KALISPELL — Kalispell is launching two new high school level charter schools which will offer students an opportunity to have a more flexible schedule to fit their lifestyle and education needs.
“I think as a nation and as a state and a community, there's a need to change, right, the Monday through Friday, periods one through seven, the traditional model doesn't work for everybody," said Flathead High School Assistant Principal Andrew Stiger. "We are a big tent. We want to welcome in everybody. So therefore we would love to find a way to tap into that flexibility, to meet the needs of everybody."
Both PACE Academy and Rising Wolf Charter School have different models and will function differently, but both will allow students more time for jobs, college classes and more personalized education.
“They're still responsible for the same amount of standards and rigor in a regular class. We've aligned the curriculum for our traditional flatted high school classes with the Pace Academy, so they're getting those same standards and learning objectives. They're just doing it in a different way,” said Flathead High School Principal Michele Paine.
Both new charter schools are schools within a school. PACE Academy will be located at Flathead High School and Rising Wolf Charter in Glacier High School.
“I think we have a culture in our building of innovation and continuing to try to find additional ways to provide opportunities for students in the spirit of the law that came about. It really wanted to look at you trying to provide something that you not currently doing," Glacier High School Principal Brad Holloway told MTN.
"And so it really was to try to find something different to expand opportunities for students and really reach more students. You don't want to take the model that you're using and shift, everybody, to a different model, because you're still going to have some students that don't fit that. So we just wanted to expand opportunities for students,” Holloway continued.
There are still a lot of unknowns as this is the pilot year of the schools, but both schools are excited to get the program started.
“We're just really excited, right? It's important to me as a high school principal that we be innovators, and that's exciting. It's challenging. At the same time, we know we're going to run into bumps and hiccups along the way, things that we really don't know, problems we don't know about right now, until we face them. But we have good staff that are dedicated to trying this out and making it into the best charter school it can be,” said Paine.
PACE Academy will be a 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. stacked class structure allowing students to have the afternoon open for jobs and internships. It will be a blended in-person and independent work model. There are three different models in the charter school including career exploration programs, self-paced math program and compact core classes.
Rising Wolf Charter School will be a bit different with an extended block option for some classes. This will allow students more time to focus on those classes as well as providing the opportunity for a class to be a semester long rather than a year long. Principal Holloway says this has helped with scheduling conflicts they frequently see.
Both PACE and Rising Wolf have many students that are taking a mix of both traditional classes and charter school classes.
