UCA receives $4.5 million grant

The University of Central Arkansas announced Friday that the school's new Arkansas Public School Resource Center has received a $4.5 million grant from the Walton Family Foundation.

The funds will be transferred to the UCA Foundation, where they will be administered to support the APSRC at UCA.

Tom Courtway, interim president of UCA, said Scott Smith, executive director of the APSRC, wrote a grant earlier this year, and the Walton Family Foundation awarded $426,141 for the planning, development and implementation of the resource center.

"The purpose of that center is fundamentally to engage in activities to provide technical assistance of what are called best practices for open enrollment charter schools (and) rural public schools in the state," Courtway said.

Smith spent five months developing the structure of how the center will operate, he noted.

"Now the Walton family awarded the foundation and UCA this $4.5 million grant to operate it the next three years," he said. "On behalf of the university and the UCA Foundation, we are very appreciative of the Walton Family Foundation and its generosity in making this grant, and we look forward to this three-year partnership.

Courtway said the resource center will have a board of directors who will work with an advisory committee made up of representatives from rural schools and an advisory committee made up of representatives from charter schools. The resource center will provide advice that will help the schools succeed academically and financially, he said, noting rural schools and charter schools face many of the same challenges.

The resource center may, for example, help schools improve their accounting methods, curriculum or computer programs. It will not provide funds, he said.

The chairman of the charter school advisory committee is Scott Shirey, headmaster at Kipp Academy in Helena. The chair of the rural school advisory committee is Jimmy Cunningham, superintendent at Danville Schools, Courtway said.

"The Public School Resource Center will be operated to benefit the open enrollment charter schools throughout the state as well as small rural school districts. It will benefit those schools as well as the administrators, teachers and students that attend those schools. It is consistent, in my opinion, with UCA's long history in public education in this state. It will also provide opportunities for some of our students and faculty members to work on this project, to work on these charter schools and small rural school districts around the state."

According to a press release from UCA, "The purpose of the APSRC is to provide comprehensive services to advance and support school choice initiatives and the implementation of high quality open enrollment public charter schools in Arkansas, as well as providing a variety of support services critical to the fiscal and academic success of rural public schools in Arkansas.

"The APSRC's work includes supporting school choice initiatives, implementing and expanding high quality open enrollment charter schools in Arkansas, protecting and continuing support of Arkansas public school accountability measures, and providing assistance to rural public school districts and schools committed to meeting accountability provisions of Act 35 and Act 1467, the Omnibus Education Act.

"The APSRC also will design and provide support services for both open enrollment public charter schools and rural public school districts to establish and maintain high quality schools measured by both fiscal and academic performance."

(Staff writer Rachel Parker Dickerson can be reached by e-mail at rachel.dickerson@thecabin.net or by phone at 505-1277. Send us your news at www.thecabin.net/submit)