agenda
The Arkansas Charter Authorizing Panel will meet at 9 a.m. Tuesday to continue its review of charter school systems in which one or more campuses have earned state-applied grades of D and F based largely on results from last spring’s ACT Aspire tests.
The meeting will be in the auditorium of the Arch Ford Education Building, 4 Capitol Mall.
The panel will continue to receive written public comment via email and postal mail. To ensure panel members have sufficient time to review the comments, public comments should be received by 9 a.m. Monday. Comments can be emailed to Dorie.Summons@ade. arkansas.gov or mailed to the Arkansas Department of Education, Division of Elementary and Secondary Education, Charter School Office, 4 Capitol Mall, Slot 21, Little Rock, Ark. 72201.
The schools to be examined by the panel are part of the eStem Public Charter Schools based in Little Rock and part of the KIPP Delta Charter Schools system that has campuses in Helena-West Helena and Blytheville. The agenda for the meeting is available at https://bit.ly/427Kbel.
The meeting will be available via livestream at https://bit.ly/3nBtQQq.
Upon adjournment of the Tuesday meeting, the panel will hold a work session in the auditorium to review the new charter application and process. The work session will not be livestreamed.
Authors commend education plans
Arkansas is one of four states recognized recently “for leading the charge for conservative education,” by national education policy and researchers Frederick Hess and Mike McShane.
Writing for The Hill and The Thomas B. Fordham Institute, the two said Arkansas, Virginia, Louisiana, Mississippi are pointing the way forward in early childhood education and kindergarten through 12th grades.
Arkansas is highlighted for the Arkansas LEARNS Act or Act 237 of 2023 and its provisions for a $50,000 minimum teacher salary, 12 weeks of paid maternity leave, funding for literacy coaches and the Education Freedom Accounts that provide state funding for tuition and other private school costs.
The authors said the four states are leaders at a time when presidential candidates Joe Biden and Donald Trump either stand for the status quo and/or are unable to engage seriously in substantive policy change.
IDEA system gets two conservators
The Texas Education Agency has appointed two conservators to oversee IDEA Public Schools, an 80,000-student charter school system based largely in Texas but which dipped a toe into Arkansas’ charter school offerings not so long ago.
K-12 Dive reported that the conservators were called in after investigations into allegations of “financial and operational impropriety.”
IDEA stands for Individuals Dedicated to Excellence and Achievement.
The organization had received Arkansas approval in September 2021 to open two open-enrollment charter school campuses within the borders of the Little Rock and Pulaski County Special school districts, beginning with the 2023-24 school year.
In October 2022, the IDEA Public Charter Schools Arkansas organization announced it was giving up those plans — at least for the time being — attributing the decision at least in part to “dramatically increased start-up and operating costs.”
The Texas agency’s investigation found top leaders in the charter district used public funds to pay for expenses that included leasing a private jet, according to the San Antonio Report, a nonprofit online news organization.
The charter district said in a statement that as part of its settlement with the state of Texas and the U.S. Department of Education it would return $28.7 million in federal grant funds to the U.S. Department of Education, the San Antonio Report wrote.