History

The Delta School was founded in 2014 as a non-profit, independent, co-educational school for students ages 3-18.  The Gaylon Lawrence Jr. Family, The Lawrence Group, The Wilson Education Foundation and a group of local cotton farmers joined to begin a school to enrich both the Town of Wilson and the greater area. The school was established to serve as a rural educational option in The Arkansas Delta, as well as a national model of educational excellence. 

In 2014, The Delta School hired Jenifer Fox to envision and then implement her educational model and serve as the founding Head of School.

Fox worked though out 2014 conceiving the overall vision and developing the program while working with the Lawrence Group to construct the permanent campus for the unique program.  In November of 2015, the school moved onto its 23-acre campus. Once home to the town’s original founders, the Wilson Family, the campus now includes a series of learning pavilions, a Makerspace, The Wonder Space, The Garden Space, the historic mansion and a school apiary.

In 2018, John Faulkner served as the Interim Head of School, securing a provisional accreditation status with the Independent Schools Association of the Central States (ISACS), anticipating full accreditation in 2022. The Delta School joined the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS), Mastery Transcript Consortium (MTC), and Global Online Academy (GOA). In 2019 the Board of Trustees hired Head of School Andy Jones-Wilkins.

Early in 2020, by order of the governor and in response to the pandemic, the school finished the second semester by remote instruction. Through tremendous efforts by the teaching faculty projects continued and lessons remained as authentic, collaborative, and personalized as possible. But, The Delta School is grounded in relationships and the community missed being together on campus, so Fall 2020 saw a commitment by the school community to do everything possible to stay together on campus and maintain the integrity of our programs.

In 2021, Andrew Podoll was named Head of School. Mr. P, as he is affectionately known, had served many roles at The Delta School prior to his promotion and is credited as the designer of our current curriculum architecture and High School program. He is committed to continuing the original mission of nourishing each child's strengths, which drew both he and his wife to Wilson in 2016.

The Delta School graduated its first class of students in May 2021 with a college acceptance rate of one hundred percent.

The school attracts families from Wilson, Jonesboro, Memphis, Marion, Blytheville and all points between.