On March 1, 1991, then-Gov. Bill Clinton signed House Bill 1387 of the 78th Arkansas General Assembly into law as Act 305. Two days earlier, he had signed Senate Bill 236, enacting Act 259. Together, the two acts officially established the Arkansas School for Mathematics and Sciences.
Today, the school is known as the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts and is a campus of the University of Arkansas System. It has more than 2,600 alumni, the majority of whom reside in Arkansas. Within the past decade, the campus has celebrated the opening of two new buildings — the Student Center in 2012 and the Creativity and Innovation Complex in 2019. A full renovation of the Chapel and Convent structures is set to begin in summer 2021.
But 30 years ago, ASMSA was represented by words on paper and the drive by several passionate visionaries who thought such a school was an important step to better educate Arkansas students and better prepare the state for future economic growth.
The path getting there was a series of events that at first may seem unrelated but were key to ASMSA’s creation, said Dr. Ron Hart, the former director and chief scientist for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s National Center for Toxicological Research near Pine Bluff.
“What has fascinated me is how a series of presumably nonrelated events can combine into a pattern leading to the creation of legislation that impacts the lives of thousands of people,” Hart said.
The first of those events was the creation of the Arkansas Science and Technology Authority in 1983, Hart said. The organization was the result of a phone call years earlier he received from U.S. Rep. Ray Thornton who contacted him with an oft-asked question — how could he improve the quality of jobs for his constituents.
Hart said he told Thornton that society was becoming more technology-based and the residents of Arkansas were not being prepared for the jobs that would be required for such a transition. Hart said one thing which could help improve that would be an organization that focused on improving science and technology initiatives — including math and science education — in the state.
Dr. John Ahlen, who would play a crucial role in ASMSA’s creation, was brought in to lead ASTA in 1984.
A second out-of-the-blue phone call was the next unexpected event in ASMSA’s history, Hart said. Hillary Clinton, who was then serving as first lady of Arkansas and head of the Arkansas Education Standards Committee, was passing through Pine Bluff when she called Hart.
“She asked if I was free for a cup of coffee. She said she had been speaking to John (Ahlen), and he told her about my push for education. She asked, ‘What are you suggesting we try to do?’ ” he said.
During their visit, Hart said he spoke about how it wasn’t economically feasible for many school districts around the state to offer the level mathematics and sciences that would have the desired impact on the state’s economy.
“I said if you really want to impact that then what you need are people who love science and love doing research and education. But in most of Arkansas, it’s pretty hard to have teachers in Algebra II much less calculus. You just don’t have school budgets to do it,” he said.
So he suggested the creation of a school whose goal would be to provide the science and math courses for motivated students who wanted to pursue advanced courses that their home school wouldn’t be able to offer. He said Clinton liked the idea.
In April 1990, Clinton hosted a feasibility meeting for a group of education, business and state government leaders to discuss establishing such a school in Arkansas. A second meeting was held in August 1990 establishing a study of similar programs in other states.
Among those who participated in the study was Ahlen, who said then-Gov. Bill Clinton asked him to lead a feasibility study of the proposed school. Clinton said he wanted a fresh set of eyes on the subject. Conducting such feasibility studies was something Ahlen was familiar with through his work with ASTA, which had conducted such studies for its own programs. The topic, however, was outside of the range they normally studied, Ahlen said.
Ahlen and several members of the committee visited similar schools in other states, such as North Carolina and Mississippi. Charlie Cole Chaffin — who then served as a state senator and was one of the sponsors of the eventual Senate bill to establish the school — served on the committee and helped lead meetings about the possible school around the state.
Ahlen wrote a paper supporting the creation of the school based on the committee’s findings. The paper included draft legislation for the school that laid out its purpose, how it would operate and other details.
Then came the hard part of convincing legislators that the new institution was important for the state. Ahlen said that the consensus of many legislators was that it wouldn’t work.
“They had all kinds of reasons of why it wouldn’t work,” Ahlen said. “No community in the state would be able to provide the required facility. Facility costs would come from the community, and communities wouldn’t be willing to pay those. No parent is going to allow their child junior year to go to a residential school. Kids wouldn’t want to give up their social activities for junior and senior year to go to a brand new school.
“There were maybe three or four more things. There was all these preconceptions that this could not happen. But the idea prevailed.”
Chaffin — a former teacher who often heralded education bills through the state Senate during her tenure — said one of the keys to success was getting people who were not teachers involved in the creation of the school.
“We changed attitudes that this was important,” said Chaffin, who later served as a chemistry instructor for five years at ASMSA. “We were able to involve people who seemed to carry more weight than educators. We made them proud of it. Several of them then tried to get the school in their area.”
Dr. Johnnie Roebuck, who taught in Arkadelphia schools at the time and later became a member of ASMSA’s advisory board and its ensuing Board of Trustees in the 1990s and 2000s, was a member of the Arkansas Education Association. She said educators in Arkansas wanted the school to allow the state to follow the path of states such as North Carolina, who established the first school of its type as part of the University of North Carolina System.
“Some schools couldn’t offer the same kind of resources. We saw it as a way for our gifted students to realize their potential. It’s not that there was anything wrong with our public schools, but this would allow one place to come together to educate these talented 11th- and 12th-graders,” Roebuck said.
Both Roebuck and Chaffin led campaigns to host the school in their hometowns — Roebuck in Arkadelphia and Chaffin in Benton. Chaffin led a successful sales tax campaign that would have helped pay for the school’s operation if Benton had been selected, but Hot Springs was chosen in May 1992 as the school’s host site.
The school opened to students in 1993. In that time, it has been recognized by several education organizations and national publications such as Newsweek, The Washington Post, The Daily Beast, Code.org, Study.com and the National Consortium of Specialized STEM Schools as one of the nation’s top public high schools. That recognition is important to the continued operation of the school today, said Roebuck, who also served as a state representative during her career.
“It helps with student recruitment, but it also helps with legislators and lawmakers. They see results from the investment by taxpayers,” she said.
Hart said it was important for other reasons as well — among those is that it disproves a stereotype about education in Arkansas.
“Whether we like it or not, Arkansas tends to have a certain national reputation. It is not recognized for its leadership in education at many levels which is unfortunate because we do have leadership in various areas. It always surprised people in Arkansas that they have a high school that is a national leader,” Hart said.
Hart said the national recognition is the outcome of something more important — results. He said one of the original goals of the school was to provide advanced educational opportunities to students regardless of their social or economic backgrounds. ASMSA has done that, he said.
As proof he shared a story about meeting an ASMSA graduate on a plane ride back to Arkansas after a business trip years ago. The young woman next to him recognized him and his affiliation with the school.
She grew up in Wabbeseka in Jefferson County. Her father was an evangelical pastor, and she was one of 17 children. As she grew older, she thought she would likely either get married or work at the paper mill in Pine Bluff. A counselor at her school told her she should apply to ASMS at the time. She convinced her father to let her attend ASMS. When she met Hart on the plane, she was a doctoral student in mathematics at Princeton University.
“I have no idea what eventually happened to her, but for her to have that opportunity. That is exactly why I pushed as hard as I did. Wherever they were raised, they would have an opportunity to get a good education in the sciences and mathematics. I knew at that point we had achieved that goal,” he said.
Ahlen said he has had similar opportunities to visit with students and their parents. He reflected on one student he knew before she attended the school.
“ASMSA was a life-changing experience that took their future in a different arc than it may have taken. Many were recognized among the bright stars in academia. That’s the payoff we were hoping to achieve 30 years ago,” Ahlen said.