Charter Schools Dominate Board Of Education Agenda

The State Board of Education approved three applications and refused one application for charter schools.

The board approved applications proposed by Responsive Education Solutions for Northwest Arkansas Classical Academy in Bentonville and Premier High School of Little Rock. It also approved an application for Quest Middle School in Pine Bluff, but it refused another Pine Bluff effort.

John Lyon with our content partner, the Arkansas News Bureau, reports:

The board voted not to approve a charter for Exalt Academy of Pine Bluff, which was proposed as a school that would admit grades K-3 in its first year and add a grade each year until it was serving grades K-8. The proposed enrollment cap for the school was 540 students.

The applicant was Exalt Education Inc., which manages Little Rock Preparatory Academy, also an open-enrollment charter school. Exalt CEO Ben Lindquist told the board the proposed Pine Bluff school would target at-risk students and would provide them with 30 percent more learning time than traditional public schools while working to put them on a path to college.

The Pine Bluff School District opposed the application.

Read more on the meeting at this link.