LYNN — Rhonda “Nikki” Barnes would have preferred better circumstances than an international pandemic for her debut as executive director of KIPP-Massachusetts.
“It wouldn’t have been what I’d have chosen,” said Barnes, who advanced to the position at the Lynn charter school after Caleb Dolan stepped down over the summer. “But one of the things I’ve done in KIPP-MA is take on challenging situations and bring everyone together.
“So,” she said, “we can weather this storm together.”
Barnes will direct KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) academies on three Boston-area campuses — two in Lynn and one in Mattapan. And while one pandemic is still very much in the news, the other one causes her concern as well.
“We have two pandemics, actually,” she said. “One is COVID, obviously. The other is the renewal in our talk of racism and anti-racism in the country. I want to take our school through both of them.”
Each is daunting, she said.
Barnes said as far as COVID is concerned, “this is a year of renewal, not recovery. There won’t be a recovery unless and until there’s a vaccine. So we have to put safety first.”
Like all the other Lynn public schools, KIPP is operating remotely at this stage of the academic year. But she says the advantage KIPP and other schools have now, as opposed to last March, is that they’ve had a summer to plan for learning via computer.
“What’s unique about our approach, after having a summer to plan for it, is that we’re walking hand-in-hand with parents to co-author the children’s education,” she said. “Historically, parents work, they drop their kids off at school, and we do seemingly magical things there.
“Now kids are learning at home,” she said. “Parents are virtual teachers. The schedules we’ve put in place are parent-friendly. We have parents who have a lot of input and say in how we do things. We’ve had time to plan. We’re now one-on-one with laptops whereas in the spring, we were only able to provide one laptop per family.”
Also, she said, KIPP has provided space for families to come together and support each other.
“And,” she said, “we are running family universities. In the spring, our parents were blown away with Google classrooms. This year, we teach families how to access the system, how to set up learning centers at home. We’ve had these Zoom sessions every week, with lots of parents participating. That’s something we didn’t have before, when everything was in crisis mode.”
Of course, the remote environment takes away from Barnes’ overarching vision for the school. It’s not easy reflecting the joy she’s after in a Zoom session.
“We’ve updated our vision,” she said. “What KIPP was mainly known for was student rules, college prep and long days.”
Gone, she said, is the stridency.
“We want to create joyful and academically excellent schools,” she said. “Most of all, though, joyful. Years ago, our kids would enter the building silently. No longer. I asked why we needed to ‘control’ black and brown bodies. When you have joy in your space, you can learn better. Children are able to be children.
“In addition,” she said, “our goal is to ensure that we prepare children with the confidence to pursue the path they choose.”
That last part is important, she said.
“It might be college, but it might not,” she said. “Our goal is to prepare students with options so they can choose. Maybe it’s college, maybe it isn’t, maybe it’s the military. But whatever it is, we want to prepare them for it.”
And Barnes wants to make sure the students aren’t alone in making these decisions.
“We have students who might say, ‘College is impossible for me.’ We have counselors to help them find the right match. Is it something financial? Does it make sense in terms of who you are? Small campus? Large campus?”
Finally, whatever they choose to do, they need to know they have a family behind them, Barnes said.
“We changed our mission to start with three words: Together With Family,” she said.
Prior to becoming executive director, Barnes was the chief schools officer from January through July. She started as principal of KIPP’s Mattapan campus and then started managing the KIPP principals.
“It’s been kind of a whirlwind year for me, but this is my life’s work,” said Barnes, who started at KIPP as a sixth-grade teacher.
Barnes uses the word “audacious” to describe KIPP’s goals, which means she — and the school — are willing to take bold risks. And, she follows that philosophy.
“I’m proud of where we’ve been,” she said, “But I have to say we have not arrived yet.”
