Fifteen new schools are set to open this fall across Idaho, according to the Idaho Department of Education.
At traditional districts, the new schools are all elementary or K-8. Two were built to address growth in the Bonneville and West Ada districts. Others are magnet schools or replacements of old buildings.
Seven new charter schools set to open this fall have a variety of approaches, from Brabeion Academy, a sports-focused school, to two classical academies.
There’s also an explosion of virtual schools, with four school districts adding online options for students and one charter school looking to attract kids statewide.
District schools
Three new district elementary schools and one K-8 school will open this fall:
Willow Creek Elementary is opening in Bonneville to address growth. Planning for the new school began in 2019, but crews didn’t break ground until September 2024, according to Local News 8. Willow Creek will be the first completely new elementary school in the district in about 30 years.
Patriot STEM Academy is a Nampa magnet school launching with third and fourth graders, with plans to expand to K-8. The school will focus on math and science through project-based learning. It will be at Owyhee Elementary for the first two years before transitioning to its own building.
Independence Elementary School is opening in the West Ada School District this fall. The school was built to alleviate overcrowding at the nearby Star Elementary. It’s expected to serve up to 700 students and cost $20 million to build.
Salmon Two Rivers K-8 School is the long-awaited update for families in Salmon. After 12 failed bond attempts, the district secured the $20 million bond to build the school in May of 2024. A group of volunteers fundraised to help cover some of the additional $9 million needed to build the school.
The new K-8 school replaces the crumbling 70-year-old Pioneer Elementary.
Virtual schools
Five virtual schools are set to open this fall in Idaho. All but Trailhead Virtual Academy are housed at traditional districts.
Fruitland Virtual Academy will be open for students in grades 7-12, according to the district’s website. There were few other details available about the school on the district’s website.
Summit Virtual will open in the Pocatello/Chubbuck School District, but no details are available on the district’s website, and communications staff did not respond to questions from EdNews.
Fremont Online is set to open for students in grades 7-12 with Subject.com providing online curriculum and the school’s learning platform. Fruitland teachers will oversee individual classes. The school’s website hasn’t launched, but families can fill out an interest form.
Fruitland Superintendent Stoney Wilson said students can work independently, but parent or guardian involvement is key.
“Constant supervision is not required, but regular monitoring and support are expected,” he said.
West Jefferson Online is a virtual school opening in the West Jefferson School District, but no details are available on the district’s website, and staff did not respond to questions from EdNews.
Charter schools
Seven charter schools will open in Idaho this fall. Two are classical schools and part of the American Classical Schools of Idaho network. Gem Prep, Elevate, and Alturas charter school networks are all also adding new schools.
Trailhead Virtual Academy is set to open this fall as a K-8 statewide virtual career-technical focused school, but as of Friday it had just four students enrolled, according to Rachel Burk, executive director of the Idaho Public Charter School Commission.
Despite low enrollment, the school will be allowed to open, Burk said, because the private company ACCEL that provides the school’s virtual platform and curriculum promised to cover costs if the school couldn’t hit its break-even point of 200 students.
ACCEL will get 95% of all state and federal funds Trailhead receives in return for the services it provides to the school.
The school had a winding road to approval from the charter commission. The school’s board applied for a charter in 2024, but commissioners raised concerns about the lack of specifics in the school’s curriculum, little demand in the state and the level of involvement from ACCEL.
The commission denied the application but, after an appeal, approved the school last year.
This spring, the school’s board still had few specifics about curriculum or a daily schedule. A school leader wasn’t hired until early June.
Valor Classical Academy, in Kuna, is one of two new members of the American Classical Schools of Idaho set to open this fall. ACSI supports five charters in the state, which all use the Hillsdale curriculum.
The Michigan-based conservative Christian college provides K-12 schools with the curriculum and training to give students an “American classical education.”
Valor is set to open with grades K-7 and add a grade each year until it reaches K-12.
North Idaho Classical Academy is set to open in Bonners Ferry this fall after a year-long delay due to difficulties finding a building to house the school.
The school ended up in an old mill site in downtown Bonners Ferry behind the county fairgrounds.
The school is also part of ACSI and uses the Hillsdale curriculum. As of last week, it still had seats available for fall enrollment in first grade and grades 3-6. The school is also opening initially with grades K-7, adding a grade each year.
Alturas Academy North will serve K-8 students in the Rigby area. It’s the third school in the Alturas International network, which has two other schools in Idaho Falls.
The new school will address Alturas’ waitlist at its other primary school, Alturas International, which had about 400 students in 2024 when the network applied for the new school. Most of those students were located in the Rigby area.
Students can then continue to Alturas Academy, which serves grades 6-12 in Idaho Falls.
Brabeion Academy, whose website touts that it’s Idaho’s first public school of sport, is set to open in Nampa this fall.
The school, founded by former state legislator Branden Durst, has a prominent focus on athletics with an hour of physical education daily.
The school will operate on a cohort model with up to 60 students per grade under the supervision of one teacher. Those 60 students would be split into two cohorts of 30 with an aide assigned to each cohort. Students will attend school every other day with a virtual option for the off days.
Durst told the charter commission last month that 200 students are on the waitlist for the school, which will start out serving grades K-8.
Gem Prep: Idaho Falls is the latest addition to the eight-school Gem Prep network. It will open serving grades K-9, adding one grade each school year.
The school was set to open in Ammon, which borders Idaho Falls, in 2025, but patron concerns over the location led Gem Prep to move the school into Idaho Falls’ city limits and delay the opening by a year.
The charter network is among the largest and oldest in the state. Gem Prep: Online launched in 2004 with the first brick-and-mortar location opening in Pocatello in 2014. Since then, the network has added schools across Southern Idaho, with one in Rexburg set to open in 2027.
Elevate Academy Twin Falls is the fifth school in the Elevate charter network to open in Idaho. The network runs a series of career technical education schools across the state focused on at-risk students.
The school will open with grades 6-10, adding additional grades over the next two years to reach twelfth grade.
The Twin Falls location will offer construction, welding and manufacturing, culinary arts, criminal justice, industrial mechanics, business and marketing, electrical, and medical arts programs. Students are expected to earn two industry certificates before graduation.
New schools in name only
There are seven other schools that the Idaho Department of Education classified as new this fall, according to data EdNews obtained through a public records request.
Five of those schools had students attending them last year but made the list because of Mountain View School District’s deconsolidation.
In Emmett, a rebrand of the district’s virtual school led to its place on the list. The rebrand to Virtual Prep Academy of Idaho was done to encompass the variety of partners who now help the district offer online, hybrid, and home learning pathways to families, according to Richard Winegar, director of online learning.
The school ended last school year with about 135 students and plans to open with about 150 this fall. Most of the students live in Gem County, with some enrollments in other areas of the state.
West Ada is also working on a career technical center set to open in fall 2027. The center is coded as a new despite not enrolling students full-time. The facility will be housed in a vacant warehouse in Meridian with classes focused on a variety of disciplines from welding to residential construction. The project cost about $13.8 million.
