New South Salt Lake charter school for secondary students

The Granite Board of Education recently approved plans for a new charter school that targets students who are immigrants and refugees. The school is intended for English Language Learners and native English speakers who are interested in a small school with a global perspective. Utah International School will begin operations in fall 2013 at the current Hartivigsen School, 350 East 3605 South, after the special needs students move to a new facility, currently under construction.

The mission of the Utah International School is “to provide a rigorous and relevant education for secondary students seeking global perspectives, including recently arrived immigrants and refugees. Our educational program includes English language acquisition, international languages, college prep and career readiness for a diverse student body.”

Linda Barth, UIS Board Chair, moved to Utah from New York City more than two years ago. Barth taught English as a second language to immigrants in public school for 12 years before relocating to Utah. During her first year here, Barth discovered two fundamental differences that had a significant impact on English Language Learners being able to obtain an education.

“In Utah, students have a free public education until they are 18 [age is 21 in NYC],” Barth said. “Also students are placed in grade by age [in NYC it is by number of credits earned], so a student coming to Utah from another country at the age of 17 might be a junior or even a senior and have little or no time to learn English and earn sufficient credits to graduate.”

Previously, Barth was the coordinator of the Granite’s Newcomer Academy that served new immigrants and refugees in the area. When the academy was shut down in 2010, Barth had to find another way to help serve that population. Instead of trying to open the charter school through the Utah State Charter, UIS approached the Granite District for approval to help foster a better collaboration with the district and its 759 refugee students.

Utah International School will have a unique structure. The school will have less than 500 students; grades will be clustered together; teachers will work in teams to serve a cohort of 80 students per grade; students will be in heterogeneous groups; and learning will be project based, integrating math, history, language arts and science.

“We believe [this model] will better meet English Language Learners needs, but we also believe it will meet the needs of students who are interested in going to school with students from all over the world and want to study from a global perspective,” Barth said. “The relationships teachers can build with the students and each other in a smaller school setting will provide a more individualized environment, which is a clear alternative to the ubiquitous, large, comprehensive high schools in Utah.”