HOPE – The Hope Public Schools Board named a recognized academic leader as the principal of the new Hope Academy of Public Service here Monday night.
Dr. Carol Ann Duke, of Magnolia, was hired by the board to lead the new grades 5-8 academy which is to open in the fall. Dr. Duke will assume duties in Hope on May 1, according to Hope Superintendent Bobby Hart.
“We look forward to the future of the Hope Academy of Public Service under the leadership of Dr. Duke,” Hart said.
Dr. Duke began her full-time career in education as a ninth-grade English teacher at what was then Yerger Junior High School in Hope in 1992. She comes to HAPS from a position as Lead Literacy Consultant for the Southern Regional Education Board, where she has been involved in literacy effectiveness development for schools across a multi-state region of the United States since 2012. Prior to that time, Dr. Duke was the director of High Schools That Work and the Technology Centers for the Texarkana Area Vocational Center of the Texarkana School District from 2002. She has a total of 24 years of full-time experience in public education in the Texarkana Public Schools, Nevada County School District, Taylor School District, and the Hope Public Schools, as well as teaching as an adjunct faculty member and director of institutional development at Southern Arkansas University Tech in Camden and as an adjunct professor at SAU in Magnolia.
Dr. Duke has been extensively involved in the development and oversight of academy-based campus concepts in the Texarkana district, and the management of career academic planning services for the 1,200-student high school campus in Texarkana.
At SAU, she has taught graduate-level courses in counseling; managed the professional development program for all county elected officials in Arkansas; coordinated Kids’ College and continuing/community education programs, as well as managing workforce training and re-employment services through regional programs at SAU; and, she has taught vocational education certification courses for trade and industrial program instructors while at SAU.
Dr. Duke earned her doctorate degree in education administration from Madison University in Gulf Shores, Miss., in 2004. She took her master’s degree from Texas A&M University at College Station in 1988, and received her bachelor’s degree in sociology from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock in 1986.
Certified in public education in both Texas and Arkansas, she is a national jurist for content-based curriculum units; is certified as a facilitator for Total Instructional Alignment, and is a member of the Association of Career and Technical Education, a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Partner, a member of the SAU Educational Renewal Zone Board, a SREB presenter, and member of the Texarkana Resources for the Disabled Board.
The new academy is scheduled to open in August on the historic Augustus H. Garland campus, as an open enrollment academy centered upon a contract-based set of expectations and responsibilities for student, family and school. Students will be placed from among 157 applicants in grades 5-8 in a blended learning environment through collaborative and individual learning and computer-centered instruction based upon personalized learning plans for each student, according to Hart.
The school will also partner with the William J. Clinton School of Public Service in Little Rock, the University of Arkansas Hope-Texarkana, and other entities to provide a rigorous course of study to prepare students to be college-ready upon high school graduation, Hart has said.
