Officials from KIPP, which stands for Knowledge Is Power Program, say the award is the largest the school has received to date. It will allow the free, open-enrollment public charter middle school for underserved students to expand from two schools in Helena to 12 schools across the Delta region by 2019. When the expansion is complete, KIPP Delta’s charter schools will send more than 240 graduates a year to four-year colleges and universities, nearly double the current number of college bound low-income students in the Delta, the school said in a news release.

The Charter School Growth Fund will provide the school with money for infrastructure and operating needs during expansion. When the growth plan is complete, KIPP Delta Public Schools will become a regional cluster of 12 charter schools serving more than 3,600 students. The KIPP Delta cluster will include Helena-West Helena along with three communities that currently do not have a KIPP school.

The three new expansion areas will be chosen through a competitive application process that includes factors such as community support, parent demand and availability of educational alternatives, officials said. The expansion area is targeted for the Arkansas Delta.

“The Charter School Growth Fund selected KIPP Delta for this investment due to its demonstrated track record of success and strong expansion plan,” John Lock, CSGF president and CEO, said in a news release. “KIPP Delta has a relentless focus on helping all students reach high standards and its vision for growth will change the future for thousands of children in the region.”

This month, the school was one of three in Arkansas to be named a 2008 Blue Ribbon School by U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings.

Founded by Scott Shirey, the school opened in 2002 with just fifth-graders and now serves 365 students in grades five through 11.

KIPP Delta is part of the network of 66 KIPP public charter schools across the country, which was originally started by Teach For America alumni Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin. Nationwide, more than 90 percent of KIPP students are of color, and 80 percent are low-income.

“With this generous CSGF investment, KIPP has the potential to double the number of low-income college graduates emerging from the Delta each year, which would be exciting for the future of the area,” Shirey said.

In 2007, KIPP added a high school in Helena when Luke VanDeWalle opened KIPP Delta Collegiate. It will launch a KIPP elementary school in fall 2009 after Amanda Johnson completes her leadership training under the Fisher Fellowship. To prepare for regional expansion, Shirey has transitioned from school director of KIPP Delta College Prep middle school to executive director of the KIPP Delta region. Jemar Tisby is now the school director of the middle school.

“The CSGF investment represents a tremendous opportunity for KIPP Delta Public Schools to replicate the success of the first two schools through a thoughtful growth process,” said Chaulk Mitchell, chairperson of KIPP Delta’s board of directors.

The number of payday lenders operating in Arkansas has dropped by about 86 percent since the state’s top attorney threatened legal action over their high-interest loans, a new study says.

Arkansans Against Abusive Payday Lending, an advocacy group opposed to payday lending released a survey Thursday that says the number of payday lenders operating in the state has dropped from 237 in March to just 33.

Attorney General Dustin McDaniel in March sent a cease-and-desist letter to payday outlets that accused the firms of charging high interest rates that violate the state’s constitution. McDaniel’s letter demanded that the firms stop issuing high-interest loans and forgive any outstanding debts.

Advance America, the largest payday loan provider in Arkansas, announced last month that it would close all its outlets in the state because of the lawsuit threat.

Heads of the advocacy group cited the steep drop as evidence of a “meltdown” of the payday lending industry, which they say preys on consumers by charging triple-digit interest on some loans. McDaniel’s letter to the payday lenders accused the firms of violating the state constitution’s 17 percent cap on interest.

“Payday lenders have finally recognized the writing on the wall - that charging triple-digit interest rates to Arkansas consumers is no longer business as usual in our state,” said Michael Rowett, chairman of Arkansans Against Abusive Payday Lending.

The executive director of the Arkansas State Board of Collection Agencies has given payday lenders in the state until Oct. 15 to comply with the Check Cashers Act, which regulates payday lending practices. Arkansans Against Abusive Payday Lending Practices said the lenders targeted by a Sept. 12 letter included 55 that initially defied McDaniel’s cease-and-desist letter.

The Arkansas Supreme Court on Oct. 30 will hear arguments in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the 1999 Check Cashers Act, a law that advocates say payday lenders have tried to use as a shield in charging high-interest rates.

HELENA-WEST HELENA, Ark.—The Delta Bridge Project has awarded a $161,502, two-year grant to enhance the Teach for Arkansas program and address the shortage of highly qualified kindergarten through sixth grade teachers in Phillips County, Delta Bridge Project Steering Committee Chairman Elijah Mondy announced today.

In Phillips County, local school superintendents point to a lack of certified teachers as a primary cause of low student achievement, forcing local administrators to fill many teaching positions with long-term substitutes or not fully qualified teachers. In 2006, 80 percent of the math and science teachers in Phillips County public schools were not fully qualified.

