Our Story

Amy Edwards was our Founding Board Chair during the charter school application process and is now our Executive Director. During her time as a professional teacher, in classrooms and online, and homeschooling her own children, she gradually built a model of learning that is now Elevated. It began to take form as a private program, meeting in person and online once per week. It started with 12 students in her garage, where she taught Literature and Humanities, and her husband taught Science. Shortly, they added teachers in other subjects, and the number of students grew to require a move to a rented facility. Amy and her husband taught with the principles that learning should be lifelong, enjoyable, project-based, and relate to the lives of students. They followed their grown children to Utah, and Amy began researching schools here and attending charter school trainings and meetings. It became clear that the private program could be a charter school, making it accessible to all families at no cost to them.

In 2021, our Board formed. They are all lifelong learners, with expertise in higher education, K-12 education, finance & compliance, and technology. They discussed the learning model and brainstormed together to refine it and create a charter school available tuition-free to all Utah students. After 2 years, many meetings and trainings with the Utah State Charter School Board and Utah Board of Education, their application was approved in January 2023. Elevated was approved to open for K-6 in the August 2024 and expand to K-9 in 2025, and a full K-12 school by 2026. 

We are motivated by a belief that every child can learn, and it is the role of a school and teachers to facilitate learning in a way that is impactful for each child. We embrace competency-based education, which means that each student begins at the right skills level and focus is on forward progress. We organized subjects as separate classes, taught at various skill levels, so that students can take just the right level in each subject. We created mixed-age classes for a more natural learning environment to inspire peer teaching and prepare students to interact productively outside of school for a lifetime.

We believe that parents are the experts on their children, and so we partner with parents to create personalized learning plans, that inspire each child to learn and face challenges with confidence.

We believe in whole family education, meaning that we consider each child, but also the family as a whole as we plan how students will learn, how they will demonstrate their learning, what support parents need, and what freedom and flexibility meets the needs of the family.

We invite you to take this journey with us to Learning Elevated!