ADE Briefs

The Arkansas State Board of Education approved in a 6-1 vote Cross County School District’s approval for a conversion charter school to be named Cross County New Tech High. (Conversion schools are those that take an existing school and transform it into a charter school.) The 500-student school is to serve grades 7 through 12. [...]

The Arkansas State Board of Education approved in a 7-0 vote today the request from Lighthouse Charter School in Jacksonville to amend its charter. The State Board of Education approved the application for Jacksonville Lighthouse Charter Schools on November 3, 2008. Grades K-12 were approved with a maximum enrollment of 650. The charter school request [...]

The Arkansas State Board of Education has begun its January meeting. Watch the proceedings live via Web stream by linking here. Posted by JJT.

Senators Mark Pryor and John Boozman and the U.S. Senate Youth Program announced this week the names of the two Arkansas students who have been selected as delegates to the 49th annual United States Senate Youth Program: Victoria Maloch of Magnolia and Colby Qualls of Monette. Maloch and Qualls will be part of the group [...]

Arkansas on iTunes U is announcing a classroom podcast competition for teachers and their students, who are are invited to submit a focused podcast series containing at least six student-created videos of two to five minutes each in length. The goal is for students to demonstrate their own learning and bring the content to life [...]

The Legislative Session of the 88th General Assembly of Arkansas is now underway, and, once again, the Arkansas Department of Education will track proposed legislation on its website, ArkansasEd.org. The direct link to the legislative pages, if you want to bookmark it, is http://ArkansasEd.org/about/legislation.html. On those pages, we’ll keep track of the current session’s K-12 [...]

In a ceremony that was moved indoors because of the remaining snow and bitter temperatures, Gov. Mike Beebe took the oath for his second term in office from Chief Justice Jim Hannah. In his address, Gov. Beebe talked about the gains made in education during his first term — including mention of today’s news about [...]

Ranked sixth overall in the just-released 2011 issue of Quality Counts, Arkansas earned its highest placement ever in the annual ranking of states’ public education policies, environment and performance. Quality Counts, now in its 15th year, is published by the national magazine Education Week. For the previous two years, Arkansas placed 10th. Arkansas came in [...]

While state offices in the Little Rock metropolitan area will reopen on Tuesday, Governor Mike Beebe will put the inclement weather policy into effect to allow state employees an extra two hours to navigate potentially icy roads. Posted by JJT.

The Governor’s Office just released this notice: With hazardous road conditions expected tomorrow after the snow tapers off overnight, Governor Mike Beebe has ordered only essential personnel to report to work on Monday under the Inclement Weather Policy. Agency directors and supervisors will decide who those people are and when they will arrive at work. [...]