The ALC moved from the high school building to Oak Park, opening up more space for SAHS and ALC students to be accommodated and learn.
The ALC is an alternative learning center from grades 9-12 that helps students who are struggling with chemical health, mental health, bullying, teenage pregnancies, or otherwise traumatic occurrences that significantly impact their day-to-day lives. There are typically 70-80 students and six teachers in the building, so the teacher to student ratio is much higher in the ALC than in other schools. This means that instructors spend more time developing personalized plans that accommodate each individual student.
Students are supported up until the age of 21, and the goal of the ALC is for the students to graduate high school. Students who successfully do so by earning the 43 needed credits will have a celebratory hallway walk and accolade.
“We support students with options beyond the comprehensive high school,” Principal at the St. Croix Area Learning Center Mary Leadem Ticiu said.
Ticiu also goes on to say that a lot of the students that attend the ALC tend to be victims of harassment, especially the LGBTQIA+ students. The ALC provides an inclusive and safe space for several minorities who are wrongfully harmed by their peers.
Unlike SAHS, the new Oak Park building is able to minimize crowded hallways and cafeterias, loud bells, and provide classrooms for students to earn various blended credits. Removing those stressors helps ALC students perform well and develop a tightly knit sense of community amongst one another.
“It’s perhaps less chaotic in some ways, like, for example, today is a pep fest, and I know historically a lot of students in the ALC would find that to be stressful,” counselor Kristina King said.
Aside from the sometimes overwhelming nature of the Stillwater Area High School building, the move to a different location helps ALC students gain a sense of further autonomy. Students also like this new location because it permits more individual agencies.
ALC students miss certain things such as the athletics center, on-site counselors and the PAC. Despite this, the old ALC space inside the SAHS building is now used for special education, language arts and multi-language classrooms. An English teacher previously located awkwardly inside of the library has now been moved to the ALC’s old space, which makes communication in the language arts department easier for teachers.
“Our multi-language learners population has been growing quite a bit, so we have a number of students here who come to us speaking different languages, and as they’re learning English to adjust to school, we need space for that too,” Principal Rob Bach said.
Conclusively, the ALC’s former space is being used for good. The ALC has historically moved from various places, and quite a bit of this change involves how students feel about the adjustment. Time will tell how this movement is received, but so far the feedback is very positive.
