KMA Land
Ethan Hewett
(Crescent) -- Families in and around Crescent will once again have a local option for elementary school students.
The Red Barn Schoolhouse received approval from the Iowa State Board of Education in January for its charter elementary school application before officially receiving its five-year charter school contract from the board last week. Plans call for providing nature-based K-5 schooling at a renovated barn on roughly 160 acres of Loess Hills Forest at 20525 Monument Road just south of Crescent. Matthew Brooks is one of the founding members of the Crescent Community School Alliance, the group that worked to establish the public charter school. Brooks tells KMA News that ever since the Council Bluffs School Board opted to close the Crescent Elementary School in 2023, efforts have been underway to provide families with another option.
"That elementary school had kind of served as a centering force for Crescent and I know it was a really tough time for families and honestly, a tough time for the administration and superintendent of Council Bluffs, because I know those decisions aren't easy," said Brooks. "But, we are really happy after the last year and a half, to be finding an alternative for those families."
A public forum was also held back in December to share the idea with community members, which Brooks says received a significant turnout. Brooks says the hope is to begin offering tuition-free K-3 elementary curriculum in the 2025-26 school year before expanding to K-4 and K-5 over the first three years of operation. Brooks adds they hope to emphasize "nature-based" learning.
"We want to integrate project and inquiry based methods and we're taking kind of a collaborative instructional approach as well," Brooks explained. "Because we want our curriculum to be dynamic and integrated to foster these hands-on learning experiences across subjects for our students. Key to our mission is getting those students outdoors as much as possible so we can promote those deep connections with the environment, inspire their curiosity, and teach them humility, gratitude, and joy for the natural world."
While Iowa law allows students to open enroll, Brooks says the goal is to serve families in and around the Crescent and Honey Creek communities. Brooks says they had been working prior to receiving their charter contract to ensure they could "hit the ground" running on a hiring process over the next couple of weeks before releasing enrollment information later this spring.
"First and foremost, we're looking to finalize our governing board, which essentially functions as a school board, and a principal who will be running the school," said Brooks. "Our governing board and its decision-making powers should be in place here within this next week and then we can begin the really exciting work of bringing on the staff that is going to make this thing work."
At full capacity, Brooks says their current model would call for having six teachers and an administrator, with the hopes of hiring all those individuals in the coming months, funding capabilities permitting. Brooks says the elementary school also plans on having a four-day school week, which has become a growing trend for smaller, rural school districts.
"We wrestled with that a lot, but we also wanted to be able to offer a year-round calendar, because we think that aligns with our academic programming--especially the nature-based and seasonal work that we do--and we wanted to kind of combat the student regression you see over long school breaks," he said. "That long summer, while I loved it while I was teaching, I understood that it actually was detrimental to many of our students. So, we wanted to figure out how we could incorporate this year-long model and still give our teachers the opportunities for breaks and the opportunity to plan and evaluate."
Brooks says more enrollment information should be available on April 2nd. For more information on the school's proposed services, background, and eventual enrollment, visit redbarnschoolhouse.org.
