Clark named director
Charley Clark and Jacqueline Brownell were named to head the new Pea Ridge Manufacturing and Business Academy. Clark is the director; Brownell is the assistant director. The selection of the two was announced Monday night at Pea Ridge School Board meeting by Rick Neal, school superintendent.
“I’m excited about him. He’s an outstanding candidate. He has been an outstanding employee of this district for the past 10 years,” Neal said of Clark.
“We’ve spent a lot of time going over this. I’m really excited about this. It’s a great opportunity for this entire town,” Clark said of the new school.
“This is definitely going to be a game changer for Pea Ridge,” Ann Cato, School Board president, said.
The school is a conversion charter school which was approved by the State Department of Education in January. It will be housed on the Pea Ridge High School campus and will offer opportunities for juniors and seniors. It will open for the 20142015 school year. A committee comprised of both school administrators and business leaders evaluated applications and conducted interviews.
“The process of bringing business and industry and education together was a collaboration of different thoughts and ideas that made the interview process valuable. He (Clark) basically rose to the top of the pack of everybody’s list — what they felt like this position needed to look like,” Neal said.
Clark, served this past year as master teacher/Alternative Learning Education teacher. He was head varsity boys basketball coach from 2006-2013, head junior high basketball coach 2004-2006, and teacher in both the high school and junior high
school over the past 10 years. Prior to coming to Pea Ridge, Clark served in Decatur from 2002 to 2004 as teacher and basketball coach.
“The birth of a new school requires commitment to community,” Clark wrote in his application for the director position. “I have now worked and lived in Pea Ridge for 10 years. I consider my family to be part of the ‘new’ Pea Ridge.
“We didn’t grow up here, and we didn’t attend school here, but we have chosen to be here. We have chosen to be a part of a community that we love. It’s the place that we call home. This job also requires commitment to work. My guiding principle since high school is a quote I once read from Theodore Roosevelt, ‘Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.’ There is not a doubt in my mind that this is a job worth doing,” Clark wrote.
Clark earned his bachelor’s degree from Hendrix College.
Brownell, a native of Hot Springs, lives in Pea Ridge. She has served as a principal in Racine, Wisc., a teacher in Westville, Okla., in California and in Arkansas. Her educational license include career and technical school administration (Ark.), school principal/ administrator (Ark., Okla. and Wisc.), family and consumer education (Ark., Okla, Wisc. and Calif.) and kindergarten through 12th grade ESL (Ark. and Okla.). She taught in Springdale from 2002 to 2006. She attended Evangel College in Springfield, Mo., graduated from Louisiana Tech University with a bachelor’s degree, and earned additional credits from California State University, Stanislaus, University of Arkansas and Arkansas Tech University. She has a master’s degree in educational administration.
“It is my commitment to education that drives me to believe that students need an entire community to become active learners and to be productive 21st century citizens of society,” Brownell said, adding that she is a philanthropist who invests in young people in the arts.