This year, there are new and familiar faces among the three groups proposing new charter schools on the Kenai Peninsula.
Charter schools are public schools, but operate a little differently than traditional public schools. Unlike traditional schools, charter schools are overseen by an academic policy committee, or APC. That group is made up of parents and school staff and is tasked with choosing the school’s curriculum and hiring the school principal.
There are currently four charter schools operating under the KPBSD umbrella: Aurora Borealis Charter School in Kenai, Fireweed Academy in Homer, Kaleidoscope School in Kenai and Soldotna Montessori.
One of this year’s applications comes from an existing Kenai charter school — Aurora Borealis, sometimes shorthanded to ABC. That school focuses on what it calls a classical education in grammar, logic and rhetoric, plus Latin classes and mentorship programs. It’s served students in kindergarten through eighth grade since it opened in 1997. Now, parents want to add a high school. If approved, it’d be the peninsula's first charter high school program.
Bill Severson is a fourth grade teacher who’s taught at ABC since it was founded.
“I think that's kind of a natural desire, because we have a certain program that is unique and different than other schools in the district, and our parents, our clientele, really appreciate that, and want to continue through,” he said.
For high school students, Severson says they hope to offer courses oriented around career paths, certain electives and honors classes. They plan to expand into the part of their current building that will soon be vacated by the Boys and Girls Clubs of the Kenai Peninsula.
Principal Cody McCanna thinks recent statewide interest in charter schools will play a role in the district’s consideration of their application this year. He pointed to an oft-cited study out of Harvard University, which found Alaska’s charter schools to be among the top performing in the nation. He said the study’s hard to argue with and indicate Alaska’s existing charter schools are doing something right.
“I think people need to remember that that's the point of having a charter school – is doing something different,” he said. “When they want to turn you into a neighborhood school, it's, well, that's the point of being a charter school, is we want to provide a different option.”
Down in the remote community of Nikolaevsk, about 10 miles east of Anchor Point, a group of parents is trying for the third year in a row to get a charter school that meets the needs of their unique community off the ground.
Parents have long sought a charter program to replace the existing K-12 school, which some say doesn’t observe the unique needs of the community’s Russian Old Believers and other rural residents.
The parent-led APC narrowly missed the application deadline two years ago, and last year the school board rejected their application because of inconsistent curriculum proposals, noncompliance with the Alaska Reads Act and budget discrepancies.
Mariah Kerrone is one of the parents leading Nikolaevsk’s charter efforts. This year, she says their group is working with a nonprofit to find a space in the village that could accommodate a charter school. She thinks that could make a difference this application cycle.
“I don't really feel like we're pursuing it again so much as just that, like we haven't got, we haven't got the, you know, like we applied for the charter, and it's not like we changed our minds,” she said. “It's still needed.”
After the school board voted down their charter application, she and other families turned to Connections, KPBSD’s home-school program, and taught classes in the existing Nikolaevsk school. But Kerrone says she’s planning to pull her kids out of the district-led homeschool program if the charter is rejected again.
The third charter proposal comes from the Kenaitze Indian Tribe, which wants to open a primary charter school at their educational campus in Kenai. Kyle McFall is the tribe’s education director and says they are interested in leveraging existing relationships with the district to open a school uniquely able to prioritize Dena’ina culture and language for students.
“I think that was kind of the vision when they built this when they built this building, was to eventually have a school of their own in this facility, so that they could continue to provide almost like wraparound services for their people,” he said.
The tribe is proposing Tułen for the school name. It’s a Dena’ina word meaning “the river will flow.” McFall says the name is intended to honor the significance of the Kenai River to the Dena’ina people. That’s in addition to mirroring the image of knowledge and opportunities flowing with students attending the school.
The tribe wants the school to prioritize science, technology, engineering, art and math, or STEAM, components, but also place-based education that honors the Dena’ina culture. McFall says the tribe already has a lot of cultural education programming that it could bring into the classroom to help with cultural preservation.
“While we want to ensure that we're putting forth a curriculum that's emphasizing our culture and our language for the tribe, we also want to make sure that we are utilizing curriculum that's research-based, and that we're not trying to recreate the wheel with the curriculum that we're bringing forward,” he said.
Oct. 1 is the deadline for the three groups to get their full charter applications into the school district. Once those applications are received, the district will schedule public meetings for its Charter School Oversight Committee to review them.
