Charter school plans to build elementary facility

Concept drawing shows proposed elementary school at site of an old LDS athletic field on East 8th North Street.

Richard McKenna Charter High School is setting sights on expanding its alternative education outreach by building a new school in Mountain Home.

The proposed 22,000-square-foot facility on E. 8th North Street would provide classes for up to 170 students in kindergarten to sixth grade.

However, before those plans can proceed, the initiative needs approval by the Mountain Home Planning and Zoning Commission. In addition to the actual building, the conditional use permit already submitted by the local charter school's officials includes a request to rezone the existing property from residential to commercial use.

The planning and zoning commission plans to discuss the charter school's proposal at its next meeting, which starts at 6 p.m. Dec. 2 at the city hall council chambers. The commission's recommendation would then go to the city council for a final vote.

Similar in appearance to Richard McKenna Charter High School on South Haskett Street, the proposed grade school would include six classrooms in the main building for students in first to sixth grade. A separate facility would include a kindergarten classroom along with a multipurpose room to accommodate various school programs.

According to Larry Slade, director for the local charter school, future plans call for building a second facility next to the kindergarten and a multipurpose annex for seventh- and eighth-grade students.

However, Slade emphasized that all of those plans are tentative and could change depending on expected construction costs. School officials expect to have those final cost estimates by April 2014.

At the same time, the alternative school also needs to revise its charter to accommodate the planned elementary school, which could take up to four months to complete. Its existing charter allows the current school to only provide alternative education for students in seventh to 12th grade.

The Mountain Home community has dealt with at-risk students for 23 years -- well before the charter high school opened its doors, according to Slade.

"We just feel that we're always doing educational triage -- getting kids up to speed to help them do better in school," he added. "Rather than always trying to remediate, I'd rather prevent that from happening by starting them young and helping them develop the study skills and habits that are required for success. We want to prepare our kids to succeed."

It was one of the reasons why the charter school pursued the grade school initiative.

"I had a number of parents come to me over a year ago, and they were asking me... about wanting something different for their students," Slade said.

Knowing that starting a charter school is extremely challenging, the charter school director tried to discourage those parents from starting one on their own. But at the same time, he admitted that McKenna was in the best position to start this type of project since it already had money set aside up for future expansion.

"We toyed with the idea (of a charter elementary school) but just couldn't see how it could work," he said.

The effort gained traction last December after the local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced plans to sell its existing athletic field on E. 8th North Street. The charter school submitted the winning bid, edging out plans by city officials to turn that property into a community park.

"We couldn't pass up that property," Slade said in a previous interview with the Mountain Home News. "You don't find property that nice" within city limits.

Since January, officials with the charter school have rapidly moved to get the project beyond the design phase, according to Slade.

"It's been a huge learning curve... but we're now at the point that we're feeling pretty confident on what we're doing," he said.

The elementary school proposal comes four years after Richard McKenna Charter High School moved to its current campus. But at a combined cost of $2.3 million, the 15,000-square-foot facility is significant smaller than the planned elementary school.

However, Slade remains optimistic that the plans for the new school will move forward.

"We can make it work if the price comes in right," he said.

Even if it doesn't, officials with the charter school system can always move those plans back a couple of years if necessary, he said.