SEEING GROWTH
Ivy Academy charter celebrates new campus
“... IT’S MORE THAN JUST TEXTBOOK LEARNING.” – HOLLY SLATER, ENVIRONMENTAL PROGRAMMING COORDINATOR AT IVY
It’s not unusual for Holly Slater to conduct her classes around a large bonfire in the winter or in a lettuce garden in the spring.
Slater teaches students at Soddy-Daisy’s Ivy Academy about the indigenous plants and animals that live on the land and in the North Chickamauga Creek that runs behind them.
At Ivy, she leads students on hikes. She helps them tend beehives, feed chickens and track animals they observe in the wild.
“Being outside is good for people,” said Slater, the environmental programming coordinator at Ivy. “… This is the best way to teach students; it’s more than just textbook learning.”
Ivy Academy, which has 150 high school students, is one of Hamilton County’s three public charter schools, operated for five years from portable trailers on leased land off Dayton Pike. This week the school celebrated its grand opening in a new facility across the street.
Angela Markum, Ivy’s executive director, said she is just beginning to see the potential the eight acres of space provides.
“We can offer so much more to our students now,” Markum said. “Before, we leased the land and couldn’t develop it like this.”
The new campus is directly across the street from the previous location. Ivy purchased and remodeled an old strip mall, which complements the school’s emphasis on outdoor education and project-based learning. The school was able to purchase the property with a $1.682 million low-interest loan from the U.S. Department of Agriculture that was allocated through Congress.
Clay Copeland, an area specialist with the USDA’s Rural Development Program, said this was the first USDA loan awarded to a charter school in Tennessee.
“This has been uncharted territory for us,” Copeland said. “And this project has gone so well it is opening the door to others.”
The new 12,000-squarefoot facility allows easy access to the great outdoors with an exterior door on every classroom. The walls of the cafeteria are covered in a large mural of the mountains and gorge where the school sits, and the school’s main entryway is curved to imitate the river.
Math teacher Lauren Karnes said the new building makes the school community feel more united, as they are no longer separated and limited by different trailers.
“It didn’t feel like a real school before,” she said.
Slater agreed, saying that the new facility is permanent and that everyone feels a strong sense of ownership. She used to work for a regular public school and said that she never had an attachment to the school buildings.
“Here it’s different,” Slater said. “This is our building. … We can invest so much more in the facility because it is our place.”
Contact staff writer Kendi Anderson at kendi. anderson@timesfreepress.com or at 423-7576592.