The enhanced Teach for Arkansas program will provide scholarships to a group of 12 nontraditional students for the final two years of the Early Childhood Bachelor’s of Science in Education degree, which will be offered at Phillips Community College of the University of Arkansas (PCCUA) through the University of Arkansas at Monticello. In return for receiving the scholarship and degree, students will commit to teach in Phillips County for at least two years upon graduation.

In addition to funding tuition and fees for the group of 12 students, grant funds will be used to fund tuition for the Grade 5/6 Endorsement for 10 additional candidates. This additional certification allows teachers with Early Childhood degrees to also teach fifth and sixth grades—an area of acute need in Phillips County.

First year funding under the grant will be $82,758 and year two funding will be $78,744. The project’s total two-year cost, including in-kind contributions from PCCUA and UA-Monticello, is estimated at $253,522.

PCCUA successfully managed the first implementation of Teach for Arkansas, which was a partnership among PCCUA, the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and Phillips County public schools to offer bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Childhood Education. PCCUA began a partnership in 2003 with UA-Monticello to continue offering the Early Childhood bachelor’s degree. The program is still in place and has a 70 percent placement rate of teachers in local school districts; however, the lack of tuition assistance among other factors has limited enrollment in Teach for Arkansas in recent years.

“Teach for Arkansas has a demonstrated record of success in Phillips County,” Mondy said. “The funds provided by this grant will help take the program to the next level and give prospective teachers the financial and other assistance they need to get their degrees and start making a difference in the lives of students in our county’s public schools.”

“The Teach for Arkansas program is a proactive initiative that will provide incentives to local traditional and non-traditional students to teach in Phillips County,” said Rudolph Howard, Superintendent of the Helena-West Helena School District. “Local residents have ties to the community and are more likely to remain in the area than teachers recruited from outside the region.”

“We are encouraged by the efforts of the Delta Bridge Project to help address the teacher shortage need in our area,” said Lee Vent, Superintendent of the Barton-Lexa School District. “While recruiting teachers from outside the area will bring in new ideas, reality shows that we must try to grow our own, especially in the critical areas, such as mathematics, science, special education, and foreign language.”

The Delta Bridge Project is a comprehensive community development initiative in Phillips County. The goals of the Delta Bridge Project are outlined in the Phillips County Strategic Community Plan, which was developed by more than 300 Phillips County residents during an 18-month strategic planning process.

The Strategic Community Plan is a blueprint for community development with 46 strategic goals and nearly 200 action steps—workable plans of action that provide organized community engagement in a comprehensive process involving each of the five fundamental pillars of community life: economic development; housing; education; leadership development; and health care.

The Strategic Community Plan specifically names teacher training as a goal under the Delta Bridge Project, and the grant announced today will help meet Strategic Goal Number Six, Action Step D.

The Delta Bridge Project has achieved unprecedented success bringing projects to reality and leveraging a total $59 million in investments to Phillips County since the first edition of the Strategic Community Plan was released in August 2005.

Contact: Dominik Mjartan (501) 372-4201 ext. 27 dmjartan@southernfp.org

The Delta Bridge Project is spearheaded by Southern Financial Partners, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit lender and community development organization founded in 1986. Southern Good Faith Fund, Southern Financial Partners, and Southern Community Development Corporation are affiliates of Southern Bancorp, a $575 million rural development bank holding company with banking operations in Arkansas and Mississippi working to transform rural economies by stimulating investments in people, jobs, businesses, and property.

Over a million dollars has been made available through a grant of $700,000 from the U.S. Department of Commerce-Economic Development Administration and another $300,000 from the state Department of Economic Development for the expansion of Delta Yams, located on Highway 49, just west of Barton. However, that expansion’s success depends on the participation of six additional new sweet potato growers.

A large group of interested farmers attended Tuesday night’s session and were presented information on growing sweet potatoes.
Bruce Leggett of Central Arkansas RC&D praised Phillips County Judge Don Gentry for helping make the land available for Delta Yams and the Phillips County Conservation District, who has helped make the facility ‘s operation much smoother.

Leggett introduced Rex King. King is president of Arkansas AgriPac Inc., a subsidiary of Bright Harvest of Clarksville who will be handling the Delta Yams marketing strategy, after signing a five-year contract with the local facility.

Leggett added that Central Arkansas RC&D is in the business of building and starting projects and not running them. However, thanks to the growers and workers at Delta Yams they were able to grade, inspect, pack, and ship potatoes during the first year of operation.

“Now that we have made an agreement with Bright Harvest-Agri Pac. Inc. to run the facility we can get back to our original job,” stated Leggett, “which is development and expansion of projects.”

