Charter high school proposed

SANDPOINT — Not a week goes by without a parent asking Sandpoint Charter School principal Alan Millar what high school choices are available to their child.

Other than Sandpoint High School and the Idaho Virtual Academy, the options are limited, he said. 

An exploratory meeting is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Thursday at SCS to determine if there is enough interest in establishing a charter high school here. Issues for discussion include how a charter high school can work, the school’s focus, education model, philosophy and size.

Although he understands this potentially could chip away at Lake Pend Oreille School District’s student enrollment, Millar believes students and parents should have choices other than those currently available. 

“We’re not trying to sell an agenda,” Millar said.

A charter high school could be established in one of two ways and could take several forms, he said.

If Lake Pend Oreille School District agrees to revise the current SCS charter and agree to add a high school, classes could begin as early as this fall.

However, if the district does not approve such a request, organizers have the option of approaching the Idaho Board of Education, which with the election of Tom Luna as superintendent of schools, is much more favorable to charter schools, Millar said.

The state will help schools with chartering schools — something that did not occur when SCS was going through the same process. That approach potentially would take more time, however, because the state approves only six charters a year.

Two new charters are expected to be approved this fall, while another 12 will seek approval next year, he said.

Millar said it is likely that a charter high school would be similiar to SCS, which is project-based so that students can move seamlessly from one school to the other. However, it should be located on a different site, he said.

“This is not going to work for everybody,” Millar said of the SCS curriculum.

He also is concerned that students are dropping out of high school because they lack alternatives — which he said should be educator’s primary concern.

The bigger issue may not be enrollment at a charter high school, so much as the number of students enrolling in online high schools with the Idaho Virtual Academy and BYU Online, Millar said.

He plans to invite LPOSD Supt. Dick Cvitanich to the meeting, because he wants “transparency” with the process, Millar said.

Joanne Havilland, an SCS parent and one of the organizers of Thursday’s meeting, said it will be important to establish a vision of what a charter high school would be, adding that not everyone may have the same ideas and those options may be better served in a different charter school setting.

Fortunately, Millar has already experienced establishing a charter school, she said. He has worked with setting up not only the school’s structure, but its payroll programs and janitorial service.

SCS attempted to add ninth grade to its curriculum three years ago, but it was not successful for several reasons, Millar said. It attracted only 15-20 students in part because “people couldn’t figure out what to do after ninth grade,” he said.

It also was not a natural fit — adding ninth grade to a middle school setting is difficult because students’ academic needs are different, Millar said.

Following that venture, SCS opted to focus on strengthening its sixth- to eighth-grade curriculum.