The calendar didn’t read Dec. 24 or Dec. 31, but the hallways and classrooms of Idaho Novus Classical Academy had an aura not unlike a holiday eve on Tuesday.

That’s because years of planning and work came to fruition Wednesday as about 378 students walked through the school’s doors for its first year of bringing education to students at the kindergarten through sixth-grade levels.

“It’s an important day for a lot of people,” said Vincent Kane, who was hired more than two years ago as the founding principal of the school. “Everyone is very enthusiastic right now. The faculty can’t wait to work with the students.”

Kane said the school’s opening comes after more than four years of dedicated work and a vision from a group of founding parents and community members.

About 70 of the students are from the Avimor neighborhood. The rest – approximately 300 students – come from across the Treasure Valley.

The tuition-free public charter school’s buses will be logging some serious miles to accommodate those students.

“We’re running a bus to Horseshoe Bend,” Kane said. “We’ll also be running a bus to Emmett and we will have busing in the city of Eagle.”

The school’s faculty also comes from far and wide.

“We have members from as far away as Florida and California, and even Alaska, who have come to be a part of this school,” Kane said. “We’re very fortunate, and this is an incredible team of educators.”

Kane said the plan is for that team of educators to be part of a growing school over the next several years.

“We’re opening as a kindergarten through sixth-grade school, but our academic model involves K-through-12 operations,” he said.

As such, the school will grow as the students grow.

“The plan is to add one grade each year as the sixth-graders advance a grade level,” Kane said. “Eventually, we can have 702 students up to the 12-grade level.”

Kane said finances have a hand in this model of growth.

“We’ve constructed a kindergarten-through-ninth-grade building,” he said. “Then, when our current sixth-graders start ninth grade we’ll actually start a building expansion project and build out a K-through-12 facility. That means that during the first four years we’re not carrying debt service on a K-12 building.”

The school’s long-term goals include a gymnasium and extracurricular activities.

“We’re going to start with cross country this year,” Kane said. “It makes a lot of sense with our community trails and the broader trail system through Avimor. We’re going to start there and build out based on student interest and the availability of coaches.”

Kane said that the school recognizes that extracurricular activities are an important part of the school’s philosophy of nurturing a well-rounded, responsible individual.

Idaho Novus Classical Academy is an American Classical Academy. Kane said he believes the education that students receive at the Avimor school won’t be all that different than the education students received a few generations ago.

“Our vision is to form future citizens who uphold the ideal of our country’s founding and promote the continuation of our American experiment,” Kane said.

At the same time, Kane reiterated that the school is a public charter school.

“That means we are nonpartisan and nonsectarian, with no religious affiliation,” he said. “We teach virtues which have endured the test of time. … Values are deeply personal, and we think it’s the family’s role to teach their children’s values.”

There are six virtues the school teaches: courage, courtesy, honesty, perseverance, self-government and service.

“There is no partisan aspect to that, and there are no religious aspects,” Kane said. “Those are simply qualities that good citizens have.”