by Cynthia Howell
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
The now-vacant Arkansas Gazette building in the center of downtown Little Rock will become home in August to three state-funded charter schools that will initially serve as many as 856 students in elementary, middle and high school.
The combined enrollment of the three schools and their combined budgets, which cover the leasing and maintaining 65,516 square feet of downtown real estate for five years at a cost of almost $7.2 million, put the schools in the position of becoming the state’s largest and most expensive charter school operation.
The Arkansas Board of Education, meeting Monday at the Clinton Presidential Center, voted 8-0 for the three new schools, which will be known as the e-STEM Elementary, e-STEM Middle and e-STEM High Public Schools.
Board members considered the schools’ applications over the course of two months’ meetings.
“It is a significant financial investment, and that is why the state board is doing their due diligence in asking those probing questions,” Arkansas Commissioner of Education Ken James said. “At the end of the day quality has to be the end result for all of us, be it a charter school or a traditional school. We have to be able to demonstrate that kids are learning and that folks are being good stewards of public resources.”
The term “e-STEM” is an acronym for Economics of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics — the subjects of focus at the three schools along with the languages of Latin, Spanish and Mandarin Chinese.
Roy Brooks, the recently ousted superintendent of the Little Rock School District and now a consultant to the organizers of the three charter schools, announced to the state Education Board that it was his intention to become part of the management of the charter schools if they were approved.
Brooks wouldn’t be specific on his exact title but said he anticipates being “the guy in charge” of schools that will introduce foreign languages and technology to students whom he believes will become civic leaders and entrepreneurs.
“When I was superintendent of the Little Rock School District , we talked about becoming the highest-achieving urban school district in the nation,” Brooks, 57, said in an interview after the vote.
“Now we are talking about competing on the world stage. We are talking about being one of the highest-achieving schools in the world.”
The Little Rock School Board voted 4-3 on May 24 to exercise a buyout provision in Brooks’ contract. The district ultimately paid Brooks and entities on his behalf — such as a retirement fund and lawyers — a total of $635,000.
Little Rock ’s board voted to buy out the two years remaining on his contract rather than follow through on an initial plan to hold a hearing on charges against Brooks that, if proved, could have warranted his firing without any additional compensation.
Brooks denied all the accusations. No hearing on the accusations was ever held.
Little Rock Interim Superintendent Linda Watson and School Board President Katherine Mitchell, the board member who led the district’s effort to remove Brooks, attended Monday’s state board meeting. They did not address the state board Monday.
The Little Rock board voted earlier this year to urge the Arkansas Education Board to oppose the establishment of the three charter schools in the Gazette building. The local School Board argued that the charter school programs are no different than programs currently available in the district schools and that the charter schools could drain students and state financial aid from the Little Rock district, at the rate of $5,770 per student.
The Gazette building is owned by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc., which is a division of WEHCO Media Inc., whose president and chief executive officer is Walter E. Hussman Jr. Hussman is publisher of the Democrat-Gazette and is a major stockholder in WEHCO Media Inc.
Open-enrollment charter schools are operated by not-forprofit organizations other than traditional school districts. The schools operate according to the terms of five-year, renewable contracts, or charters, with the state Education Board.
The charter schools, exempt from some of the rules that govern traditional schools, have some flexibility to innovate. In return, they are held more accountable for student achievement.
Arkansas now has 10 open-enrollment charter schools ranging in size from 58 students to 499 students. They serve about 2,570 students. Act 736 of 2007 caps the number of open-enrollment charter schools that can operate at any one time to 24.
The state board’s approval of the three open-enrollment charter schools Monday brings to six the number of new schools approved for opening in August 2008, raising the total number of schools to 16.
One more — Covenant Keepers College Preparatory Charter School , also planned for Little Rock — is still awaiting state board action in January.
The board in November approved charter schools for Sherwood in the Pulaski County Special School District , Osceola and Humphrey in the DeWitt School District.
The e-STEM Little Rock elementary charter school, planned for the first floor of the Gazette building at 112 W. Third St. , is expected to house a staff of 27 and operate in the first year at a cost of almost $3 million.
The middle school has a projected first-year expenditure of $3.2 million.
The high school, set to start with 100 students and grow to 400 over time, is projected to have first-year expenses of $1.1 million.
The cost of the lease is $17.29 per square foot plus $4 a square foot for insurance, utilities, janitorial service and maintenance.
The total first-year facilities cost for the three schools is budgeted at $1.4 million. An addendum to the lease gives the non-profit e-STEM Public Charter Schools Inc. the option to purchase the building for $3 million with consideration for building improvements and adjustments made in the Consumer Price Index.
The budgets for the three schools — which will feature a math curriculum used in Singapore, an early engineering program designed by the LEGO plastic building blocks company, and merit pay for the faculty — also includes the cost of providing bus tokens for every student to ride city buses run by the Central Arkansas Transit Authority to and from school, said Caroline Proctor, director of the Arkansas Charter School Resource Center, a Walton Family Foundation office at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.
Proctor helped plan the programs for the each of the schools.
Lewis David Jones, a North Little Rock engineer, is the chairman of the umbrella board of directors for the schools, which is expected to formalize Brooks’ selection as administrator within the next few days. Each of the three schools also will have their own boards of directors; the membership of each board will include at least one engineer, one economist, one mathematician and one scientist.
The state Education Board had tabled action on the e-STEM charter schools in November to give school planners time to finalize the lease arrangements.
On Monday, board members MaryJane Rebick of Little Rock and Dr. Ben Mays of Clinton posed multiple questions about the arrangements, such as who would be responsible for replacing the roof or repairing the parking lot if that became necessary.
Rebick said she was willing to forgo many of her questions because of the stature of the schools’ backers.
“I’m willing to overlook some of these budget issues this time because I know that Dr. Brooks is fiscally responsible,” Rebick said. “With [Walter] Hussman and the Waltons involved, I don’t think they will let the schools fail. I am putting my faith in these schools based on knowing these people.”
