Kenai Peninsula school board members will consider a slew of new charter school-related proposals, from adding high school grade levels to Kenai’s Aurora Borealis Charter School, to potentially opening a new charter school in Nikolaevsk.
Charter schools are public schools, but they’re run by an advisory committee of parents and teachers that select the school’s curriculum and principal. The school board controls whether charter applications are approved and reviews school contracts each year.
This year’s applications already went before the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District’s Charter School Oversight Committee.
The board will consider adding a high school program to Aurora Borealis Charter School, renewing the charter for Soldotna Montessori Charter School and creating a new charter school in Nikolaevsk. Board members heard from representatives of all three groups Monday during a work session. Members will ultimately vote each one up or down.
Cody McKanna is the principal of Aurora Borealis Charter School. He told school board members that parents have long wanted upper-level classes at the K-8 school.
“I’ve been at Aurora for ten years,” he said. “This is the third go around of kind of starting a high school.”
The school is proposing to add the four new grade levels over the next three years, starting with ninth and tenth grade next school year. Eleventh grade would be added for the 2027-2028 school year, and twelfth grade the year after.
To start, the school would hire a full-time English Language Arts teacher and Science/Math teacher. Additional teachers would be hired in subsequent years as needed.
McCanna says facility space has been a roadblock every time they’ve previously pursued a high school.
To accommodate the extra grades, the school would take advantage of space recently vacated by the Boys and Girls Clubs of the Kenai Peninsula. Once tenth graders arrive, the school wants to use the part of the building occupied by Kenai Alternative School. It’s unclear where Kenai Alternative would be relocated.
That’s an issue for John Galahan, the principal of Kenai Alternative. He says the school’s enrollment is growing, but the close-knit community is coming off a threatened school closure due to budget cuts.
The committee also has a new charter school proposal from residents in Nikolaevsk, a Russian Old Believer village about 10 miles east of Anchor Point. It’s the fourth year in a row parents have tried to get a charter school off the ground for the small community. The school district closed the village’s K-12 school earlier this year to save money.
As School Board President Jason Tauriainen noted, it’s harder to open a new charter school than it is to expand an existing one.
“This is an initial application, it’s different than both of the other ones,” he said. “A little more complex, a lot more things to get through, and it’s approving a school that does not exist yet.”
Blake Sawyer is heading up Nikolaevsk’s application this year.
“What we're trying to do is we're trying to fill a void that exists for the community that was left there so they don't feel left behind,” he said. “So this charter isn't something that we're trying to just imagine out of thin air. It’s something that we feel is necessary for our community.”
Organizers envision a Montessori program with a home-school option that prioritizes hands-on learning and career and technical education. The school year will observe Russian Orthodox holidays, but will not include a Russian language immersion program from previous iterations of the charter proposal.
The Aurora Borealis and Nikolaevsk charters are in addition to a renewal application from Soldotna Montessori Charter School. The school serves 164 K-6 students. And there’s more than that – 173 – on the waitlist.
John Devolld is the principal of Soldotna Montessori. He says the school’s in good standing with the district.
“We successfully meet our and maintain our academic standards in terms of contract, same with our fiscal integrity, and we have successfully completed our annual review each year as part of our APC practices, and that's important for us to share as far as you considering our renewal application,” he said.
New charter applications will also go before the State Board of Education, regardless of how local school board members vote. The Kenai Peninsula School board expressed interest in holding another work session ahead of their Nov. 3 meeting to meet again with charter groups.