Legett contacted Bright Harvest officials in 2007 and asked them to come and look at the local facility and according to Leggett, they were impressed.

King told the growers what the company, founded in 1967 in Clarksville, does and reported that Don Kerr has been owner of the company since 1999.

“Sweet potatoes are the healthiest vegetable there is and this healthy root vegetable is now beginning to get more recognition,” said King. Some of the products Bright Harvest produces include sweet potato patties, casseroles and other sweet potato products.

“We are really excited about the prospect of growing more sweet potatoes in Arkansas and we’re here to help the sweet potato industry in the state. This will give the growers an opportunity to have their sweet potatoes go straight to the processor,” said King.

“The demand for the No.1 grade of sweet potatoes is on the increase and at least 450 to 500 additional acres are needed to meet that demand,” King said. “In fact I don’t think there is any limit to how many sweet potatoes we can take.”

When a grower brings in their potatoes its best that they have the top grade separated from other potatoes, because that’s where most of the money is, commented King.

“The bottom line is that at Kerr Industries we’re excited to be a part of this project,” added King.

“Last year we were at the learning stage in sweet potato production and marketing,” said Leggett. “As we moved along sweet potatoes of all sizes were brought into the plant.

Leggett pointed out that growers need to harvest the potatoes while they are top grade, which is not too big, not too small; in other words, almost perfect. The No. 1 grade primarily goes to grocery stores. The others, which might be a little out of shape, can be sold as canners.

New growers will be provided with a harvest crew.

Leggett said that new growers and those who can afford to plant the crops would occupy the additional space. It costs approximately $1,500 an acre to produce sweet potatoes.

“If you can’t afford that you should not be growing sweet potatoes, said Leggett.

The proposed new addition will double the facility’s storage capacity, which is currently between 110,000 and 200,000 bushels.
Earnest Bradley of the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff Cooperative Extension Service, reported that few people know that only 2,500 acres of sweet potatoes are grown in Arkansas.

“Now that we have a state Department of Agriculture maybe Arkansas will finally be put on the map as far as growers go,” stated Bradley.

“If I was going to grow sweet potatoes I would first do a soil sample, because land that is good for soybeans probably won’t be as good for growing the tubers,” said Bradley. “They don’t like wet conditions, where the fields stay wet most of the time and they also like good drainage.”

“We are looking at working on grants to help buy harvesting equipment since the equipment is so high, most farmers can’t afford to buy them on their own,” said Leggett.

Jerry Coffee, also with Agripac, told the prospective growers that before they make a commitment to grow sweet potatoes they should talk to someone who is already growing sweet potatoes.

Tom Price is the manager of the Delta Yams and Phil Pratt will be the assistant manager.

Angela Duran (center) recieves the award from Hugh McDonald, President & CEO, Entergy Arkansas, Inc.
Photo by David Harris Lewis, Entergy

Jamie Stringfellow, Co-lead of the Entergy Arkansas Low Income Team
Photo by David Harris Lewis, Entergy

Photo by David Harris Lewis, Entergy

“We were delighted to have had an opportunity to ‘lay the final brick’ in this campaign and set the stage for future growth,” said Joe Black, executive vice president of Southern Financial Partners, which administers the Delta Bridge Project.

“What we love most is that this building project was 90 percent complete before we ‘bridged’ the final gap,” said Black. “That’s the kind of enabling work that the Delta Bridge Project is all about.”

“This is truly a momentous accomplishment for our community,” said board President Tim Schuringa. “This would not have been possible without the phenomenal outpouring of support from within our community, from the children who emptied their piggybanks to the $100,000 donors.”

In all, nearly $1.1 million was raised from sources both inside and outside of Phillips County to make the new 18,800 square-foot facility a reality.

“While I’m proud that we managed to bring over $450,000 into Phillips County in 2007 that otherwise would not have been here, I’m even prouder that the majority of funds came from within the community,” said board member Doug Friedlander. “Anyone who has a bad thing to say about Phillips County, its people, and its prospects for the future will now have to answer to this achievement.”

Board Member Brian Miller agreed.

“I imagine this will turn heads across the state of Arkansas, from Texarkana to Jonesboro, from Little Rock all the way back to Phillips County,” he said.

In fact, the news has already turned heads farther away than that.

“When I was in Dallas recently for a Boys & Girls Club conference, I attended a session on fundraising in rural communities,” said Boys & Girls Club Executive Director Jason Rolett. “As it turned out, we - the Boys & Girls Club of Phillips County – were the example they offered for everyone else to follow. In fact, I learned that in certain measures of fundraising success, our small-town Club exceeded a number of major, well-established Boys & Girls Clubs in rural and urban areas of the country. That is truly a testament to the extraordinary nature of this community.”

