Often times charter schools are founded by dedicated educators with a great idea for an educational system, but little-to-no experience on the business of running a school. That’s where we come in. We provide them with support,” shared Camille Wells, chief co-based educational services provider helping schools succeed.
Athlos offers different services to charter schools, including business functions such as HR, community development and accounting/payroll. Additionally, Athlos has its own educational model based on a three-pillar system. Their pillars are ‘Prepared Mind,’ ‘Healthy Body’ and ‘Performance Character.’
“We have schools that already have educational models they’re built around, such as one we partner with in Texas that is a Chinese language school, but they utilize the other two pillars,” Wells explained.
There are two types of partnerships Athlos engages in with schools: fully implementing partners and powered-by-Athlos partners. Fully implementing partners utilize all three pillars, whereas a powered-by-Athlos partner may already have an educational model but utilize the other two pillars. Recently, they started their 39th partnership with a school, although they do not currently have a partner school in Idaho.
“It’s something we are working toward in the future as a possibility, but Idaho can be a challenge to open a charter school in. However, we are really glad to be based in Boise. I’m originally from Idaho and the city has been great and helped us secure a grant so we could stay located here,” said Wells.
Athlos Academies relocated to their new permanent office and training space in downtown Boise, off of 10th and Idaho in the Old Macy’s building in May of this year. The old Macy’s building was built in 1927 and has undergone a number of renovations over the last several decades. “We worked with Boise State to find some of the old photos of the building. We unfortunately don’t have one from when it was built, but we do have images from the 1950s, including a fun image of the workers, the 1970s and the 1990s when it was the Macy’s,” shared Wells.
When Athlos moved into the building it underwent a few changes. The most striking change was the removal of pillars from the first floor.
“We had to remove pillars on the first floor for our turf and hardwood court. We wanted to model our teaching method in the building, so the pillars had to go. They put in a special structure frame that holds the building up from the second floor. These 90-ton steel beams replace the wood
ones from the first floor, and we had them painted to match the original metal beams. It was important to us to keep the historic structure of the building intact. We wanted to make the space new, but keep the integrity.”
The wood from the original beams was converted into a bench and art installations in the building, as was a metal grate that had been placed originally outside of the building and was reutilized for interior decor.
“We eat our own cooking,” Wells shared, “that’s why a lot of thought went into how we designed our facility. We have staff movement activities on the turf, all of our meeting rooms are named after values and our mock classrooms where we train educators represent each of the pillars we teach.”
For more information about Athlos Academies check out their website at HERE.