Bennett Mountain students show progress

With their first semester behind them, students attending Mountain Home's newest alternative school made significant academic progress over the past four months.

Bennett Mountain High School's lead instructor Stehvn Tesar outlined the achievements of his students during a briefing before the Mountain Home School District board on May 22.

"Overall, it was great year (and) we build a great foundation for the future," Tesar said. "The first blocks of study went very well (and) our overall student achievement, attendance and GPA all went up."

Geared for those in grades 9 to 12, Bennett Mountain opened Jan. 7 in the middle school annex on East Jackson Street. It marked the first time in eight years the school district had offered this type of academic alternative.

Richard McKenna Charter High School previously served as the district's alternative high school before it left the district and became a stand-alone facility. Since then, Mountain Home was one of a handful of schools in Idaho without this type of school.

"You've got kids that don't fit in with the regular education system, and they need an alternative route to get through," said district superintendent Tim McMurtrey.

"There is a definite need for this school, and we learned that in a short amount of time," Tesar said.

The school opened at the start of the second semester with 30 students. That number jumped to 36 as more teens transferred to Bennett Mountain about two months later.

Each school day included four, 90-minute classes. Tesar taught two classes per day with students devoting the remaining academic day to online studies. Those computer-based classes included everything from core curriculum subjects to college-level advanced placement courses.

Many of these teens started at Bennett Mountain with hardly any credits to their name, Tesar said.

"They are now earning needed credits, and we have all of them back on track, if not ahead of the game," he added.

Four of his students went on to graduate with the rest of Mountain Home High School's Class of 2013 on Friday. Of those four teens, two of them would never have made it to graduation if they hadn't gone to this alternative school, Tesar said.

One of those graduates had struggled to stay focused on school, he added. Prior to coming to Bennett Mountain, he had already dropped out of six other schools.

The school helped this student reach this milestone in his life, said Tesar, who graduated from Mountain Home High School 13 years ago.

Students enrolled at Bennett Mountain fall into "at risk" categories based on standards established by the state.

Absenteeism was a common thread among several of the students, which was sometimes linked to issues at home that distracted them from school work, Tesar said.

"We have students here that have children of their own but are straight 'A' students," he said. "But they're considered 'at risk' because they're at a risk of dropping out because they have children at home."

A few others had failed at least one class over the years of school and lacked enough credits to graduate.

"A lot of them will admit that all it took (to succeed) was being in a smaller classroom environment and removing them from their peers," Tesar said in a previous interview with the Mountain Home News. "They're 'finding themselves' in this environment."

Other students include those "that we not necessarily ready for that transition from the junior high school to the high school," he said. "Sometimes they get overwhelmed dealing with seven class periods a day."

When school resumes in August, Tesar has 60 students that are guaranteed to start classes there. He added that he has many more on the waiting list.

"Potentially, if the school opened with 80 in the fall, I would not be surprised," he said.

"It all depends on how much we want to expand in a short amount time. We may have to take a more controlled growth approach."

The Bennett Mountain staff expects to add a counselor when the new year begins to deal specifically with the at-risk aspects of these students. Tesar also hopes the school can add a full time math teacher and possibly some part time teaching positions.

"In order to teach in an alternative setting, you have to be a special individual," he said. "It's not a traditional approach to education. You have to do different things to reach that at-risk population."

Currently, Mountain Home High School has identified up to 150 of its students that fall into the high-risk category. All of them could benefit from Bennett Mountain's academic environment, Tesar said.

"There's a need for it, and it will grow," he added.