Flathead and Glacier high schools are moving forward with charter school rollouts after gaining approval from the Montana Board of Public Education in January.

Both charters will share staff with Flathead and Glacier high schools.

Each charter needs to enroll a minimum of 41 students to receive basic entitlement funding from the state.

Enrollment is on a first-come, first-served basis and is open to students statewide, with preference given to in-district students. Under state public charter school requirements, a lottery is held if more students enroll than can be accommodated.

Flathead Pace, which stands for “Personalized Academic and Career Exploration,” will take a career-path, work-based learning approach, as the name implies. The academy will be open to 10th- and 11th-graders in the first year and then 12th-graders thereafter.

Rising Wolf Charter School’s focus is providing students with scheduling options that mirror Montana Western’s Experience One, or X1, experiential learning model. Using this model, students will take one class in a two-and-a-half to three-hour block for about 24 days before moving on to the next class.

The charters fall under House Bill 549, which authorizes public charter schools in Montana.

The public charter schools would operate under the school district and be governed by the district’s board of trustees whom taxpayers elect. The state board will monitor the charter schools’ performance. Publicly funded, the charter schools would be tuition-free.

Additionally, Rising Wolf Academy will create a board of directors made up of one or two school board trustees and community members with backgrounds in education. The group will serve as a link between the full school board and the charter. PACE Academy will create a parent and community advisory council, a leadership management team and select community project liaisons.

While it wasn’t impossible to create a charter school before HB 549, a key difference is in the additional funding schools receive.

Daily Inter Lake: Charter schools are coming to Kalispell