By Kathy Smith, Walton Family Foundation Senior Program Officer
For most of her senior year at Batesville High School, Somyr Strickland led a double educational life.
By day, the 17-year-old Arkansas native was a 12th grade student studying English and Math and preparing for her high school graduation with her fellow classmates. By night, she would head to the University of Arkansas Community College-Batesville (UACCB) campus to learn the life-saving skills of an emergency medical technician, from splinting techniques to spine immobilization and bleeding control.
It was, Somyr admits, a “very demanding” schedule. But her hard work paid off.
On May 8, 2017, Somyr graduated from UACCB with her certificate as an EMT. Four days later, on May 12, she walked across the stage at Batesville High to receive her diploma.
“I would not be where I am at today if I didn’t have the opportunity to take those college classes while being in high school,” Somyr, now 18, says. “It was tough. But if you stay focused and don’t get sidetracked – and you know what your end goal is – you can achieve anything.”
Somyr’s experience was made possible through a collaboration between UACCB and the four school districts in Independence County, Arkansas. It allows high school students to concurrently take college credits or career training at the community college. It’s part of a larger effort by community leaders in Independence County and across Arkansas to better prepare students for success after high school, whether they pursue higher education or immediately enter the 21st century marketplace.
Another major goal: To create a better-educated, skilled workforce that attracts high-wage employers to the state.
“For us, everything comes down to having an equipped workforce,” says Jamie Rayford, the chief operating officer for the Batesville Chamber of Commerce, which has led efforts to forge the educational partnerships between Independence County school districts and UACCB.
“Whether a student graduates high school and goes immediately into the workforce, or goes to university, we want them to be equipped and trained and ready,” Jamie says. “We know the only way we can keep our talent here is to attract companies that have great-paying jobs. You can’t attract the companies if you don’t have a trained workforce that is well equipped and ready to go to work.”
To develop the educational partnerships between county school districts and the community college, local officials worked closely with ForwARd Arkansas, a statewide organization formed in 2014 to develop a modern, comprehensive vision for education in the state.
Forward Arkansas is a partnership between the Arkansas Department of Education, the Walton Family Foundation and the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation. After a year-long consultation process – that included focus groups and surveys with 8,500 people – the group developed recommendations for improving student achievement and closing the achievement gap, from pre-school through high school.
Batesville was one of the first five cities – including Crossett, Marianna, Pea Ridge, and Springdale – designated as “Forward Communities” and tasked with developing individualized plans to implement new educational strategies.
In Independence County, qualifying students – those with high grade point averages and test scores – are eligible to take community college courses beginning in 11th grade.
They can take general college credit classes or career-specific courses in fields that include welding, industrial technology, plumbing, nursing, plumbing, cosmetology, and others. In the last academic year, more than 180 Independence County high school students took college courses.
“The fact is, we need a robust high school program that is ready for the global economy,” says Susan Harriman, Forward Arkansas’ executive director. “Education improvement is the driver for creating a state with strong employment that attracts and retains talent.”
Forward Arkansas helped forge relationships between Independence County’s school districts, build educational capacity and consulted with county leaders on how to implement the region’s plan.
Somyr is one of the early success stories. While growing up, she developed an early interest in a healthcare career because several family members – including her father and uncle – worked in the field.
Entering her senior year, she witnessed a car accident and rushed to the assistance of the injured driver.
Somyr knew she had found her calling – and jumped at the opportunity to earn her EMT certification while still in high school.
Since August, Somyr has been working as a licensed EMT with Vital Link, an Independence County-based emergency medical services company.
This fall, she enrolled again at UACCB and is studying to become a paramedic.
“This program has been my saving grace. I am at least a year ahead in terms of being able to reach my goal, just because I had the chance to go to community college as I was finishing high school,” Somyr says. “I am able to do exactly what I love. When I wake up in the morning and I am getting ready for work, I cannot wait to get out that door. To me, that is such a special thing.”
The Arkansas Coalition for Community Schools and ForwARd Arkansas have joined together in partnership to support the development, and implementation of Community Schools in Arkansas.
The Office of Innovation for Education, University of Arkansas, led an Arkansas group to visit a set of high-tech learning opportunities on a regional campus in Michigan. ForwARd Arkansas sponsored our participation.
In the regional campus concept, students attend the regional campus only part of the day while remaining enrolled at their home school. “Home school” means the public school closest to where they live. The students take afternoon classes at their home school, participate in athletics through their home school and graduate from their home high school.
The home school benefits by having enrolled students that cost them substantially less, because about two-thirds of the classes the students take are paid for by the regional programs. Two of the regional programs are even provided at no cost to the home school. The home school pays a fee for the online learning program, but it is less than the state foundation-level funding per student. The home school transports the students to and from the regional campus.
The regional program supports and protects the student’s home community. In many cases, participating students are ones the home school would have lost: they are disengaged, about to drop out, or planning to attend another school through choice. The regional program allows students to connect with real-world, state-of-the-art learning in a way not possible in most local high schools. It also allows students to remain connected to their community and their home school classmates.
The sophisticated career and technical equipment include items such as virtual reality programs and robotic machines for manufacturing. The faculty includes professionals in a field of work who later become teachers as a second career. The expense to make these options available would be unaffordable for most districts on their own.
