Date |
ArticleType |
3/7/2016 |
EconomicDevelopment |
NLR district takes step to run career-focused charter school |
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North Little Rock School District leaders want to expand the curricular options for the city's high school students to include industry-education programs that will enable new graduates to move directly into good-paying jobs. To that end, the North Little Rock School Board at a special meeting Friday authorized staff to send to the Arkansas Department of Education a required letter of intent to apply to operate a conversion charter school beginning with the 2017-18 school year. The one-page letter of intent to apply for the state charter is due at the Education Department by Tuesday. The actual application for the charter is due Aug. 4. The application will describe in detail the education plan for the school and the waivers from some state laws and regulations that are necessary to carry it out. Charter schools in Arkansas are supposed to offer innovative features to promote student achievement. The schools operate according to the terms of a charter or contract with the state. Conversion charter schools, such as the one North Little Rock wants to operate, are those run by traditional public school districts. Open-enrollment charter schools are also public schools but operated by other nonprofit organizations. Deputy Superintendent Beth Stewart said the district will form a committee of employees, business and industry representatives, Little Rock Regional Chamber representatives and others to fully develop the charter application. School Board approval of the draft application for what is envisioned to be a school-within-a-school at North Little Rock High will be necessary before it is submitted to the state. "This will be a career-focus center," Stewart said. "The purpose is for our students to find their passion and to be prepared to have a job in the end." Christie Toland, the district's director of college and career readiness, said the programs would give students in ninth through 12th grades pathways to careers in manufacturing, health care, transportation, distribution and logistics. Courses in those areas will be offered to students as soon as the 2016-17 school year and then expanded in subsequent years as a result of the charter school. The manufacturing, transportation and other career-focused programs will be blended with the district's already existing engineering, computer science and Environmental and Spatial Technology Laboratory courses. "Why a conversion charter school?" Toland said. "It affords us opportunities and flexibility to serve students' needs -- all students' needs -- in a way that we can't in a traditional high school." Charter school waivers can include changes to the minimum number of hours required for a course or can result in combining courses or embedding one course into another. Toland assured the board that teachers in the career-focus program will be certified to teach the courses. All students at North Little Rock High, including students with special needs, will have access to the charter programs, she said. The students still have to take core academic courses in math, science, English and social studies. Students who enroll in the career-focus programs will still be able to take Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate courses and participate in extracurricular activities, Toland said. Students in the charter programs will receive North Little Rock High School diplomas, but those diplomas will be "value added," Stewart said. That's because the new graduates will have acquired skills and certificates in career fields that will prepare them either to go on to college or to walk into a job. Stewart said in an interview that the district's efforts to establish a North Little Rock High School Center of Excellence were motivated in large part by the Little Rock Regional Chamber. The organization invited the three Pulaski County school districts to meet with its manufacturing group, which had identified for the school districts the essential skills that they wanted students to learn. "We were able to react," Stewart said. "We just knew we needed to go because jobs are sitting out there for kids." As many as 4.5 million jobs are anticipated to be open nationally in the next five years in science, math and technology fields, Toland said. Jay Chesshir, president and chief executive officer of the Little Rock Regional Chamber, said Friday that his organization has been working with its industry and school partners for over two years to establish the kind of charter program now in the works for the North Little Rock district. That effort has included looking at career-development programs in schools elsewhere in Arkansas -- Marion, Pea Ridge and Siloam Springs -- as well as nationally. "We are so excited that the North Little Rock School Board has determined it wants to move forward with this because we see it not only as a career pathway opportunity for young people in North Little Rock and Pulaski County but also an opportunity for companies to be able to train and retain talent that unfortunately sometimes slips away from us," Chesshir said. "It is a win-win for the young folks as well the business community, which means it's going to be a win for all of us." Article ran in Metro section of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on 02/27/2016. Story by Cynthia Howell
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