September Bird's-Eye View
Dear Members of the Liberty Community,
I am excited to share that Liberty STEAM Charter has been recommended for Cognia STEM Certification, another milestone in our commitment to getting better for scholars. Once certification is final, Liberty will join nearly 700 Cognia STEM-certified institutions recognized for their commitment to high-quality STEM learning.
This recommendation builds on Liberty earning Cognia Accreditation with Distinction this past spring. That process looked at the strength of Liberty as a whole. This time, we voluntarily invited Cognia to take a deeper look specifically at our STEM model.
On Friday, September 18, a two-member Cognia evaluation team conducted a virtual review across all three campuses. Evaluators reviewed 84 artifacts aligned to Cognia’s 10 STEM Performance Standards and 32 pages of narratives documenting how our STEM model has grown over the past five years. They also heard directly from the people who make Liberty what it is—scholars, parents, teachers, school leaders, our STEM Collective Leadership Team, Board members, and community PATH partners.
After that rigorous review, the evaluation team recommended Liberty for Cognia STEM Certification, recognizing that our STEM model meets Cognia’s research-based performance standards.
This moment has been seven years in the making. In our original 2019 charter, we made a promise to the Sumter community: we would build a school deeply focused on STEM and, when the time came, invite an outside organization to evaluate and validate what we had built. Our charter has always been more than an application—it is our promise to this community. In 2026, we are delivering on that promise.
We pursued this certification voluntarily because continuous improvement matters. We want to know what is working, where we need to grow, and whether the experiences we promise scholars meet rigorous standards beyond our own walls.
For families, that means outside validation of the STEM experience we promise. For teachers and staff, it affirms strong practices while helping us get better. For scholars, it means stronger opportunities to think, create, collaborate, solve real-world problems, and connect learning to their futures. And for our community, it is another way we hold ourselves accountable for the promises we make.
Most importantly, this is not the finish line. Cognia’s feedback gives us a roadmap for what comes next as we strengthen STEM learning across Liberty and advance the vision for our Early College & Technical High School.
From Accreditation with Distinction to STEM Certification, our approach remains the same: open our doors, invite the feedback, learn from it, and keep building.
Building what’s next. Advocating for opportunity. Sustaining the promise.
In it together,
Dr. Trevor Ivey, NBCT
Co-Founder, Liberty STEAM Charter School
President & CEO, Liberty STEAM Charter School Foundation
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