Hiiraan Online

By ANDREW DEZIEL 

 

A new charter school is opening in Faribault next fall and plans to expand each year thereafter.

Surad Academy will serve up to 120 students from kindergarten through fourth grade in the fall in a leased space in Towns Square on Lyndale Avenue. Each year, school leaders plan to add a grade, gradually expanding to K-12.

The new free public school was approved by the Minnesota Department of Education last year.

The man tasked with organizing the school’s launch, Startup Coordinator Jonathan Starr, said Surad Academy is led by community members who came together out of a desire to see greater, more personalized learning opportunities for students.

“The goal is that this school would perform every bit as well or even better as those in the most privileged or wealthy districts in the country,” Starr said. “That’s a big challenge, but we believe it’s doable.”

Following the public charter school model pioneered in Minnesota three decades ago, the academy is focused on offering an innovative education mixing tradition and outside-the-box thinking.

Surad’s model takes inspiration from the Abaarso School of Science and Technology, a nonprofit school in Somaliland that Starr founded with his own finances more than a decade ago after a successful career on Wall Street.

With highly selective test-based admissions and rigorous academic standards, Starr said Abaarso managed to provide students in one of the world’s poorest countries with a pipeline to some of its most elite academic institutions.

 

 

Starr’s unique background and reputation might make him particularly well suited to help launch an alternative school in Faribault, a community which has a large Somali population.

However, Starr took pains to emphasize that Surad aims to serve all Faribault students. Part of that may be culturally relevant education for all students, but the heart of Surad’s mission is to provide a rigorous and intense education in core subjects.

“While there will be culturally relevant aspects for sure, that’s not to me the thing that makes the school unique,” he said. “It’s really about delivering a strong product.”

A day in the classroom will look different under Surad’s model. According to its website, the school aims to ditch dry textbooks and worksheets in favor of engaging activities such as games and experiments, while seeking to make the most of modern technology.

Starr said Surad Academy will focus on meeting each student where they are at. Too often, he said traditional schools give assignments which are too hard, leading to discouragement, or too easy, leading students to “check out.”

“It’s not about what grade you’re in, it’s about what you can do right now,” Starr said. “(If) someone’s performing at a third-grade level, then they need to be doing work that challenges them at that level.”