Where exactly is this efficient and effective arrangement? It’s in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Similar programs exist elsewhere, but this one stands out because so many stellar components are located on one campus. Michigan, like Arkansas, has a regional structure, in which a group of districts is a member of an “intermediate school district” or ISD. In Arkansas, we call these ISDs “educational service cooperatives.”
Kent ISD
Kent Intermediate School District, or Kent ISD, serves 20 public districts, as well as charter schools and parochial schools. Kent ISD offers part-day programs, allowing students to move between schools and programs to meet their personal learning goals while remaining connected to their home schools.
On campus, Kent ISD offers three main programs or schools and provides a host of related supports and opportunities on and off campus:
Kent Career and Technical Center
MySchool@Kent
Kent Innovation High School
Kent Student Support Network (community school coordinator)
Community college coursework
Kent Career and Technical Center
The Kent Career and Technical Center (KCTC) is housed in a 300,000-square-foot facility. A millage funds the equipment and much of the staff. Grants and business partnerships also contribute to the funding.
This video gives a good glimpse of how it all happens:
The students that travel to KCTC arrive from their home school for two sessions, taking place 6:55-11:30 a.m. Each session lasts 2 hours and 15 minutes. A third session is available from noon to 2:15 p.m.
Students attending KCTC are mostly juniors and seniors who have completed the bulk of their core courses during their freshman and sophomore years at their home schools. Students may return to their home schools in the afternoon for remaining core courses or use MySchool@Kent to complete their required credits. Sophomores can attend one session: a STEM overview course, called Design Lab.
Robotic manufacturing equipment.
KCTC has 23 state-approved programs at participating sites, including:
Aviation Maintenance Technology and Avionics, and Aircraft Electronics, located at the Gerald R. Ford International Airport
Precision Machining, located at Grand Rapids Community College’s Applied Technology Center, with easy access to advanced equipment and evening classes at the college
Health Sciences Early College Academy, with biomedical technology courses located at Grand Valley State University’s Cook-DeVos Center and therapeutic and diagnostic healthcare professions courses located at the Downtown Market
Hospitality and culinary programs, located at the Downtown Market
On the Kent ISD campus, KCTC provides programs in:
3-D animation and game design
Applied construction technology
Auto collision repair
Automotive technology
Criminal justice
Design lab
Diesel and equipment technology
Engineering and architecture design
Entrepreneurship and marketing
Graphic communications
Health careers
Heating, air conditioning and refrigeration
Hospitality and culinary programs
Information technology
Mechatronics
Sustainable agri-science
One of the best examples of the quality of the programs can be seen in the digital technology program’s 3-D Autism project. This program is a national finalist in Samsung’s Solve for Tomorrow contest.
Kent Innovation High School
The Kent ISD campus also includes a New Tech Network school, Kent Innovation High School, that has expanded the traditional New Tech program. (Arkansas, too, has New Tech school programs — for example, the New Tech program at Cross County school district.) The small Kent Innovation High School, with about 100 students per class, provides core classes in the morning. Students return to their home schools in the afternoon for electives and extracurricular activities, riding the same buses as the KCTC students. Amway provided funding for much of the cost of facilities and equipment.
In this YouTube video, students describe their experience at the school:
One example of the student project-based learning at this school shows how students connected ideas from three classes. In history class, students studies World War II, in English class they studied dystopian literature, and in science class they studied gene editing using CRISPR. (CRSPIR is “clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats,” which is the hallmark of a bacterial defense system that forms the basis for CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing technology.)
Students were asked to write an example of dystopian literature based on a prompt, such as, what if Hitler had access to CRISPR? They were also asked to write about various ethical concerns about the use of CRISPR addressing the potential for good and for misuse. Their answers included lessons learned in all three classes.
MySchool@Kent
MySchool@Kent (MS@K) is an online, personalized-learning school. Students physically attend class two times per week at the Kent ISD campus. This works well for a variety of students who may work, have children, are caregivers, want to accelerate their classes, travel extensively for sports activities, or need classroom credit recovery.
The school also serves students who have been expelled or have long-term suspensions. Students participating for disciplinary reasons don’t attend class at the ISD campus. MS@K serves them and other students at the downtown YMCA and the downtown library, where teachers work with the students
The primary software used for MS@K is APEX and eDynamic. Teachers can adjust or supplement the curriculum externally. For example, an English teacher facilitating the online learning requires students to write four essays a year, in addition to the software’s programmed learning activities. Students take part in goal setting and are monitored for keeping pace. In addition to the certified teachers participating in MS@K, three coaches and one interventionist are available to make home visits if students are falling behind.
Kent Student Support Network
Photo credit: http://www.kentssn.org/
Kent ISD is also a community school, in which teachers refer students to the Kent Student Support Network (KSSN) and the community school leader is embedded in the school team. KSSN works to reduce inequity and disparity for vulnerable students throughout the Kent ISD. Services include:
Assistance with food security
Assistance to students who are parents, including day care arrangements
Health services, including dental and mental health
Help with housing needs
Help with tutoring
Other individual student needs
Summary
Kent ISD wasn’t designed for the convenience of adults, institutions, or the community. Kent ISD was constructed to address student aspirations and provide opportunities that allow student flexibility while maintaining excellence. In short, Kent ISD meets students where they are, with a multitude of options. Every student can learn. Every student can succeed.
The Arkansas Coalition for Community Schools and ForwARd Arkansas have joined together in partnership to support the development, and implementation of Community Schools in Arkansas.
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