The Arkansas Board of Education on Monday renewed the charters for three of the state’s most-acclaimed, independently run charter schools: KIPP Delta Charter Schools in Phillips and Mississippi counties, eStem Public Charter Schools in Little Rock, and LISA Academy-North Little Rock.
Also Monday, the board approved the establishment of the Miner Academy Charter School, a district-operated conversion charter school that will feature flexible scheduling and the use of technology for students in grades six through 12 in the Bauxite School District.
The board renewed the KIPP and eStem charters for 10 years and approved merging the three eStem charters into one charter, or operating contract, with the state. The LISA Academy charter is renewed for five years but, with that renewal, the state board approved increasing LISA Academy’s 500-student enrollment cap by 100 students in each of the next two years to a maximum of 700 students.
Tom Kimbrell, Arkansas Education commissioner, said each of the newly renewed charter schools has done a good job in what it initially set out to do.
“KIPP is the charter that has led the way for how to go into an area of really high-need, high-poverty student populations and really make a difference,” Kimbrell said during a break in the meeting.
“LISA and eStem are trying to be responsive to the communities in which they serve, telling parents that ‘we are going to have high expectations and we are going to make sure teachers are teaching every day, and the focus is on children and not on adults,’” Kimbrell added. “I think that is what parents are looking for.”
The eStem elementary, middle and high public charter schools opened in downtown Little Rock in 2008-09 with separate state-issued charters.The name for the schools, which have a total of 1,485 students, stands for Economics of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.
John Bacon, chief executive officer of the eStem system, asked that the eStem High Public Charter School’s state charter be amended to include the elementary and middle schools, and that the original elementary and middle-school charters be surrendered.
Bacon said combining the charters would increase efficiency, in part by eliminating the need to compile duplicate reports for the state.
Also, the existing three governing boards for the schools will become one board with up to nine members. A second board, the eStem Charter Inc. board of directors, will continue to exist with some of its members coming from the schools’ governing board.
The state Department of Education’s Charter Review Council, an advisory body to the state Education Board, recommended the renewal and issuance of a single charter. The council noted improved student achievement and a waiting list of 4,600 students for the schools.
Bacon told the board that despite the demand for enrollment in the schools, school leaders were not seeking an immediate increase in the enrollment cap.
“We want to get it right and perfect for the kids we serve now,” Bacon said. But he said streamlining the operation of the system will help set it up for expansion later. He told the board that the largest number of students on the waiting lists come from the 72209 area code in southwest Little Rock.
The Arkansas Education Department’s charter council noted as a concern in its review that the eStem Middle Public Charter School is classified in the state’s accountability system as “needing improvement” in math.
Bacon said that is the result of scores earned by the school’s growing population of special-education students, and that the school has developed strategies to provide additional services to the students.
He told the board that, in general, the three schools are achieving on state exams at rates above those in the surrounding Little Rock, North Little Rock and Pulaski County Special school districts and are doing it at a lower cost per student. He also said the schools - which provide teacher incentive pay - outpace the statewide rate of growth on national exams in most grades.
Board member Sam Ledbetter of Little Rock called the eStem schools, “good schools with good people,” but he said accurate comparisons can’t be made between eStem and surrounding public school systems that have a higher proportion of poor students.
“It’s not race, it’s poverty that presents a challenge,” Ledbetter said, adding that the eStem schools don’t provide school bus transportation, which can be a barrier to low-income students who might want to attend the charter schools. Some eStem students do use the city bus system.
Charter schools are exempted from some state laws and rules in return for greater accountability for their student achievement rates. The eStem schools asked Monday to be exempted from publishing an annual progress report in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.Board member Alice Mahony of El Dorado questioned it, saying that all districts are required to publish their reports in the local newspaper.
“There is not a way to inexpensively run that in the paper,” Bacon responded. “It seems very inefficient and we spend thousands of dollars on that. There are other local publications that we could cobble together and get the same message out without having that high of expense.”
Board member Jay Barth of Little Rock asked Bacon about the student attrition rate at the school. Bacon responded that about 69 percent of the students who have not graduated have stayed with the school since its opening in 2008-09.
The board voted 6-1 for the charter renewal with Mahony casting the only “no” vote. She cited the fact that the middle school was categorized as needing improvement as the reason.
The KIPP Delta Public Charter Schools, which serve 1,161 students in kindergarten through 12th grades, is in its 11th year of operation in east Arkansas and is one of the state’s oldest charter systems.
“We feel we are making dramatic changes in the lives of children in the Delta,” Scott Shirey, the chief executive officer, said about the system that includes a national Blue Ribbon award-winning middle school and a high school recognized by U.S. News and World Report as the No. 2 high school in the state.
He said 100 percent of the graduates in the school’s first three graduating classes were accepted into college. Eighty one percent continue to be enrolled in college.
Shirey said the KIPP schools are beating the odds in the region, state and nation for low-income children.
“We are very proud of the KIPP-through-college culture that we have built.”
He said the school has shown in its first 10 years that children in the Delta can succeed at high levels, and the next 10 years will be devoted to showing “how high they can actually climb.”
The board approved a 10-year renewal of the charter for the KIPP schools in Helena-West Helena and Blytheville, which are part of a national network of charter schools. Mahony cast the singular “no” vote on the renewal. She cited the fact that the Blytheville campus that serves grades five through eight had been identified through the state’s accountability system as needing improvement in math.
Shirey said the school was identified on the basis of limited data from just two classes and that the system was working to improve the achievement rate.
Shirey also said that finding and retaining staff members is a challenge at the schools, and is one of the reasons the organization on Monday dropped its request to expand its enrollment cap by 90 students for the Blytheville campus.
State data showed that 27 of the 56 KIPP teachers changed between 2011-12 and 2012-13. Shirey said that rate is affected in part by the school’s reliance on Teach for America teachers who make only a two-year commitment to the school.
The state Education Board unanimously approved the 5-year renewal and 200-student expansion for the LISA Academy-North Little Rock. The school’s name stands for Little Scholars of Arkansas.
The school opened in 2008-09 and now serves 500 students in kindergarten through 12th grade in a former retail store on Landers Road in Sherwood.
Leaders of the school that emphasizes math and science instruction had asked for a longer extension, but Barth urged the shorter period because of some “instability” that he saw in the school’s enrollment in regard to middle-school transfers. About 30 percent, or 142 students of the 471 enrolled at the middle level since its opening, had transferred out.
The state Education Department’s Charter Review Council found multiple strengths at the school, including academic achievement, a good financial balance and a waiting list of more than 1,000 students. The council did note that the small high school has been classified under the state’s accountability system as “needing improvement” in math, missing the mark for an “achieving” rating by 0.02 point.
LISA student Vicktoreia Carroll, a member of this year’s first graduating class, praised the school that she has attended since seventh grade, citing the accessibility of teachers and the challenging curriculum.
“Now I have the opportunity to go to the college of my choice, possibly for free,” Carroll, 18, told the Education Board, describing scholarship offers from Vanderbilt and Dartmouth universities.
The Education Board unanimously approved the Miner Academy that was proposed by the Bauxite School District to serve up to 250 students.
The school will be an alternative to the traditional middle and high school program for students who need or want to learn at a different pace than those in a traditional classroom.
Students to be served will include those who are behind in earning graduation credits, in need of an alternative program for personal or behavioral reasons, or want to take more courses than they are able to in a regular school day. More individualized instruction, a one to-one student-to-computer ratio and instruction from core academic teachers are features of the academy plan.
The school will feature an extended school year. Flexible daily scheduling would enable students to stay all day in the academy or spend just one or two periods before returning to the regular school setting.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 03/12/2013