KIPP in Touch

On June 6, KIPP DC Elementary students showcased their spelling prowess at the inaugural KIPP DC Regional Spelling Bee, held at KIPP DC College Preparatory. The event brought together bright young spellers from across our campuses, celebrating their dedication and hard work. It was a day filled with excitement, determination, and school spirit as students competed for top honors. Congratulations to all participants for their impressive performances and a special thank you to the organizers, judges, and supporters who made this event a resounding success.

We look forward to making the Spelling Bee an annual tradition!

Executive Team Updates

As we look ahead to the 2024-25 school year, we wanted to share a few important updates about our executive leadership and structure of some of our teams.

Academic Team

As part of an effort to further build out our academic infrastructure and instructional support of schools, we will be adding a new superintendent role starting in the 2024-25 school year.

The superintendent will be the leader of our academic strategy and work across functional teams to ensure that all of our systems work in a focused way to support our schools. As KIPP DC focuses more on academic quality, consistency, and sustainability, it is more important than ever that school perspectives and voice are at the center of the systems, policies, processes, and plans across the network.

The new superintendent role will be posted by the start of next week to launch the search for this role. Please feel free to share the link or send any referrals to director of school leader and executive recruiting Clare McGuire.

Community Engagement Team

As KIPP DC moves out of a 15-year trajectory of rapid growth and network expansion, the needs and focus of our community engagement work have evolved. As we look to the future, our efforts need to be focused more on embedding and institutionalizing family engagement and student experience in our schools, leveraging partner organizations like the DC Charter School Alliance and PAVE (Parents Amplifying Voices in Education) to advance our policy interests in a changing political landscape, and deepening our relationships with city leaders and government agencies.

To adapt for this shift in strategy, we will be making some structural changes within our community engagement function, including adding a new role focused on community outreach and partnerships, shifting family engagement to the equity & inclusion team, and shifting athletics to the operations team.

Advancement Team

After a decade at KIPP DC, chief strategy & advancement officer Tom Clark will transition out of the organization in the next year to explore new opportunities. During his tenure, Tom has led KIPP DC’s development efforts raising more than $120 million in philanthropy and grants, activated a network of investors and partners to support our students and alumni, helped our network double in size by funding new campuses and recruiting new students, and remained a constant as we navigated organizational change and unprecedented challenges.

We’ll work with the advancement leaders to develop a plan in the coming months and we will launch a search for a new chief advancement officer in mid-July.