Alturas Preparatory Academy to move into former Sears property

IDAHO FALLS, Idaho (KIFI) - Alturas International Academy Charter School is excited to introduce its new location to provide education. 

They will be taking over the old Sears location in Idaho Falls and will turn it into a school.

"This is a dream come true," director and founder of Alturas Preparatory Academy Michelle Ball Executive said. "We're building Alturas Preparatory Academy that will serve grades six through 12. Eventually, we'll start sixth through 10th and add 11th and 12th grade in the next in consecutive years."

The original campus location for Alturas will now be a K through fifth school. It will be the Alturas International Academy, and the new location will be Alturas Preparatory Academy.

"We've been exploring spaces for a long time, and we saw this space and it was, it was 73,000, square feet, and it can help us create the environment that we wanted for our students," Ball said.

Ball said they wanted to develop 21st-century skills of collaboration, communication and creativity. 

"With these open spaces of our common areas, our garage doors open up into 20-foot hallways. It just has everything we wanted to create this environment for our students," Ball said.

The school had 600 students on its waiting list last year.

This year, with 450 students in the lottery, Alturas International Academy will be full. 

However, this year they were able to offer 192 new seats in that location.

"It'll open up the opportunity for a really unique and innovative High School in Idaho Falls, which we believe Idaho Falls needs," Ball said. "We really are looking so forward for this to be a change for education that every student's gifts will be recognized and all students will belong to this incredible high school that we're going to create."