ANOKA, Minn. – (August 15, 2013) — When they got the final go ahead last Friday from the Minnesota Department of Education, the Anoka-Hennepin School District was ready to act. That same day they sent out multiple press releases and sent a mailing to all eligible district students to announce that a new high school was coming to the district and it would be opening for this school year. “We knew that we have a variety of learners out there that want to go to school online fulltime,” StepAhead Principal Jessica Lipa explains.
StepAhead High School is the first school in the state’s largest district to be available completely online. This year there will be a 9th grade and 10th grade class of students attending StepAhead. Next school year 11th grade will be added and 12th grade will come online the year after.
Principal Lipa knows that it will take a certain type of student to succeed online. “The student that’s the best for online learning is a motivated learner,” Principal Lipa says of StepAhead’s ideal pupil, “a student who likes to work at his or her own pace, and really wants to try something different and learns best through technology.” Every online course will have an Anoka-Hennepin teacher attached to it, which Principal Lipa sees as a great advantage StepAhead will have over an upstart online school on its own. She explains that there will be ample opportunity for open communication between parents and teachers via phone or e-mail.
The online courses will use a variety of learning tools including: lecture, video, reading and classmate interaction. The social interaction that students experience when attending school in a traditional high school will not be lost at StepAhead but will be replaced by a method of communication and interaction that students are already very accustomed to. “Our students actually interact all the time online, and so its really no different” reflects Principal Lipa, “they are interacting with their peers online everyday.”
The team behind StepAhead believes that this will bring new learners into the district and will not take students away from the five traditional high schools. Principal Lipa suggests StepAhead is for students seeking an alternative educational experience and “really for those learners that are looking for a different opportunity.”
As we sat down with Principal Lipa just days after the announcement of the new school the storm of phone calls and email from interested students and parents had already started to flood her office, but the application process is really quite simple. Prospective students can visit StepAhead’s website, download an application, and officially begin their enrollment.
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