KIPP celebrates past, looks to future

LYNN – Despite being named one of 40 people under 40 to watch by the Boston Business Journal, Caleb Dolan, executive director of KIPP Academy Massachusetts, isn’t wearing a sash.He is wearing a grin, though, because the honor falls on the school’s 10th anniversary in Lynn.”We have 850 kids. This is our first year of full enrollment,” he said, standing in the lobby of 90 High Rock. “We will have our first graduating class this year.”In 2004 a little startup charter school raised hackles among traditional educators when it opened in a module classroom and the basement of Holy Family on Bessom Street. It used a lottery system to determine enrollment and was aimed only at middle schoolers.In 2012 it put down firm roots when it built a school of its own design in the Highlands.”We thought we had so much room then,” Dolan said. “Now we’re filled.”As students aged out of the system, Dolan said they realized they didn’t want to let them go, so they went to work to add a high school. Each subsequent year the school expanded to include the next highest grade. In June it will graduate the very first class of students who have attended KIPP from fifth grade through their senior year.It’s what Dolan calls “the new normal.”That is a catchphrase he uses often. He points to colored pages taped along the top of the cafeteria windows. Each one lists a summer program a Kippster took part in. Later in the year the pages will be swapped out for college acceptance announcements.”So for fifth-graders, the idea of college becomes the new normal,” he said.As middle school students move through the hallway in straight lines, quiet and subdued, the high schoolers are a little more raucous and relaxed.”They’re getting ready for college campuses,” Dolan said. “They get a little more freedom.”Prior to opening the high school, KIPP had a 30 percent to 40 percent college graduation rate. Dolan said they know that because they continue to track students even after they leave the school – it’s a promise they make when students enroll in the school.”It’s a promise we make to families, that if we do our job, we are with your child until they graduate from college,” Dolan said.They keep in touch by offering incentives like pizza parties when the kids are home for holidays. They try to pick up on who’s struggling, whether it’s financially, academically or socially and offer support.Dolan said he expects the graduation rate to jump to 50 percent and climb now that KIPP is graduating seniors.Ultimately, he said, he hopes that some of those kids will come back and teach and take over his job.”Of course we don’t expect them all to become teachers,” he said with a laugh.KIPP is also lucky in that it has a national network of support. When Dolan started with KIPP, there were three schools.”Now there are 162 and over 50,000 kids across the country,” he said. “By 2020 we’ll have over 40,000 alumni. It’s proof you can scale good schools … and we’re not slowing down.”KIPP is not slowing down locally, either. It offers night school for free for adults, any adults, “they don’t have to have kids in the school,” Dolan said.And in the next 10 years, Dolan said the organization’s top priority is opening an elementary school, kindergarten through fourth grade, that would feed into the middle/high school. Although they have no location mapped out and still need approval from the state for the expansion the plan is moving forward.”We filed for 120 students per grade ? that’s about 600 kids,” Dolan said.Other plans include possibly establishing a teaching fellowship program in which lead teachers would mentor teachers-in-training and empower students and their families. Dolan said one way to empower families to help them negotiate the college process is to support the kids when they get to college and to stick with the kids through the entire process.”We’ll have our first senior class, and we’re really excited to celebrate all year,” he said. “They’ll face rejection ? it’s part of