Hope aiming to ramp up educational offerings with $15M federal grant

Five-year plan informational meeting Thursday at Hempstead Hall

HOPE, Ark. -- Ahead of Hope Public Schools' five-year planning event Thursday, Superintendent Jonathan Crossley shared what the administration seeks to achieve.

"The vision is that at the end of that five years, all kids will be graduating from high school with either an associate's degree, with a year of college completed or having completed our professional skills training certification," Crossley said.

The district will fund its plan with a five-year, $15 million grant received in October 2022 from the U.S. Department of Education to create a magnet school. The money will be used to transform the entire district into a magnet district, from Pre-K through 12th grade.

Crossley said the school system has built partnerships with local field trade locations to create paid career internships for students.

"It's called Bobcats Work, where students can work 20 to 30 hours a week if possible, and make money doing so," Crossley said.

Crossley said the high school is going to serve as a finishing school for students who graduate, but also have expanded programs such as arts, robotics, mathematics, technology, performance based dance and drama.

"We're going to have expanded clubs and I really believe in that. Kids having the opportunity to connect with each other and connect with caring adults are nine times more likely to graduate from high school than those who are not connected through extracurricular activities," Crossley said.

Crossley said the school system has the goal of making sure all elementary aged students are at the grade-appropriate level for literacy.

"We believe when we do that and build that it will revolutionize and change how ready kids are as they go through our system, because we know how important literacy is," Crossley said.

The school system has a scholarship program that Crossley said will assist students with having a nest egg for their future straight out of high school, whether it's for job training or college courses.

"Some kids have taken out $30-40,000 loans all the time just to live, we just don't believe in that kind of consumer debt, if we can help it. We want to use this money to help pay for tuition or living expenses to set them up for success," Crossley said.

Crossley said Hope Public School system has a goal to raise $5 million dollars by Christmas, which will provide $200,000 per year to graduating high school students. The system also has plans to raise employee salaries between 10-13% within five years.

"I really believe that employee satisfaction starts with workplace support," Crossley said.

The school system plans to start a partnership with the local hospitals to provide services to parents of young children, which will be called Baby College and Parent Academy.

"We're going to connect a home to a school adviser to connect parents from the time a kid is born. This will provide any resources that parents need to make their kids successful," Crossley said.

The five-year plan informational event will start at 5:30 p.m. Thursday at Hempstead Hall on the campus of the University of Arkansas at Hope.

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