Original Research by School Decision on Creative Action Team School
Creative Action Team School is a single-building school that covers kindergarten through twelfth grade for the entire Hope School District. Its total enrollment is very small, and the student body is predominantly Black and Hispanic, with a smaller share of white students. Every child who attends qualifies for free or reduced-price meals. The school is not a charter or magnet program; it operates as a regular public school.
Because the school is small, the state has suppressed nearly all of its academic assessment results. For grades four through eight, across math, reading and language arts, and science, the proficiency rates are listed as suppressed due to the low number of test-takers. That means there is no publicly available measure of how students at Creative Action Team School perform on Arkansas’s standardized tests, and no way to compare them to other schools in the state or within Hempstead County. A parent who wants to understand academic quality would need to ask the school directly about classroom assessments, curriculum, and student growth. Graduation rate data was also not available in the source materials, which is an important gap for a school that serves the upper grades. The school lists ninth through twelfth grade enrollment, so a graduation rate should exist; a family may want to follow up with the district to learn about four-year completion rates.
What is clear is the nature of the school’s peer environment and community. The student body is very small, and the school is located in Hope, a city that has seen a population decline over recent decades. Hope is the county seat of Hempstead County and has a manufacturing and agricultural economy centered on poultry processing, food production, and the manufacture of audio speakers, steel products, and plastics. The town has an industrial layout bisected by railroad tracks, with a traditional downtown anchored by a restored railroad depot that also serves as an Amtrak stop and visitor center. Home values in the area are well below national averages, and the housing stock is affordable relative to most of the country.
The school itself does not have published program offerings, so it is not possible to describe what advanced coursework, career and technical education, or extracurriculars are available. Many very small schools have limited course menus, but the data here does not specify what Creative Action Team School provides. The district brief turned up no recent changes or initiatives to report, so the school appears to be operating without major new programs or restructuring in the recent past.
For a family considering this school, the most salient fact is its size. With a very small total enrollment spread over all grades, a child will experience very small class sizes and close relationships with staff, but also limited peer cohorts and likely a narrow range of elective and advanced course options. The demographic profile is that of a high-poverty school serving predominantly Black and Hispanic students. The town of Hope offers low housing costs and a slow-growth or declining economic setting. Because state testing data is suppressed, families cannot use typical school rating or benchmark information to evaluate academic performance here. A parent would need to visit, observe classrooms, and speak with the principal and teachers to get a real sense of the instructional environment and whether it meets their child’s needs. The school’s website was not included in the available data, so that is another resource worth seeking out.
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