Farmington District To Seek Designation

FARMINGTON — Farmington School District plans to seek a new designation through the Arkansas Department of Education that would allow it to design and create new teaching strategies.

The district will submit an application to become a District of Innovation and schools in the system will submit applications to become Schools of Innovation, Superintendent Bryan Law told the School Board at its March 17 meeting.

“It’s a great opportunity to apply for this,” Law said. “It will allow us some flexibility with some rigid rules that we haven’t had before.”

A District of Innovation or School of Innovation is a new concept that became available through state Act 601 of 2013. With this designation, schools can request alternatives to existing instructional and administrative practices.

Applications must be submitted online by May 1. As part of the application, Farmington has to outline its goals and then list what waivers it needs to meet the goals.

The district also must create a Council of Innovation for each school and a district-wide Council of Innovation.

Panel members would include teachers, a building administrator, classified employees, parents, community members and students.

In addition, Law said, 60 percent of the teachers from each school must vote to support the request to become a School of Innovation.

The commissioner of education is given the authority to approve a school’s application. If approved, the designation will be effective for four years and can be renewed for four-year periods after that at the commissioner’s discretion.

Building principals and other administrators gave examples of how the district would benefit from being designated a School of Innovation or a District of Innovation at the School Board meeting.

Jon Purifoy, high school principal, said the school could request a waiver to allow non-certified persons to teach specific classes.

For instance, School Resource Off icer Chad Parrish could teach a law enforcement class.

A registered school nurse could teach a medical class. A sports medicine class would be another example, he said.

“When they say the door is wide open, it’s really wide open,” Clayton Williams, high school instructional facilitator, told the board.

One waiver the high school will request, said Purifoy, is to have a late start one day a week.

This would allow students who passed their end-of-course tests and are up to date in their classes to come to school an hour late.

For others, the hour would be used for tutoring or remediation.

“That’s a small tweak to the schedule that would be awesome,” Purifoy said.

Julia Williams, principal of Ledbetter Intermediate, said her school is researching waivers related to a math, science and technology curriculum.

The middle school has challenges because it has to meet state requirements for both a kindergarten-sixth grade school and a seventh-12th grade school, said Budd Smith, assistant principal.

Smith said the school is exploring options of how being a School of Innovation would allow flexibility in the schedule.

As a District of Innovation, one request for a waiver might be to start school several days earlier in August in anticipation of snow days, Law said.

Clint Jones, assistant superintendent, said the idea of being a School of Innovation is to “help our students have a leg up.” He added, “Having an edge is a good thing for our kids.”