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by Teya Vitu, Idaho Business Review
Two educators thought they would each build their own charter school in Boise, anchored with their $120,000 Idaho New School Fellowships from Bluum, a Boise-based new school incubator network.
After Brad Petersen and Amanda Cox spent time together in the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) training for charter school principals, they decided it made sense to combine their fellowships. “It became clear pretty quickly that this is a lot of work,” Cox said of establishing a charter school. “It might be best for us to join forces. There was a good alignment of our visions.”
Cox and Petersen want to break ground in the coming months next to the Boys and Girls Club of Ada County’s Moseley Center on 42nd Street in Garden City. They hope to open their school, called Future Public School, in fall 2018. They are in the early design phase with erstad ARCHITECTS.
“Our vision is to create engineers of the future and engineers of our community,” Petersen said. “They will engineer future computer and science solutions while also engineering ways to expand equitable access to opportunity for people of all backgrounds and walks of life.”
The Future Public School will seek to prepare students to tackle jobs that do not exist yet.
“Our expanded vision of student success includes preparing students for a life of constant agility, pivots, and iteration,” Petersen said. “We can no longer automate the education process and teach all children the precise facts and figures that prepare them for a 40-year career at a certain firm.”
Petersen, Cox, Bluum CEO Terry Ryan and Building Hope, which is Bluum’s charter school financing partner, all saw just reason in combining two fellowships for one school.
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