Kansas City-based Frontier Schools is on track to open Columbia’s first charter school in the fall of 2027.
At this point, Frontier Schools has hired a contractor and is looking for possible locations for the charter school in the city.
The Missouri Board of Education approved the opening of the STEM-based elementary school in April, allowing it to become the first charter school to operate in Boone County.
Called Frontier STEM Academy, it will start with students in preschool through second grade and add an additional grade per year for at least the next three years. According to a report presented for approval in April, Frontier’s plan is to start with 40 preschool students, 96 kindergartners, 24 first graders and 24 second graders.
“Since receiving approval in April, our efforts have focused on the early planning stages of implementation, including facility exploration, and organizational planning,” Jennifer Gray, the director of communications and outreach with Frontier, wrote in an emailed response to questions.
Frontier has not begun to hire staff, Gray said. That process is likely to start closer to the open date.
The search for a location might be influenced by considering the target population. For Frontier, that’s “predominantly low-income kiddos,” said Noah Devine, the executive director of the Missouri Charter Public School Association.
He pointed to downtown and the north side of Columbia as possible locations. “Although, you’re going to be flexible,” he said. “And you know, renting or buying are both reasonable options.”
Devine said there are five “key activities” charter schools must complete in order to open a school. The first is physical location.
“You don’t have access to public-tax-dollar bond monies, so you have to get a little creative,” Devine said. “Sometimes it means leasing, or doing a loan, or doing a site search, which is what they’re doing right now.”
Whatever building Frontier chooses must comply with requirements set by the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and the state.
The second move is hiring staff, including teachers and principals. In Frontier’s case, that would likely occur between October and May 2027, Devine said.
The third move is recruiting students to enroll. Devine said informational posters around town could start popping up this fall with enrollment information.
Another effort is community engagement, which Frontier is currently managing. Devine said this involves meeting with parents and gathering feedback from stakeholders to tailor the school’s model to fit the needs of its community.
Devine called the last move “organizational operations,” which involves everything that is “necessary, required and very critical,” for public schools. This includes sorting out federal grants, setting up payments with the state of Missouri and ensuring special education resources under Section B, among other things.
From approval to the school’s start date, 18 months is a reasonable time frame for any public school to open, Devine said.
From Frontier’s perspective, it has been working to develop the vision for its Columbia school for the “better part of 21 months,” Devine said, since it submitted an application in December and resubmitted it in March.
“This is a timeline that I think is very reasonable, and is generally in alignment for what we see, both in the charter school world, as well as just for all public schools, inclusive of charter schools,” he said.
Meanwhile, Columbia Public Schools has been granted judicial approval to continue challenging the law that allows charter schools to operate in Boone County. The district has resisted charter schools since the state law passed in 2024, suing the state in December and claiming the law is unconstitutional.
In a ruling last week, a Cole County Circuit Court judge said pursuing this legal remedy was an appropriate way to ultimately decide the issue of constitutionality. The next hearing in the case is Aug. 3.
The district is asking for a court ruling that would declare the provision in the law singling out Boone County unconstitutional and the application by Frontier Schools a violation of statutory requirements.
Since the state law was passed, two applications have been submitted to start charter schools in Columbia. In addition to Frontier, an application for a charter school proposed by Job Point and devoted to workforce training is still pending.
For many of those opposed to charter schools, funding is a major concern. The schools are financed by taxpayer dollars, which are allocated after students choose which school to attend. In Boone County, both state and local funding are included in the allocations.
Columbia Public Schools has said that Frontier STEM Academy is projected to take more than $4 million away from the local district in its first year, increasing to over $9 million by its fifth year.
