UA office coaches charter school hopefuls
Posted on Sunday, October 15, 2006
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/169710/
The number of independently run, open-enrollment charter schools in Arkansas will more than double in 2007-08 if all 11 applications submitted to the state Department of Education are approved.
The 11 applications include three new charter schools planned for Little Rock, as well as one each in Rogers, Pine Bluff, Helena-West Helena and Magnolia. Others are proposed for the rural communities of Burdette and Dell in the northeast corner of the state, Rondo in Lee County and Humphrey in Arkansas County.
“The thing I’m happiest about are the schools going into the [Mississippi River ] Delta,” said Caroline Proctor, director of the new Arkansas Charter School Resource Center at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. “They are going into areas of tremendous need.”
The number of applicants could have been even greater.
In August, a total of 20 organizations sent letters to the Education Department giving notice that they intended to apply for charter schools.
“We asked some to delay to ’ 08-09 because of the current legal cap of 24 schools — six charter schools per congressional district,” Proctor said. “If everybody went forward, the schools would have been competing against each other for the available slots. We are hoping the cap on open-enrollment schools will be lifted or raised next year by the Legislature.”
The state currently supports eight “open-enrollment” charter schools, which are public, taxpayer-supported schools run by nonprofit organizations other than traditional public school districts. The state has another eight “conversion” charter schools that are managed by public school districts. Four districts — Osceola, Vilonia, Texarkana and Beebe — have recently notified the state that they intend to apply to create conversion charter schools in 2007-08.
Both kinds of charter schools can be experimental because they operate according to the terms of a contract, or charter, with the state Board of Education. Charter schools are exempt from some rules and laws that govern traditional schools. But, in return, charter schools are held to specific student achievement goals. The state’s first charter schools opened in 2000-01.
The 11 proposed open-enrollment charter schools are subject to review by the public school districts from which they are likely to draw students. If the school boards for the affected districts want to object to the charter school plans, they must make that known to the state Board of Education before Nov. 1. The state Education Board will take the objections under consideration when deciding whether to approve the plans. State Education Board action on the charter school proposals is expected in December or early next year.
The volume of charter school proposals this year is at least partly due to Proctor’s efforts to recruit and encourage aspiring school operators and let them know that her center, which is funded by the Walton Family Foundation of Bentonville, is available to help. Catherine Dean, an attorney in Osceola who is spearheading what has been a two-year effort to open a charter school in Mississippi County, is appreciative of the assistance.
“It’s an unbelievable change from last year,” Dean said. “The resource center has helped pull all of us together so that, as we go through this process, if Applicant A has the same problem as Applicant C, we can all talk to each other about how we want to address it.” The center is making it possible for the charter schools to access different programs and software they need to assess student progress over the course of a year or manage special education documentation at a reduced price.
“As a charter school group we have looked at common needs and we know about certain programs and how expensive they are,” Proctor said. “We approached the different companies and said, ‘If we run all that through our server, what kind of price will you give us ?’ We’ve negotiated 30 [percent ] to 40 percent discounts on everything. “
Additionally, the center also intends to assist most of the schools, at least through their first year, with their financial work, such as payroll, and with posting data on the state public school computer network, she said.
Three of the proposed 11 charter schools would be high schools. They face the challenge of teaching the minimum 38 courses every year that the state requires of traditional high schools and which has been unwilling in the past to waive for charter schools.
The charter schools will meet or exceed minimum course requirements by using distance learning programs in which students and their teachers are in different locations and lessons are taught online or by other electronic means, Proctor said. The center has pulled together information on the different distance-learning courses to benefit the new charter schools, as well as existing charter programs and even the state’s small high schools that struggle to meet the 38-unit requirement. Some of the sources for the online courses have been available in the state for several years; others, such as APEX Learning, are new.
Dean’s organization, Great River Academic Center for Excellence Inc., has proposed a charter high school to be located in Burdette in the Blytheville School District and a kindergarten-through-eighthgrade charter school in Dell, which is in the Gosnell School District. The University School will provide a college preparatory program that will enable students to earn an associate college degree by the time they complete high school.
Both the high school and elementary charter schools will be housed in existing school buildings that have been vacant or used for other purposes in recent years.
“ It was just too easy to walk into these buildings that were set up to be schools already,” Dean said. “We have been able to work out sweet deals with the cities because it would benefit both cities to have schools back in those buildings. It’s a perfect partnership.”
Several of the proposed charter schools would target students who do not do well in traditional school settings. A school proposed in the Humphrey community will work to prepare students for work in a global economy. A school in Rogers would cater to students who are interested in the arts. A school planned for Helena-West Helena is designed to prepare kindergarten through fourth-graders for the rigorous work in the already existing Knowledge Is Power Program: Delta College Preparatory Charter School in that town.
The applications for the charter schools are dozens of pages each and represent months of planning. Dean said she is looking forward to the next step of defending the proposals to the Education Board.
“We’re excited and nervous and all that,” she said.