Tennessee’s First Environmental Public Charter School
Ivy Academy
July 26, 2023
Ivy Academy, Tennessee’s first environmental public charter high school located in Soddy-Daisy, Tenn., welcomes Ed Davis, who will serve as director of the charter school.
Davis served in the U.S. Navy for 24 years and has extensive experience in management, leadership, training and education. A native of Chattanooga, Davis is a 1980 graduate of Kirkman Technical High School and has master’s degrees in education leadership and health services administration from George Mason University and Central Michigan University, respectively.
Davis taught courses in health services and business and management at the University of Phoenix in Chattanooga, and he taught science at Howard High and Middle schools for two years. He also served as program coordinator with the Environmental Health Justice Collaborative in Chattanooga. Davis and his wife Althea have four children and live in East Brainerd.
“Ed contributes great management skills to Ivy, and even though he will be taking the lead on operations issues, he is a teacher and has a great heart for students,” says Marie Daly, Ivy Academy founder and an English teacher at the school. “Ed understands the charter school’s purpose and wants to help this school realize its mission.”
“I look forward to helping students achieve in this alternative learning environment,” says Davis. “I want to continue on Ivy’s excellent start, which has been proven by last year’s Gateway/End-of-Course test scores, and assist the staff in accomplishing the goals that have been set out for this innovative school, which can serve as a model for charter schools across the nation.”
Ivy Academy, a tuition-free public charter high school, opened in Hamilton County, Tenn., in the fall of 2009 with 55 ninth-grade students. Each year, Ivy Academy will add a grade until all four high school grade levels are filled. This year, the school anticipates enrollment of approximately 140 ninth and tenth-grade students.
Based on a philosophy developed by veteran teacher Marie Daly, the school’s founder, Ivy Academy offers students small class sizes, longer class periods and an integrated thematic curriculum that integrates real-world concepts across all disciplines. Additionally, the school – located adjacent to 7,000 acres of protected wilderness land in Soddy-Daisy, Tenn. – focuses on outdoor learning opportunities.
Ivy Academy, as a charter school, serves an underserved population of non-traditional learners who are:
- Restricted by structural and schedule constraints in a traditional school.
- Frustrated by lessons that do not adequately address different learning styles.
- Scoring outside the norms on standardized tests and are either too far above or too far below for their needs to be met in a large and inflexible classroom.
- Voracious learners that lack sufficient challenges to spark their interest.
The state’s Gateway/End-of-Course (EOC) test scores for the school’s first year indicate that Ivy works, reports the Ivy Academy board of directors: 83 percent of students met or exceeded standards in Algebra I and 96 percent of students met or exceeded standards in English I.
Ivy Academy is accepting applications for ninth and tenth-grade students through Sept. 10 for the 2010-11 school year. For more information, call the school at (423) 305-7494.
