Richard McKenna Charter School - Online Alternative

Richard McKenna Charter School - Online Alternative is a public charter high school in Mountain Home, ID, serving grades 9–12 as part of the Idaho Virtual High School Inc. district, with an enrollment that is not currently reported but appears to be very small. The school ranks 117 out of 122 Idaho high schools for 2025–2026, placing it in the bottom 5% statewide with a 0-star rating. This puts it well below the other campuses in the same network: the Richard McKenna Charter School - Onsite campus ranks 42nd (66th percentile), while the Richard McKenna Charter School - Online campus ranks 114th.

Academically, the school trails far behind state averages on ISAT assessments. In the 2025–2026 school year, only 29% of students were proficient in English Language Arts and 22.7% in Science, compared to state averages of 61.3% and 41.2%, respectively. These results are also much weaker than local alternatives like Mountain Home Senior High School, which posts 55.9% ELA proficiency, and even Bennett Mountain High School, another alternative school, which shows 16.7% ELA proficiency. Interestingly, the Onsite campus in the same charter network achieves 58.3% ELA proficiency, showing that the district can produce strong results — the online/alternative model itself appears to be the challenge.

Historically, graduation rates at this school have been extremely low — between 18% and 29% from 2020–2021 through 2023–2024. A reported jump to 82.5% in 2024–2025 appears to be a data artifact, since the same figure appears across all schools and the state. Per-pupil spending is just $4,081, less than one-third of what the Onsite campus spends ($13,283), and the student–teacher ratio has hovered around 24–25 to 1 in recent years. For parents considering this school, the combination of very low test scores, historically low graduation rates, minimal spending, and high student–teacher ratios raises serious concerns about whether students receive adequate support.