LITTLE ROCK — The state Board of Education on Monday classified the Alpena and Bismarck school districts, along with the Drew Central School District in Monticello, as fiscally distressed because of declining fund balances.
The board also took action on requests from charter schools in Blytheville, North Little Rock and Beebe.
Alpena is projected to end the current school year with a fund balance of $343,543, Bismarck with $430,786 and Drew Central with $227,491.
The districts were notified in advance that the state Department of Education had identified them as fiscally distressed. None of the districts appealed.
School districts in fiscal distress must turn their finances around within two years or face sanctions that can include annexation to another district. The Education Board can impose sanctions sooner than two years if it sees fit.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
Fourteen districts in the state are now on the fiscal-distress list.
In other action, the board approved a request from KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) Blytheville College Preparatory School to move to a new, larger facility and begin accepting fourth-grade students. The open-enrollment charter school has been serving grades 5 and 6 and is already authorized under its charter to add grade 7 in the coming school year and grade 8 the following year.
Blytheville School District Superintendent Richard Atwell complained that the charter school had already built the new facility and begun recruiting for the fourth grade, before going to the board for approval.
KIPP Executive Director Scott Shirey said the construction began before a rule was created requiring board approval for a location change.
“I do apologize for that. On the fourth-grade front … we should have waited,” Shirey said.
Atwell told the board that some students who started the school year at KIPP wound up returning to the Blytheville district during the school year, and most were performing at only basic level on tests.
Board member Sam Ledbetter of Little Rock told Shirey that a common complaint about charter schools is that “you guys keep the kids that are doing well, and the ones that aren’t doing well somehow find their way back to the traditional public school.”
Shirey said national studies have shown that KIPP schools do not weed out low-performing students and said he would welcome a similar study at his school. Such a study would need to consider at what level the students were performing before they went to KIPP, he said.
The board also accepted the voluntary surrender of the charter for Ridgeroad Middle Charter School, a conversion charter school run by the North Little Rock School District.
North Little Rock Superintendent Ken Kirspel told the board that closing the charter school is part of a cost-cutting plan that includes reducing the number of campuses in the district from 21 to 13.
The board approved a request from Badger Academy, a conversion charter school run by the Beebe School District, to renew the school’s charter for five years. The school serves students in grades 7-12 and has an enrollment cap of 70 students.
Board member Alice Mahony of El Dorado noted that the school has failed to meet the standards for adequate yearly progress under the federal No Child Left Behind Act for two consecutive years.
Beebe Superintendent Belinda Shook said the school is so small that a single student’s test score can prevent the school from meeting the standards.
Mahony moved that the board renew the charter for only one year, but the motion failed. Toyce Newton of Crossett then moved to renew the charter for five years, and the motion carried with only Mahony voting “no.”