Southside Junior High School serves students in grades 7 - 9 within the Southside School District in Independence County. As a FY2020 APSRC CSP Subgrantee, Southside Junior High School was awarded $1,250,000 in December 2019.

The mission of Southside Junior High School is to open the doors of academic success and community enrichment for all children by 1) committing to high levels of learning, exploration and discovery, and 2) supporting of the whole child.

As a district, Southside Schools has focused on supporting each student in his or her Future Story success. The vision of the conversion charter is focused on helping students discover his or her own Future Story. By supporting the whole child, the school will strive to help each student succeed in finding a pathway to a Future Story during grades 9-12.

While consecutively planning for the opening of the Southside Junior High School as the district-conversion charter school, leadership was also navigating education during the COVID-19 pandemic. District and building leaders worked collaboratively to develop the school in a manner that reflected the mission and vision of the charter while balancing the health and safety of all. The work focused on the four prongs of the vision:

1. Student success for educational excellence;

2. Healthy living and well-being;

3. Community engagement; and

4. Connections to make an impact.

To plan for the return to learning, district leaders, principals, and a stakeholder committee created an action plan for the 2020-21 school year. Many of the changes in learning were shared publicly with parents by Superintendent Roger Rich. With the plan as guidance, Mrs. Harris, the assistant principal, led PLC work through the process of identifying essential standards, planning for the unfinished learning from the spring of 2020, and creating common formative assessments. The work aligned to the ADE: DESE guidance with High Reliability Schools. The building leadership team continued to study and learn more about this process by participating in the summer virtual conference for High Reliability Schools. In addition, the Science PLC completed Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) training with the educational co-op's Science Specialist. The STEM training was tied to the Future Story Discovery Planning and the vision of the school.

First and foremost, the school evaluated Alternate Methods of Instruction (AMI) work of the spring and how to best prepare for a school year in the continuing pandemic. With guidance from the Arkansas Department of Education: Division of Elementary and Secondary Education (ADE: DESE), the school leaders sought ways to prepare for multiple formats of instruction that might occur in 2020-21, the opening year of the charter school. At the center of these methods, leaders noted a high reliance on technology and the Professional Learning Community (PLC) process.

To prepare for the technology-delivered instruction at SJHS, the leaders dedicated lead technology teachers to support and sustain the learning of the staff. With the Charter's partnership with Apple Technologies, teachers were provided new Mac Books and iPad Pros. The Apple Education Specialist provided training with these devices and the best educational tools available. In addition, training was scheduled for Google Classroom. Teachers had continual opportunities to develop and strengthen skillsets within socially distanced large group trainings and small Tech Tuesday groups offered before school started.