New Code Academy partners with learning pod in St. Cloud
Ahmed Hassan, a local entrepreneur and founder of Knowledge Academy LLC, recently partnered with New Code Academy (NCA) to provide a space where NCA's St. Cloud-based online students can attend school.
NCA is an online school for Minnesota families with students in grades K-12, certified by the Minnesota Department of Education. Students are enrolled through Bloomington Public Schools as NCA is a branch of that school district. However, they're open to enrolling any student no matter where they are located so long as they live in the state.
As of Wednesday, Knowledge Academy has seven students. Three sophomores , two fifth graders, one sixth grader and one third grader.
Because NCA is part of the Bloomington public school district, parents or guardians are not charged for enrollment. The children's guardians, however, are charged $200 per month by Knowledge Academy for its space, supervision, tutoring and guidance.
"They want flexibility for their kids' learning," Hassan said when talking about what attracted parents to his company and NCA. "They also want help." Hassan said that the students have had their own struggle in each of their previous school systems.
NCA provides a standardized form of education that would be expected out any public school district in Minnesota, but the learning pod provided by Knowledge Academy brings a focused guidance for each student.
John Weisser, director of technology and head of the NCA branch, said popularity in NCA increased after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. He credits the program's success and popularity due to them starting before online learning became normalized before the pandemic.
"School is a complex organization for students and families to navigate and understand. COVID... created a tough, inconvenient thing for families to get through. I think it opened up the eyes of possibility for some families in the right situation to look at new models," Weisser said.
Weisser said through NCA, Bloomington schools has 300 fully-online students across the state.
Weisser added that the partnership with Knowledge Academy is "unique" but he was attracted to the idea. He heard of a similar system being used between families in Bloomington during the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic where children were brought together in a different household each day to fit their parents' or guardians' work schedules.
"This idea of knowledge bringing kids together to provide that structure while our staff provides the academics is a pretty interesting support model." This is their first time partnering with a private business providing an education pod. "We're having discussions about replicating it for either other parts of the state or other populations of students."
"The change in norm for online learning is here to stay. It's not for every kid, and it's not for most kids... but it's for a lot of kids."
Hassan spoke with the Times after the students' first full week in the learning pod which is located in the basement level Global Center Mall in in north St. Cloud. The space was provided by the Iqra Education Center, which is a non-profit, tax-exempt organization that has been formed exclusively for religious, educational and social purposes.
Hassan said the Iqra Education Center has no influence over the students' individual curriculums as it is part of their agreement. He plans to relocate Knowledge Academy's location soon if he receives more students.
This article originally appeared on St. Cloud Times: New Code Academy partners with learning pod in St. Cloud