The Delta Bridge Project initiative has leveraged more than $60 million to revitalize Phillips County. Also, a voter-approved 2-cent city sales tax has generated more than $1.1 million for city services since July 2007.

Other projects include:

-$2.3 million for public schools to improve school test scores. The Learning, Excelling, Achieving in the Delta program, or LEAD, produced significant gains after only one year. Math proficiency among Marvell third-graders jumped 52 percentage points, to 95 percent.

-The KIPP Delta College Preparatory School, a charter school, opened a middle school with almost $3 million in grants and loans from Southern Bancorp in 2002-03. Construction of a $2.7 gym is under way, as is a $25 million campaign to build a high school.

-Voters on Sept. 16 will consider whether to raise property taxes and build a new $21 million Helena-West Helena High School. The state in April returned the district to local control after briefly running it because of financial problems.

-The Boys & Girls Club of Phillips County, opened in 2006, serves 250 children but will be able to accommodate 750 shortly after Labor Day after renovation of a building.

-The $20 million Delta American Fuel biodiesel plant, capable of producing 40 million gallons of fuel a year, is to open this year, creating 20 jobs.

-The $2 million Arkansas Delta Yams storage and distribution center, which allows local sweet potato farmers to store their crops while waiting for the best prices.

-The Delta Area Health Education Center, a $4.5 million health and fitness facility that opened in 2006. The 30,000-square-foot building was the largest construction project in Phillips County in decades.

-Court Square Park. Workers removed old service station tanks and cleared the grounds for a park within a stone’s throw of the municipal, county and federal court buildings. The beautification project is expected to cost about $500,000. Plans call for a 10-foot-wide walkway to accommodate a farmers market and a 40-foot-tall clock tower at the center of a “cultural history plaza” to recognize the different nationalities that populated the river port.

-The $1.5 million Southern Place Apartments, which has 20 units. About 90 people applied for an apartment in the first month.

-The American Land Conservancy purchased the 1,500-acre Buck Island in the Mississippi River for $1.2 million as part of its preservation mission. The nonprofit agency is hoping to sell the island to a public agency for use as a unique camping, hiking, fishing, recreation and bird-watching spot.

-Quapaw Canoe Company opened this summer, offering guided tours of the Lower Mississippi River, or canoe or kayak rentals for self-guided tours. Owner John Ruskey’s “eco-adventures” include trips to Buck Island for a day hike or overnight camp out.

-Other new businesses: Bistro Bar and Grill, Granny Dees, Habitat for Humanity cafe, Delta Gypsy Caravan gift shop, and Little Biscuit Recording Studio. An Arkansas Revenue Office has moved into the downstairs of a renovated downtown building, while work to turn the upstairs into loft apartments is nearly complete.

-Centennial Baptist Church. The 1905 national landmark, built by a black architect and headed by the first president of the National Baptist Convention, was stabilized with $450,000 in private and state funds.

-Twenty downtown buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places were re-roofed with grants totaling $500,000. Fourteen abandoned business properties have been examined for possible contamination left by former occupants. The so-called brownfield program is nearing completion under a $400,000 grant from the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

-Biscoe Street. A $165,000 cleanup cleared the main entrance into town of its burned out buildings and abandoned strip malls.

Formerly known as Project Deserve, Power to Care is a program funded by contributions from Entergy Arkansas customers, employees, retirees, and shareholders to help our less fortunate customers pay their energy bill during times of financial crisis. The fund is administered by Southern Good Faith Fund (SGFF) of Pine Bluff.

In Arkansas, the need has been about $30,000 a week this summer, while the contributions are about $26,000 a month. The Power to Care program has assisted 1,901 customers and granted $328,747 in assistance so far in 2008. Qualifying customers can apply and be assisted with up to $200 one time per year.

Entergy customers can contribute by checking a box to add a dollar to their monthly bill; making a one time donation through a direct mail solicitation; or online through Entergy’s secure Web site: go to www.entergy-arkansas.com, select Our Community, and click Make a Donation. Checks can be made payable to the Power to Care and mailed to SGFF at 2304 West 29th Avenue, Pine Bluff, AR 71603. All donations are matched dollar-for-dollar by Entergy, up to a maximum total of $500,000.

Southern Good Faith Fund is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization committed to increasing incomes and assets of low-income and low-skilled residents in rural communities. Southern Good Faith Fund, Southern Financial Partners, and Southern Property Corporation are affiliates of Southern Bancorp, a $575 million rural development bank with banking operations in Arkansas and Mississippi.

Contact:
Rosalie Tripp, 870.535.6233 ext. 12 (SGFF)
James Thompson, 501.377.3545 (Entergy)