The first year is over but iLearn Academy Charter School already has big plans to expand school programs and facilities.

Guam's newest charter school celebrated the completion of its first two quarters of operation last month. Assistant principal Rachel Alquero told KUAM News, "The school year went really, really well, the students were able to adjust, the teachers were able to adjust to our program, and overall at least during evaluations that I had conducted with our teachers, everything was pretty positive."

But according to Alquero, the school has big plans in the works for the next two school years, including building a brand new facility in Harmon. "This current location has always been seen as our temporary campus, so when our petition got approved, we had to open up a facility, open up a school, start accepting students right away just the way that charter school law is written," she added. "So the gymnasium the cafeteria, all of the classrooms will be completed by August 2017, so that's when we're looking to move into that permanent location."

Alquero says the new facility will be more conducive to the technology program the iLearn Academy wants to implement. "We will have our classrooms, we will also have a designated robotics room, we will have a designated fine arts room as well as agriculture. We're really wanting to get into an agriculture program. So there will be a community garden, just different things like that, and these are all programs that we really can't implement here in this location. It's smaller and we look forward to having the freedom to implementing the program we want to," she said.

Alquero said iLearn had 358 students last school year, but wants to increase student enrollment to 450 for the School Year 2016-2017. Once the new facility is completed in 2017, however, Alquero said iLearn will be able to accept up to 900 students from kindergarten to 5th grade.

While still a long way off, Alquero said she is excited for the opportunities the new Harmon campus will provide both the school and students. For more information on iLearn Academy Charter School, you can contact 989-3789.