Hiawatha aiming for five-school charter future in Minneapolis

Hiawatha Academies' plan to teach high school students for the next three years at the former Northrop School in Minneapolis is stoking a history of neighborhood anxiety over placing older students in the building.

"I share a concern with many people that temporary will turn into permanent," said Michael Nicholls, who lives six houses from the site.

Hiawatha Academies is plunging into a deep and uneasy history over the issue.

Neighbors roundly opposed a 2006 proposal by an alternative school to use the former Northrop, at 1611 E. 46th St., as a high school for at-risk students.

There also is lingering angst over an earlier competition for the best way to reuse the previously vacant school.

The neighborhood association favored a proposal that split the block between senior co-op housing and a different charter school, which edged out a proposal by Hiawatha.

Instead, the school board decided in 2013 to go with the Hiawatha plan, which opened its second elementary school in Northrop in August after a $4.9 million renovation.

The charter school's leaders now want to build that school by next fall, but first want to house high school students ­temporarily. That has neighbors worried.

"You have to keep your word," Willie Bridges, president of the Field Regina Northrop Neighborhood Group, said after the school outlined its proposal at a recent community meeting. "All of a sudden, we're hearing about a high school."

The school is likely to win city approval, said John Quincy, the area's City Council member.

If so, Hiawatha will be opening its fourth south Minneapolis school since 2007 and extending its reach from kindergarten to high school graduation, only the third Minneapolis-based charter operation to do so.

The schools educate mostly students from families with low incomes and limited English skills, and have gained recognition for achieving higher rates of proficiency on state math and science tests than such students elsewhere in the state.

Originally, Hiawatha laid out a long-term growth plan that didn't call for opening a high school until 2019. That would have meant the first four classes of students to use its elementary and middle schools would go outside the Hiawatha system for high school.

But parents, such as Jamesha Hodge, argued that the school had made a moral commitment to graduate students like her younger sister, eighth-grader Kylah, who started with Hiawatha in first grade. Her extended family has five other students at Hiawatha schools, with two more on the way next year.

"We spoke up as parents because we were told they would be seen through," Hodge said.

Hiawatha leaders have been aggressively looking for other high school options.

Once the decision was made to offer high school for this year's eighth-graders, "we pounded a lot of pavement and looked at temporary moves and permanent homes," said Eli Kramer, Hiawatha's ­executive director.

The school said it is seeking city permission to allow the high school students for just three years.

They won't fit after that, Hiawatha officials said. That's because the middle school is being built for 336 students, but full enrollment at the high school would hit 416 if all four high school classes remained there.

The students at the existing Northrop building also will need the new building for middle school in three years.

Hiawatha is hoping for city approvals in January, and a November opening, with the initial projected freshman class of 104 students temporarily in a separable wing of the elementary building.

Hodge said she expects community relations will improve once residents see the quality of the students.

Steve Brandt • 612-673-4438

Twitter: @brandtstrib