Chubbuck charter breaks ground on a new middle school

Chubbuck’s Connor Academy charter school is expanding by building a new school – Alpine Academy – to serve students in grades 6-8. The existing building, built in 2015, currently houses 540 students in grades K-8.

With a waiting list of about 200, the charter school is ready to grow.

The entire project, which includes a new school building (with a price tag of $12 million), a road extension, and refinancing the current school, is slated to cost $18.9 million.

About 40 teachers, students, staff, board members, and community members gathered Aug. 29 at a groundbreaking ceremony for Alpine Academy.

The new school will be better suited to help middle school students transition to high school, according to Joel Lovstedt, principal and superintendent of Connor Academy.

“This will help them feel like it’s a school made for them,” Lovstedt said. “Middle school kids want to feel like they’re advancing and taking a step up from elementary school.”

Features of the new school will include a more flexible layout in classrooms, a dedicated art room, a weight room, a library, and a full-service kitchen.

The kitchen in the new building will also allow the schools to provide hot lunches for students. The current building does not have a kitchen, so students bring their own cold lunches each day.

And once the new school is built, each elementary grade level will grow from two classrooms to three.

But getting started on the new building hasn’t come without its challenges.

Financing, inflation, and staffing are all obstacles on the way to a new school

For one, charters aren’t allowed to ask voters for bonds to build schools. With property taxes kept out of reach, charters must use their own budgets or turn to other alternatives, like nonprofits, for support.

Building Hope, a nonprofit organization “dedicated to increasing educational opportunities for K-12 students”, has supported Connor Academy by helping them secure the commercial loan for its current building, which helped it build a credit history.

But in 2019, a new law created a state enhancement program, which helps charters achieve lower interest rates when borrowing. That program has had big benefits for charter schools ever since.

Building Hope is helping to get Alpine Academy off the ground as well. The school is expected to cost about $12 million, but Lovstedt said that the disrupted supply chain and inflation make that number hard to predict.

Lovstedt said he plans to hire 10-12 full-time teachers for the new school as well as additional support staff.

“That is going to be challenging in today’s climate,” he said.

But, obstacles aside, the new school is scheduled to be completed by July 15, 2023 — just in time for its inaugural class.

— Carly Flandro reports for Idaho Education News. This article was originally published on idahoednews.org and has been edited for brevity.