Outdoor experience

 Students attending Cameron-based North Star Academy paused for a group photo taken during a recent school-sponsored camping trip to Tettegouche State Park, in Minnesota. The park is located more than 160 miles north of Cameron along the North Shore of Lake Superior. Photo contributed

Signing agreements last year with a pair of school districts in the News-Shield circulation area and creating a new scholarship program are just two of the important things going on at North Star Academy, a charter alternative high school located in Cameron.

Chris Crowe, principal and director at the academy, is discussing these and other aspects of the program in presentations to groups and organizations in the area.

Chartered in 2002, the school has an enrollment that serves between 40 and 50 at-risk students each year. Until 2023, it functioned in cooperation with the Barron Area, Cameron, Chetek-Weyerhaeuser and Turtle Lake school districts. Last year, new agreements were made with the Clayton and Prairie Farm districts, Crowe said. Current enrollment includes two Prairie Farm students and one from Clayton, he added.

The school mostly serves students who are either in their senior years or who have missed graduating with their classes at their home school districts. School days are arranged in two parts – a morning session in a teacher-directed classroom setting, and an afternoon session during which there is “a significant amount of independent (school) work with more flexibility in attendance guidelines,” which is an advantage for students who have full-time jobs.

Crowe said it is typical for students to move back and forth between the structured setting and independent study.

The students can work toward a high school diploma from their home districts or a diploma from North Star Academy, itself. The average graduating class averages from 20 to 26 students.

Regardless of the learning environment – traditional or independent -- North Star Academy emphasizes that the students, themselves, play the most important part in their success.

“There’s a lot of individuality that works into (each student’s educational plan),” Crowe said. “In all circumstances, though, we provide support, structure and accountability, but the students must be the drivers of their own success.”

Field trips to Minnesota state parks, Lake Superior ice caves, or even Washington, D.C., are part of the program.

Crowe said students must be in good standing to go on the trips and must help fund the cost, but that sponsorships and donations help defray expenses too.

“It’s not always perfect, but I think that the idea of travel is an incentive,” he said. “It’s a taste of the larger world, (an encounter with) history, and a teaching and learning possibility.”

The school’s new scholarship program comes in part from donations made by former North Star Academy teachers Mike Harvey and Lory Bush.

Harvey, a former Dunn County social worker, arrived in Barron County in the early 1990s and helped get alternative classes started in the Barron Area School District. He soon hired Bush as a second teacher. Now retired, Harvey and Bush “are both passionate about serving students for whom education in a traditional setting is not a good fit,” Crowe said.

North Star Academy’s first scholarship was awarded last year.

“Now, the (scholarship process) is taking on a much more formalized approach,” Crowe said.

Scholarship applicants are reviewed and vetted by a board that works with the academy to reward deserving graduates. In presentations, Crowe notes the scholarships recognize “youth who have overcome significant adversity” as they work towards high school graduation.

Crowe said that North Star Academy is a 501(C)(3) nonprofit, and accepts tax-deductible donations either at the school or Cameron Community Bank.