Focus on charter, rural campuses
by Cynthia Howell
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Thursday, May 22, 2008
The University of Central Arkansas and the Walton Family Foundation will establish a center to assist public charter schools and traditional public school districts in rural communities.
University President Lu Hardin on Wednesday announced the Walton foundation grant of $426,141 that will be used to plan for and develop a Little Rock-based Arkansas Public School Resource Center.
He said he believes the center will not only be an asset for Arkansas public education but a model for the nation.
An executive director and finance director for the public school resource center will be named by July 1, Hardin said.
The people being considered for the director’s position are “Arkansas education all-stars, who know the system backwards and forwards but at the same time have the creative ability to transcend the choking bureaucracy,” he said.
Faculty and staff from the University of Central Arkansas will provide a range of services to participating schools and school districts.
That assistance could be in financial management, facility planning, teacher training, student assessment, distance learning, data management, special education compliance and school lunch program requirements.
Of Arkansas’ 245 school districts, about 120 have 1,000 or fewer students.
Arkansas’ open-enrollment charter schools are taxpayersupported public schools run by nonprofit organizations other than traditional school districts.
The schools, of which there are 10 this year with seven more expected next fall, are operated according to a contract or charter with the state Board of Education.
The schools are exempted from some state rules and laws that govern traditional schools. In return for the exemptions, the schools are held to a higher standard for student achievement. Arkansas law also permits the operation of conversion charter schools that are run by traditional school districts.
Luke Gordy, executive director of the Arkansans for Education Reform Foundation and a planner for the new center, said that developers of the center are engaging the services of a national consultant to identify more specifically the needs of the different kinds of schools.
One of the founders of Gordy’s Arkansans for Education Reform Foundation is Jim Walton, president of the Walton Family Foundation of Bentonville.
The establishment of the partnership between the Walton foundation and the University of Central Arkansas follows the closure in January of the Arkansas Charter School Resource Center, also a Walton foundation-funded operation, at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.
That center focused largely on recruiting and guiding potential charter school operators through the state application process as well as providing support for the setup of the charter schools once approved by the state Board of Education.
Hardin, a former chairman of the state Senate Education Committee, said the primary work of the new center will be charter schools.
But he emphasized that charter schools are public schools. He disputed what he says is a misperception that charter schools are in conflict with conventional public schools.
Instead, charter schools take the risk out of trying new approaches to education, he said. He also said the center will not compete with the state’s 15 education service cooperatives that enable their member school districts to share services in areas such as special and gifted education and purchasing.
“My vision for this center, in carrying out Jim Walton’s vision, is to creatively develop a best practices model [for schools] through research,” Hardin said.
Dale Query, superintendent of the 900-student Flippin School District and the president of the Arkansas Rural Education Association, on Wednesday welcomed the plans for the center and the advantages it can provide to small school systems.
“Anything that is going to improve the quality of education for our kids, I’m for it and the Rural Education Association is for it,” Query said.
The concept of the center was born during the last legislative session when it was realized that charter schools — which are almost always one-campus schools — and rural and small schools share some of the same kinds of needs in terms of technology, facilities and financial management, Query said.
He held himself and his district up as an example.
“I am the superintendent, and just like in any small school, I have to take care of finances, facilities, maintenance and operations and transportation and I wear all of those hats. There are areas of strengths and weaknesses. I see this resource center as an opportunity for people like myself to get expertise in areas where I might have a weakness. And, if I have a strength, maybe I can help someone else.”
The precursor of the planned Public School Resource Center was the Arkansas Charter School Resource Center in Fayetteville, which was headed by former charter school operator Caroline Proctor.
John Murry, assistant dean for administration at the University of Arkansas’ College of Education and Health Professions, said Wednesday that the college and Walton foundation decided jointly to close the Fayetteville Center. That was because the foundation wanted to provide far greater technical services to schools beyond charter schools, he said.
“I think they were trying to reconfigure some kind of center that could be more broad-based and really provide services to a larger number of schools with the charter school piece being a small piece of that,” Murry said.
“There were no problems or issues whatsoever between the university here and the college and the Walton Family Foundation. I think they wanted to go in a different direction. The center here through the leadership of Caroline Proctor had provided some outstanding support to charter schools.”
Proctor, earlier this year, formed a private nonprofit corporation, New Schools Group Inc.
