Katie Walker works on her last high school assignment, a five-page history paper, in a quiet room in the Kemmerer Alternative School over lunch. GAZETTE PHOTO/Sara Millhouse

Four days before she graduated high school, Katie Walker still had about half a five-page paper to write at the Kemmerer Alternative School.

After she finished school that Thursday, she worked a five-hour shift. On the weekend, she waitressed. She cares for her son, Tucker Erickson. And she’s studying to take the ACT test.

Last week she only had a few pages left, but her path to graduation has been a long one with a couple detours. She was supposed to graduate in 2007. But she “got in some trouble” and dropped out of Kemmerer High School.

She went back once, but then she got pregnant. She dropped out again.

Two days before the start of the fall semester, she went to Kemmerer Alternative School. “I started to think,” she said. “I wanted to move. I couldn’t go anywhere without a high school diploma.”

Staff interviewed her to see if she would be a good candidate for the school, which enrolls up to 15 students. “They asked me what I could bring to the school,” Katie said. “I said, ‘I’m an adult now. I can help the younger teens.’”

Now with a son who will be 2 in April, Walker is an adult with far more “real world” responsibilities than most high schoolers. Sometimes she finds herself arguing the “parents’ side” in arguments with her peers.

For an independent student like Walker, the Alternative School proved a better fit than a traditional high school. “They let you mainly rely on you,” she said.

Not all the students at the Alternative School are as independent as she is, though. In fact, many end up there because they need more attention. “A lot of students here aren’t comfortable at the high school,” Walker said. “It’s too big, or they’re judgmental. Some of the kids here are ‘hooligans,’ but they’re still students that need to be taken care of.”

She argues passionately for the small school, which has the equivalent of one full-time teacher per seven students. “They can get the attention they need, and the one-on-one contact they need,” Walker said. “A lot of the students are doing better than at the high school.”

Walker’s favorite class was English, she said, and she’s proud of their government class’s participation in the “We the People” competition this December. “We did better than the high school,” she bragged.

The Alternative School expects to graduate 17 kids total in the 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 school years, more than the 13 students the school graduated in its first four years of instruction.

The school is one of the last alternative schools funded by the Wyoming Department of Education, said Lincoln County School District #1 superintendent Teresa Chaulk. It’s “fully funded” at about $190,000 a year, she said.

It occupies a building that served as teacher housing during the boom years and is owned by Lincoln County School District #1.

Chaulk worked on the proposal for the school and served as its first principal. She calls her time as principal there was a “high point” in her career. Secretary Mary Failoni, who started with the school, still works there.

“Because of the building it’s in and the size, it’s like a close-knit family,” Chaulk said. “When one person’s having a bad day, we all feel it, but when something exciting happens, we all feel that, too.”

She said that, though aspects of their education are more flexible, the school has the same graduation requirements as Kemmerer High School. “I loved being principal of the Alternative School,” Chaulk said. “It’s our job to meet the kids wherever they’re at and get them where they need to be.”

Scott Wiblemo has been principal at the school since the fall of 2008, “When you have small numbers, the teachers get a lot more work out of them,” he said of students. “Some of the kids really need that.”

As for Walker, she’s already started the next phase of her education last week, a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) class. “I was nervous,” she said of her first day of class. But now she has her CPR certification.

She thought of other paths, like banking or beauty school, but nursing was a no-brainer. “I like taking care of people before I take care of myself,” she said.

Walker has been accepted to Central Wyoming College to start their nursing program in the fall. She’ll move to Riverton at the end of summer.

Her last paper was on changes in music from the 1970s to today. She graduated Monday morning.