We empower, invest in, and support educational leaders who take risks and put children first.
LET LEARNING GROW.
EMPOWER
We empower educational leaders in the Gem State by providing one- or two-year fellowships to those who take risks and put children first.
INVEST
In partnership with the J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Family Foundation, Bluum serves as a funding intermediary and local champion for supporting entrepreneurial education ventures.
SUPPORT & IMPROVE
Bluum provides partner schools with additional services and technical assistance. Our team can help elevate the business of running a school by reviewing financial infrastructure and identifying areas of strength and areas for improvement.
DISCOVER & INFORM
Bluum has become a go-to resource on education research and innovation. We aim to share the work of Idaho’s high performing schools and outstanding educators. Our hope is that it can become a national model for helping all children reach their fullest potential.
$20,392,682
FEDERAL CHARTER SCHOOLS PROGRAM INVESTMENT
16,406
TOTAL NEW SCHOOL SEATS CREATED
40
TOTAL IDAHO SCHOOLS SUPPORTED
$72,998,132
TOTAL PHILANTHROPIC INVESTMENT
2023 Annual Report
We have the privilege of serving some of Idaho’s finest school leaders in helping them educate and support their thousands of families and students. In 2023, the real heroes in our orbit were our 40 plus partner schools and their teams.
Read The Report
Stories
Idaho has a thriving charter school sector with over 30,000 students enrolled in one of the state’s 70+ schools. It features some of the highest-performing schools in the state, but until recently charters had little choice but to hire teachers certified through traditional schools of education. Some teachers obtained interim certificates through Teach for America or the American Board of Certification for Teacher Excellence (ABCTE) that allowed them to teach for three years. But charters had no authority to design their own teacher preparation pathways, or to hire people with a wealth of life and professional experience but no teaching degree. While Idaho created a more streamlined, low-cost, online certification program through the College of Southern Idaho in 2018, aimed primarily at certifying and retaining rural educators, charter advocates say it did not provide a more customized approach that many charter schools desire or require.
In the ever-shifting world of school choice, what began as a homegrown charter-school network’s small experiment in microschooling stands out as unique—and as a uniquely promising model for replication. Gem Prep, a network of seven brick-and-mortar K–12 charter schools in rural Idaho, anchored by a longstanding and high-performing online school, launched an experiment called Learning Societies at the start of the 2022–23 school year. Two publicly funded Learning Societies opened in August 2022, one in the hamlet of Emmett, 30 miles northwest of Boise, with 22 students in grades 1–5, and the other in Lewiston in northern Idaho, with seven students in grades 1–5. The basic idea is this: Some parents who, for a variety of reasons, hesitate to send their children to a traditional brick-and-mortar school have neither the time, inclination, or temperament to homeschool or to monitor a full-time online program.
Sheraya Hauck grew up in Bonners Ferry in far north Idaho and was homeschooled by her parents. Her son attends kindergarten at a small private Christian school that opened just this year in town. Sheraya never thought she would consider a public school for her son, or her one-year-old daughter. She believed her family’s values clashed with what was taught in most public schools. Then she heard about the North Idaho Classical Academy public charter school, scheduled to open near Bonners Ferry in August 2025. She became one of the founding group of parents. She is all in on sending her children there. “I always knew that I would never put my children into the mainstream flow of public education,” she said. “People used to ask me all the time what I’m going to do because I have a career, so I can’t really homeschool.”
Hispanic Parents Talk About Schools & Life in Idaho
Frequently Asked Questions
Measuring How Well Idaho is Meeting Public Charter School Facility Needs