Elevate Academy East opened last August and is going strong as an alternative to traditional public schooling. This April, the school will hold a lottery for students to attend the next school year.
“We'll draw all the names for the seats that are open for next year. And if your student's name is kind of a random drawing, if their name gets drawn, then they'll have the opportunity to enroll here as a student. If their name doesn't get drawn, they go on to what's called a wait list. And then if students decide to leave or change their mind and don't want to take a seat here, we just kind of work down that wait list,” said Logan Watje, the charter administrator.
Watje says the free public charter school focuses on trade school subjects rather than electives. With math for example, they would make it into carpentry which uses both math and writing on a technical level. They tend to focus on children who are considered “at risk” meaning at risk of not graduating. These can be due to several reasons, according to Watje.
“So if a student falls behind after failing some classes or has a very low GPA or struggles in academics, they would qualify as at risk. And then the other side of qualifying for at risk is that there's personal stuff going on in the student's life. So, if they have personal struggles, medical struggles, family issues, things that make learning really hard or being homeless, being emancipated,” he said.
To find out more information or to apply for enrollment, click here.