One St. Cloud charter school closes, another takes over its building and absorbs many staff, students

ST. CLOUD – A St. Cloud charter school will expand and accommodate students, staff and even a building from a charter that closed this spring.

Less than 10 years after it was built to house Athlos Academy of St. Cloud, its school building and campus will become home to many middle schoolers from STRIDE Academy this fall.

“It was a really short runway between them closing and us doing some due diligence,” said Eric Skanson, a former longtime principal at Cold Spring Elementary who just finished his third year as executive director at STRIDE. “We looked at leasing and we looked at long-term purchasing. Ultimately, we landed on both.”

Skanson said STRIDE has a one-year lease on the former Athlos building, valued at $22 million, with an option to buy early next year.

Athlos closed at the end of May after nine years of operation because its sponsorship contract was not renewed by Volunteers of America, citing poor academic performance and financial problems. Despite improvements in enrollment and revenue under recent leadership, only about 250 students attended the school this past year, down from a peak of 651 in 2018 and 630 as recent as 2020.

STRIDE, meanwhile, is the oldest continuously running charter school in St. Cloud. It launched in 2005 for grades K-5 in a newly built building on the city’s north side. It moved to a new, larger location on the south side in 2010, eventually serving middle school students through eighth grade. STRIDE’s $16 million, 40,000-square-foot facility at 3241 Oakham Lane, which will house students in grades K-4, is less than a mile west of the 87,000-square-foot former Athlos building at 3701 33rd St. S.

STRIDE had about 600 students this past year and expects enrollment to hit an all-time high of 800 in September, largely because of the former Athlos students. STRIDE also has hired more than a third of the 60 staff members who worked at Athlos, including its executive director, Heather Ebnet, who will become principal of grades 5-8.

“Everything fell into place,” Ebnet said. “This alleviates a lot of stress for the [Athlos] families. They can just stay with what’s familiar, and a lot of our staff found out the same thing. It was a turbulent couple of months, but this has become exciting, and the future is really bright.”

STRIDE had tried but failed to sell bonds for an $8 million to $9 million expansion in recent years. Coincidentally, there is commonality between the bondholders for both school buildings.

“Certainly, this is a better value than if we tried to expand the other building,” Skanson said. “We’re looking at multiple finance options and we think it’s a bonus that the bondholders are already vested in our success.”

Other potential tenants toured the Athlos building, including Benton-Stearns Education District and St. Cloud Christian School, which recently bought the former Crafts Direct building in Waite Park.

Ebnet said she knew Skanson and reached out once it became clear her school would not survive.

Like many other charter schools around Minnesota, STRIDE also has weathered challenges. Enrollment peaked at 690 students in 2017, when it also was threatened with closure by its authorizing agency, Friends of Education, because of low proficiency scores. As part of a plan to obtain a contract extension, STRIDE moved away from its original year-round school model and eliminated seventh and eighth grades. STRIDE transferred its charter to Pillsbury United Cos. in 2018 and added back seventh grade in 2019 and eighth grade in 2020.

According to its most recent annual report, more than 80% of STRIDE students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch and identify as Black. Nearly half the student body is made up of multilingual learners and the school had 95 staff members, with revenue and expenses each representing more than $9 million. It also had a general fund balance above $3.4 million.

“In my 25 years, this might be my Everest,” said Skanson, who also is launching STRIDE Virtual Academy this fall. “Building cohesive teams across two campuses and getting all this ready to go by September, this might be my biggest achievement.”

And once they have the space at the former Athlos building, Skanson and the STRIDE board will already be asking what that means for the future. Could they add grades 9-12?

“We feel very much like we have the potential to be adding a high school to serve the area in the future,” he said, explaining the many approvals a high school would need. “There are other K-8 charter schools in town and we think those families chose charter and are likely to stay with it for high school if they can. With this move, the feasibility drastically increases that we could do that and still have it feel small and family-centered.”