Arkose Ridge Leadership Academy finds home at Palmer High

PALMER — This fall, Palmer High School students will have first crack at a new educational model that is both agriculturally minded and energy conscious: Arkose Ridge Leadership Academy.

The academy, first pitched to the Mat-Su Borough School Board as a charter school at the end of 2014, will begin operation as a place-based “school within a school” at Palmer High this coming August. Students can apply online at matsuk12.us/ARLA now through April 7.

Successful applicants (up to 50 the first year) will follow a unique school year schedule that is similar to the traditional calendar, but includes three 3-week intensives in August, December and May. Optional summer intensives and internships will also be available.

“This has taken a long time to come to fruition, but … we are super excited,” said academy director and teacher Paul Morley at a public informational meeting recently.

ARLA is largely Morley’s brainchild, but would not have become a reality without the following board members: Anchorage teacher and Palmer resident Rene Dervaes, Mat-Su parent and teacher Tony Kristich, environmentalist Kimbrough Mauney, parent Anna Folsom and Alaska Pacific University professor Steve Rubinstein.

Rubinstein in particular, as director of APU’s graduate program in outdoor and environmental education, has helped foster the relationship between the budding academy and APU’s Spring Creek Farm in Palmer, which has long been a place for environmental education at all levels.

“Those acres will be open for any and all projects Arkose wants to work on,” Rubinstein said.

At ARLA, students will be able to complete all the typical high school graduation requirements and choose a concentration or sort of “major” of their own, from Northern Food Production and Renewable Energy in the first year to Community Planning and Boreal Ecology in the future. Intensives may or may not be separate from a student’s declared major, and will include courses like trail design, avalanche science, soil science, GIS mapping and archeology.

Partnering with ARLA to make these courses and concentrations a reality are: APU, University of Alaska-Fairbanks, Alaska Farmland Trust, Renewable Energy Alaska Project (REAP) and National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS).

In addition to becoming agriculturally minded and energy conscious, students will be encouraged to develop critical thinking skills and appreciate the importance of collaboration.

“Young people need to learn how to learn,” Morley said. “We are overwhelmed with information these days and it’s not all factual, so we need to teach kids how to discern what is important and what is credible.”

Parent Mary Mueller said she’s excited to have a new and different model of education available for her three middle school-age children, even if they ultimately choose a different path.

“Even if it doesn’t work out for us, this will be exactly what some students need, and I support that for our community,” she said.

Mueller said sustainable energy is “always a big conversation” at her house, too, as her husband has worked in power plants locally and in Alaska Native villages, where they also have family.

“The kids are always asking him how it’s going and he’s pretty frank about our energy,” she said. “Knowing that he … had to bring lone standing power plants back online to give a full community lights and power is a really huge concern.”

Morley said he and ARLA’s partners are just taking “baby steps” at the moment, and the goal is still to have a fully fledged school of their own someday, with more and more opportunities for experiential learning.

To learn more about Arkose Ridge Leadership Academy, visit www.arkoseacademy.org.