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Mission

Challenge Charter School is a unique, supportive, and safe learning community where kids come first in all decision making. Then, accountability is embedded in all processes, and academic rigor and citizenship are pillar expectations and motivators for all staff and students.

Challenge Charter School (CCS) is a public elementary school serving over 600 students in grades Kindergarten through 6th. Founded in 1996, CCS was the first official Core Knowledge® School in Arizona. Core Knowledge® is “engaging, challenging, and content-rich” at the appropriate developmental level, and integrated across disciplines for a foundation that “promotes academic excellence for all learners, while remaining flexible enough” to meet individual needs.

The CCS Team is passionate about kids’ first decision making in education and also in fostering and embracing a love for the life-long learning process for everyone. CCS Leadership sets high expectations for themselves, as well as for our faculty and students. Leadership then ensures that all barriers are removed to reach these expectations. There is frequent and transparent communication throughout the tolerant, strengths-based CCS culture. People feel safe to take risks and challenge themselves within that culture.

At the heart of the CCS mission is academic accountability. A school must be a family, a true community of parents, educators, community members, and stakeholders, all working together. Such a community cannot be built without trust. Trust in a school community is built through consistency, commitment, communication, and accountability/results.

The dedicated team of CCS educators has collaborated to ensure cross-curricular concepts, including the arts, unify into a larger, extended learning experience that has real world relevance at each child’s developmental level. Learning is fun at CCS, the type of fun that comes from being engaged in the classroom through inquiry based adventures, and making connections across disciplines that are relevant to the learner.

Frequent hands-on activities foster the life-long love of learning making school fun and relevant to a child’s life. While it is tangible and relatable for students, it also prepares each child for success in their continuing, secondary education with a rich, broad, and meaningful foundation.

In addition to each and every child, regardless of race, ethnicity, origin, or ability, having access to the components of this engaging curriculum/classroom and developing a love for the learning process, they are also actively engaged in the larger world, their community and the importance of their own citizenship in that community, at the school level, the community level, the state level, the national level, as well as the inner moral code that is needed for a truly fulfilling education and life.