Idaho Education Academy to add additional space for classrooms

The Pocatello Planning and Zoning Commission has cleared the way for the Idaho Distance Education Academy to expand.

The Idaho Education Academy is also known as Gem Prep Pocatello. They will be adding two 18-square foot modular buildings and 14 new parking spaces.

The school currently has 73 students. With the new space, the school expects their student population to double by 2020. With the additional room, the school also plans to add three more grade levels. Currently, they teach kindergarten through third grade.

Bob Lee, Gem Prep’s operations manager, said they are trying to do something that is totally innovative in modern education.

Their approach to education is blended learning.

“Blended learning is an experience for the student which replicates the best of online school, the best of home school, the best of a brick and mortar school, and brings it all together in one location,” said Lee.

They have online teachers who answer phone calls from students and parents with questions about their child’s work. Then there’s the classrooms where a teacher and a paraprofessional work hands-on with the kids.

The kids also each have laptops to do their work on. They all have educational apps related to subjects like science, reading, and math. Gem Prep says doing their work individually on laptops allows each student to work and progress at their own pace.

While students are on their laptops working, each teacher has a dashboard where they can see what the student is working on and track their progress, too.

Gem Prep says their goal isn’t to change education, but to innovate it and find what works best for kids in today’s world.

“We really hope that this school can represent a system that the school district and other schools look at and say ‘okay we’re going to watch these people carefully because they’re doing something that really isn’t being done in our schools, and if it works at their school, then it should work at ours,'” said Lee. “And we can benefit from this.”

Another thing they try to do at Gem Prep is getting the kids thinking about college early on. They have flags from all different colleges hung around the school. Most are from the colleges the teachers and staff graduated from. They hope by the kids seeing these they’ll get excited and pursue a college degree later on.

One of the biggest concerns with the expansion is the residential area it’s in. Neighbors of the school worry that an expansion will bring a lot of traffic to the area.

Gem Prep said they have a plan to try to reduce the number of cars coming in and out.

“We’re actually working with Pocatello Regional Transit to drop a number of the students off at OK Ward Park and PRT picks them up and buses them into the school so that cuts down on quite a bit of traffic,” said Lee.

The school said residents had the same concerns when they added two buildings a year ago but so far they haven’t had any problems.

As soon as the school can meet all building and fire code regulations, and get a fire lane in place, they can start working with contractors on building the new space.