Charter high schools in Minneapolis are often tucked away in modest locations, missing all the amenities that come with larger school district high schools.
Things will be different at the $27.3 million Hiawatha Collegiate High School campus that opens next fall.
There, students will be greeted by a gymnasium with the school mascot name splashed behind rows of seating. They'll file into what Hiawatha calls a state-of-the-art lecture hall, and classrooms and science labs. And when the end-of-day bell rings, their own regulation high school soccer field will be waiting right outside the doors.
"This is a manifestation of the dream that you all have been helping us pursue for a long time getting a lot closer," said Eli Kramer, executive director of the Hiawatha Academies chain of schools, speaking at a celebration at the site Wednesday.
Other charter high schools in the city include some of the features Hiawatha Collegiate is advertising, said Minnesota Association of Charter Schools executive director Eugene Piccolo. But he said there likely isn't another Minneapolis charter high school with all these amenities.
"The goal, I assume, is that if they have a brand-new facility with all the bells and whistles, that they will increase enrollment, which would expand their ability to do the programming," Piccolo said.
Hiawatha Collegiate, at 3500 E. 28th St. in the Longfellow neighborhood, used to be home to a Canada Dry bottling plant, among other things. The building will be sandwiched between Brackett Park and a pair of schools in the Minneapolis district, symbolizing the already tense competition for students in that area of the city.
The four schools that make up Hiawatha Academies bring in kids from kindergarten through 11th grade, and its first class of seniors will graduate in 2019. Hiawatha is one of the city's largest charter schools, serving mostly Latino students.
