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| | State board hears appeals of Pine Bluff charter school proposals
Tuesday, Nov 9, 2004 By David Robinson Arkansas News Bureau LITTLE ROCK - Pine Bluff School District Superintendent Frank Anthony was forced Monday to defend against two charter school proposals that, if approved, would siphon students from his district. Anthony and the Pine Bluff School District Board had voted in September to deny the two charter school applications and those votes were appealed to the state Board of Education on Monday. No action was taken Monday by the state board. "We don't believe you can have an overnight operation come in here and do what we've been doing for years," Anthony told the state board. The board heard appeals on three open-enrollment charters - two from Pine Bluff and one from Texarkana. Only two can be approved because of a state limit on open-enrollment charter schools. No more than three such schools can exist in each of the state's four congressional districts, and one already operates in the southern Arkansas congressional district. No decisions are expected on the proposals until January. The board is not meeting in December. Anthony, superintendent of the system since 1999, steered the district out of both academic and fiscal distress, but several schools within the district still need improvement under the federal No Child Left Behind law. Also since 1999, the district has lost about 1,100 students. The loss is costly because schools are funded based on the number of students they have. He said the district has made numerous improvements, including data-driven teaching, and requires more classes to graduate than surrounding districts. He said neither proposed charter had a track record and approving them would amount to an experiment that could be detrimental to students. "We have 5,750 of the most precious babies," Anthony said. "I don't have time for them to be a research project." Representatives of the two open-enrollment charter school groups seized on the district's low benchmark exam scores and high dropout rates as the basis for their proposals. Only 12 percent of students were proficient in algebra and 28 percent in literacy, said David Sehested of the Pine Bluff Leadership Academy and Arkansas Educational Options Inc. He also said that the dropout rate is about twice the state average, with more than 30 percent of ninth graders quitting school before they graduate. "The numbers don't lie," said state board member Mary Jane Rebick. Arkansas Education Options proposes to bring dropouts back into the classroom and has plans to partner with The Pines Mall. The other proposed open-enrollment charter school, Sci-Tech Development Inc., would be available to grades 1-6 the first year and grades 7-8 the second and third years. Olusola Oluwatosin, speaking for the proposal, said the school would offer after school and summer school programs and place an emphasis on parental involvement. The program also would seek to help parents find better jobs so that they have more time to help their children with homework. Anthony said both proposals failed to show either a record of success or what models they would use that have been successful for demographic groups similar to his district, which is 95 percent black with high poverty rates. Advocates for the charter schools noted that while more affluent residents can send their children to private schools, there's no such alternative for low-income parents. |
