Alliance Academy

• Year founded: 2004

• Year closed: 2013

• Location: Burnsville, MN

• School Address(es): 12156 Nicollet Avenue, Burnsville, MN, 55337

• Facility:

• Other Names: Sobriety High - South Campus

• School Type: Public - Charter

• Mission/Purpose & Description: The school was designed to "help students recovering from alcohol and drug abuse." (1)

• Origins: Alliance Academy opened in 2004 as the third campus of Sobriety High, and the first located south of the Minnesota River. Sobriety High started as an alternative learning center (ALC) in Edina, MN, in 1987. In 2003, the ALC became a charter school and started adding campuses in Maplewood (1999), Burnsville (2004), and Litchfield (2005). They also took over Arona Academy in Coon Rapids, a school that originally opened in 1995.

• Reason Closed: 

  • Funding challenges. Lost support of a major funder. Percentage of funding for charter schools was not enough to support the program. 

  • Enrollment declines.

  • Sobriety High had gone from one campus to five, and it proved too many to sustain. (2)

• Student Demographics:

• Funding: Braided public and private funding. Public funds available through charter school allocation and other state mechanisms. Private fundraising, especially through the Sobriety High Foundation.

• Enrollment: Designed for 40 students.

• Staffing: 

• Recovery Model and Philosophy: Abstinence-based Minnesota Model. School did not conduct drug screening.

• Admission Requirements: Students required to be abstinent prior to admission, and to have received prior treatment. 

• Academic Program: 

• Recovery & Therapeutic Services:

• School Hours: 

• After-School Programming:

• Key Figures:

  • Judi Hanson

SOURCES

(1) "In Brief. Dakota County. New Sobriety High." Star Tribune. (March 31, 2004). 

(2) Finch, A. (2024). Salvaging a Teenage Wasteland: Origins of the Recovery High School Movement.