The story of LEAD Academy is really the story of a dream—the dream that all students graduate from high school prepared to attend college or enter the work-world. The idea for starting a charter school to reach that dream grew out of Jeremy Kane’s, LEAD Academy’s Founder and School Director, commitment to the youth of Nashville and his belief that every student has the potential to graduate from high school and be accepted to a 4-year college/university. Seeing the effects the low graduation rates were having on the community first-hand, Jeremy decided to start LEAD Academy, a charter school dedicated to changing the expectations of students more familiar with failure than college matriculation.
Building on his experience with several successful charter start-ups, Jeremy spent more than two years visiting and researching high-performing public, private, and charter schools around the country.
Earlier this year, he began recruiting a core group of supporters, board members, and advisors to implement the LEAD Academy strategic plan, beginning with planning the school’s goals and objectives, conducting neighborhood information sessions and focus groups, meeting with political and educational leaders in the Nashville community to build support for the school, visiting exemplary public and private schools across the city and country to research best practices, and building the partnerships that form the keystone of the LEAD Academy model.
Taking the best attributes and characteristics of the models studied, the team developed a model that lays out a clear path for changing the expectations of students more familiar with failure than college matriculation. This does not happen overnight and there are no shortcuts to reach our goal, which is the reason why LEAD Academy is starting small and expanding slowly.
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