Charter Schools Chart Progress

Most college freshman fail chemistry at the University of Arkansas.

That’s one reason Bill Warnock, a professional engineer and former assistant dean at the UA College of Engineering, decided to join the faculty at Haas Hall Academy.

The charter school was established this fall to give students a non-traditional high school setting for a smoother segue into college.

“It’s just a different atmosphere from high school to college,” Warnock said. “So we can give them a little bit more.”

Charter schools are public schools that function like private schools in that they don’t receive revenue from local school districts. But they do receive some state and federal funding. Each charter school in Arkansas is open to students anywhere within the U.S. congressional district where it is located.

Martin Schoppmeyer, former director of corporate relations at the UA College of Engineering, is the CEO of Haas Hall.

The student-to-teacher ratio will probably never exceed 15-to-1 at Haas Hall, although right now it’s more like 2-to-1 with a total of seven faculty members to 16 students.

A 10,000-SF beige metal building situated on farmland outside Farmington houses the charter high school. But inside, students are equipped with wireless Internet and each will eventually have a laptop computer. Meals for students are catered, and a lounge furnished with overstuffed couches adjoins the lunchroom. Students will also have access to chemistry and engineering labs.

“It doesn’t look like a typical school, it doesn’t feel like one and to me that’s a good thing,” Schoppmeyer said.

Preparing for College

Classes at Haas Hall range from 45 to 90 minutes and do not meet on the same day at the same time every day of the week. In addition, their school day runs until 4:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday and only half days on Fridays.

The only extracurricular sport activities offered will be tennis and golf in the spring, which prompted about 30 potential students to go elsewhere so they could participate in traditional extracurricular activities like football, basketball and band.

Warnock said the lab classes cover chemistry, basic engineering principles, physics and a lot of math.

“We’ll cover general basic things so when they hit the university they will now know what the professor is talking about and they’ve had a hands-on experience with it,” Warnock said.

Right now, the 16 students enrolled at Haas Hall are in 10th and 11th grade, but Warnock said he hopes the future 12th graders will be in at least advanced math or calculus by their senior year. In addition to meeting the state requirements for graduation, Haas Hall students will graduate with five science units and be in at least four math units, in addition to having completed three units of literature.

One of the classes offered will be marketing.

“That is one of the deficiencies engineers have,” Schoppmeyer said, “they have an idea, but they don’t know how to communicate it.”

Making the Financial Grade

Haas Hall is considered a public school because it receives $5,400 per student in state funding. Haas Hall doesn’t receive any other funding that other public schools in congressional District 3 receive, such as millage or bond proceeds.

Schoppmeyer, said his expected expenditures for the 2004-2005 school year are $846,400, and he anticipates revenues of $835,835. Haas Hall’s budget for students is about $30,000 per student per year.

“We are the only charter high school in the state of Arkansas, and we are one of only a few in the entire country because it is expensive,” Schoppmeyer said.

Because the charter for Haas Hall has to be renewed every three years, Schoppmeyer said, the corporation that holds the charter has no financial credit.

Schoppmeyer said he personally financed the start-up of Haas Hall, though not through a specific bank. The school is promised a $150,000 matching grant through the Walton Family Charitable Support Foundation, if it can match it by Dec. 31. Schoppmeyer received a $10,000 federal grant to write the charter and, to date, the school has received an additional $300,000 in federal grant money for an implementation grant. Another $150,000 in implementation grant money Schoppmeyer expects to receive in 2005 will max out his eligibility for implementation grant funding.

Charter schools have up to two years to use their implementation grant, said Dana Koite, coordinator with the Arkansas Charter School Office.

“They can use it as temporary salary but they can’t use it for day-to-day expenses,” Koite said.

Charter schools are considered non-profit, tax-exempt organizations but they can waive the minimum or maximum salary schedules required by the state.

John Lewis, chairman and CEO of The Bank of Fayetteville, said he joined the Haas Hall school board because he thinks the school is a noble experiment.

“I think as the demands on the educational process become more severe and more known, how are we going to prep our children and grandchildren for the information age?” Lewis asked.

Bootsie Ackerman joined Haas Hall in mid-September as the school’s director of economic development.

“My experience in fundraising for the Downtown Dickson Enhancement Project is really my background in fundraising,” Ackerman said. “I must say this has got to be easier.”

Ackerman said she is developing a comprehensive plan now, which, she said, includes bringing people out to the campus and showing them the school.

For example, Ackerman said, an existing business trying to attract a quality employee now has Haas Hall to offer as a local education option.

“There is a lot of potential for support through partnerships with our existing business and industry,” Ackerman said. “After all, their greatest challenge is recruiting and retaining the best and brightest employees.”

Gary Moore, principal of the Benton County School of the Arts elementary school in Rogers, said his charter school is the only public school in the area focused on the arts. But funding, Moore said, is a constant challenge. The school’s parent-teacher organization raises money through several fundraisers annually.

“If we want to build anything, we have to seek private funding through lending institutions,” Moore said. “Banks don’t like that we can only be set for three years.”

Benton County School of the Arts is working with Architecture Plus Inc. of Fort Smith to plan the stages of a $1.3 million expansion for the school.

The federal government began providing grant funding to be applied in the 2004-2005 school year through the State Charter School Facilities Incentive Grants program.

The U.S. Department of Education can award grant money for up to five years to eligible states. It gave about $19 million to schools nationally in fiscal year 2004 and the program is earmarked for $25 million, but Arkansas charter schools aren’t eligible for that type of per-pupil aid. Arkansas’ charter law doesn’t allow per-pupil funding for new facilities construction, building purchase, lease or renovation.

Charter Issue

Eight open-enrollment and nine district-conversion charter schools currently exist in the state, Koite said. Arkansas has a cap on the number of open-enrollment schools it allows per congressional district, such as Haas Hall, which along with Benton County School of the Arts, make up the only open-enrollment charter schools in the two-county area. The current cap on open-enrollment charter schools is 12.

“Charter schools are relatively new, and we don’t know for sure,” state Sen. Dave Bisbee, R-Rogers, said. “It appears they are doing a pretty good job, and I think there will be a movement to increase the number allowable in the future.”

Bisbee said the state will go down that road cautiously to avoid mistakes.

In addition, Koite said the Arkansas Charter School office has four applications on file — three for congressional District 4 and one is for congressional District 3, which includes Northwest Arkansas. The application for Fort Smith Challenge Academy would max out the allowable open-enrollment charter schools in District 3.

Mike Scoles, director of the Arkansas Charter School Resource Center in Conway, said the state has asked the federal government for $3.4 million in grant funding for this school year. Last year, Arkansas received $2.3 million in federal funding. Altogether, the federal government contributed $200 million in funding to the 41 states that had more than 3,000 charter schools in the 2003-2004 school year. Since 1991, 41 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have all signed into law charter school legislation and 40 states have charter schools. Arkansas passed its charter school law in 1995.

About 10 percent of charter schools nationwide have failed since the first state passed the first charter law, Scoles said.