Trina Clark James pouted all the way to Clayton that morning in 1985 after losing the battle with her parents over where she’d enroll in high school. Her preference had been Sumner in her culturally rich but economically poor Ville neighborhood on St. Louis’ North Side. Her parents insisted, however, that she take the bus to Clayton High as part of the St. Louis Student Transfer Program.

Two engineering degrees and an MBA later, James giggles about the incident in a self-deprecating aside about her naivete. As a child of the ’80s, she could not immediately appreciate her parents’ advice or imagine the value of a resume that listed degrees from Clayton, Georgia Tech and Stanford. Those credentials first took her into the world of software engineering and later influenced her decision to help bring a highly regarded charter school, the Knowledge is Power Program — KIPP for short — to St. Louis.

BRINGING KIPP TO ST. LOUIS

If all goes as planned, KIPP St. Louis will open in summer 2009 with a fifth-grade class and will become the seed for a network of KIPP elementary, middle and high schools serving about 1,500 St. Louis children. Meanwhile, KIPP has selected a possible school leader, the equivalent of a principal, to run KIPP St. Louis, which is likely to be staffed by educators from Teach for America.

KIPP had said the school would not open next summer if the right leader wasn’t found. James says KIPP accepts only about 2 percent of those applying for its one-year school leadership fellowships.

“It takes a special type of educator to do this,” she says.

Bringing Kipp to STL

Provided

Trina Clark James  

James arrived at this nonprofit school venture through a roundabout route. Six years ago, when she was 30, she realized that she wasn’t satisfied with engineering. As she searched for an alternative career, she realized how rewarding she had felt over the years in mentoring and tutoring high school and college students. That thought reinforced her decision to seek an MBA with a concentration in nonprofit management.

“That was where I wanted to focus my energy,” she says. “I wanted to leave engineering and return to St. Louis and apply my organizational, managerial and analytical skills to education and make a better system for our children. I wanted them to have the kind of educational experience that I’d had at Clayton.”

That turned out to be easier said than done, but becoming a Broad Foundation resident in urban education between 2005 and 2007 put her on the path to her goal. Broad residents include lawyers, MBAs and others who are assigned to urban public and charter school systems with the aim of using best business practices to improve these schools. James was assigned to the St. Louis school system.

She took a Broad-sponsored trip to the original KIPP academy in Houston. There, she became a believer after witnessing KIPP’s “no shortcuts” philosophy of exposing children to a rigorous college-prep curriculum, requiring them to attend school from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays, every other Saturday and three weeks during the summer, and instilling a can-do culture of excellence in every child, from kindergarten up.

As soon as she reached a classroom, she noticed how the school reinforced the idea of making children think college from the time they walk in the door each day. At the threshold of each classroom, students see the name of the college or colleges that the teacher attended, along with a flag from each school.The building also includes the names of KIPP graduates and the names of the colleges that they attended after graduating from KIPP.

“I walked into an elementary school and saw kindergartners who already knew what college they wanted to attend,” she said. “It was exciting to see all these brown and black kids, Latinos and African Americans, engaged in learning that all children should expect. That made me see what was possible.”

MEETING GREG WENDT

So she returned to St. Louis “thinking I was bringing back this revolutionary idea” of working to open a KIPP academy, not realizing that KIPP had been in dialogue four or five years earlier with city school officials. Even so, she pulled together some people to help draft an application in the fall of 2006. It was rejected, but KIPP was impressed with the work she and others had done and pointed her to other people who might strengthen the application. One connection was Greg Wendt, a former St. Louisan who is a board member of Teach for America and senior vice president of Capital Research, an investment management firm based in California.

PARTNERSHIPS PAY OFF

Lots of efforts made this synergism possible. When the history of this movement is written, there is certain to be a mention of James’ unwavering commitment to keeping afloat the idea of bringing a KIPP to St. Louis and her work in mobilizing the community to make it happen. In the end, it happened in part because civic leaders and others helped to plant the seed with $500,000 in donations that will help fund a local KIPP resource center and search for a dynamic educator to lead KIPP St. Louis.

A successful small-business owner, Howard D. Denson, is accustomed to having people meet and bounce ideas off him. Some turn out to be pipedreams that go nowhere, but others turn out to have potential when the bouncer is determined to see the idea through. He said James’ pursuit of a big name charter school fell into the latter category because she devoted her free time – “everything other than sleep and work” – to that dream.

“I met her two years ago,” recalls Denson, CEO of the St. Louis Black Pages Inc., “and I was really impressed first of all that somebody with pretty impressive credentials would move away from a successful career and pursue this venture. Second, I was impressed with the unselfishness with which she pursued it, how she never waivered in her push to help bring KIPP to St. Louis.”

Denson admits being surprised when KIPP, in effect, said “no but yes” to James’ initial effort and introduced her to Wendt, the Teach for America board member.

“Not only was this a strictly voluntary endeavor on her part, it was something she was trying to do in her spare time,” Denson said. “It impressed me that she was determined to make it happen, and I think if KIPP had said 'no' again, she would probably would have kept trying. That’s the kind of young person she is.”

TIME TO GIVE BACK

While singing the praises of KIPP, James does not believe that charter schools will or can replace traditional public schools. She thinks city children deserve access to many educational options, including good public schools.

In many ways, James is typical of talented young blacks who flee St. Louis rather than settle here. Quiet as she keeps it, James hardly saw herself as returning to the city when she headed for Georgia Tech after graduating from Clayton High.

“The racial tension, the racial divide that I saw here as a child and a young adult had made me bitter about St. Louis,” she says. “So I couldn’t wait to leave … Each time I returned to visit my family, I left more disgusted than before, just thinking about the despair I’d see just driving through my old neighborhood.”

Then, in the late '90s, she says, she began to see signs of redevelopment in pockets of the north side. The revival has yet to catch fire, but what she has seen has given James hope of what’s possible.

“I decided that we can’t all just give up on the city and leave. We need to return to help make this city the way we talk about it should be in relation to places like Atlanta. That’s what brought me back.”

Now KIPP has given her an added reason to stay.