The second-oldest KIPP area in the country, KIPP Gaston, is a public charter school that opened in 2001 with 80 students. It has grown into KIPP North Carolina, a statewide network of schools that serve about 3,000 students in 2024–25.
The “Knowledge is Power Program,” or KIPP, is meant to help students do well in school and in life. It is based on the real-life situations and experiences of the students and their families.
Since our start in 2015, EdNC has been following KIPP’s own journey of self-determination and writing about its position in North Carolina.
KIPP North Carolina is one of 278 K–12 schools across the country that work together to serve 125,000 students.
Tim Saintsing is in charge of running KIPP North Carolina. He began in July 2020, when COVID-19 was very bad.
Saintsing had worked as a public school teacher in New York, but he was not new to North Carolina. As part of his senior thesis at Davidson College, he looked at information about people on North Carolina’s death row. This information has “guided him since.”
He got his master’s degree in public policy from Duke University and then worked in NYC Public Schools, started a charter school, and was in charge of the Relay Graduate School of Education.
A blueprint for school turnaround
Due to problems with school leadership turnover, fluctuating enrollment, and persistently low performance, Saintsing hired David Tell from Texas to “re-found” KIPP Durham College Prep Middle. This included hiring a new group of teachers and having their salaries boosted by the national KIPP Foundation.
The website says that this partnership “will be a ‘first of its kind’ blueprint for other turnaround efforts across all of KIPP.”
The new team of 18 teachers makes between $69,000 and $100,000 a year, but the website says that this is “commensurate with the difficult work at hand: delivering exceptional Tier 1 lessons daily, creating individualized learning plans for every student in their care, deeply internalizing lessons with colleagues until 5:00 PM daily, building lasting relationships with students and their families, running Saturday school (some weekends), hosting summer school (some weeks of each summer), and engaging in the transformative work of school turnaround.”
Where Zearn is a verb
The word “Zearn” is used as a verb in KIPP North Carolina grade schools. There is a sign on the board that says “I Zearned it.”
She co-founded and runs Zearn, a charity and math platform. Sharma is the author of “Math Mind: The Simple Path To Loving Math.” This is all the study that shows why it works.
In the United States, one in four elementary school kids now use Zearn to learn math. States like Colorado, Ohio, Texas, Virginia, and Louisiana are also starting to use it.
Saintsing chose Zearn as the math program for KIPP North Carolina’s elementary school children.
“Learning it’s not a race,” the teacher tells her class. “Go slower.” Find out what the lessons are all about.
Building its own educator prep program
KIPP North Carolina was made an educator prep program (EPP) by the N.C. State Board of Education in April 2024. This means that it can train and qualify teachers. . It was made after you did your own research through the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP).
To be an EPP, KIPP North Carolina is the first charter school or network of charter schools in North Carolina to get the green light.
St.sing thinks the EPP will start up before the 2025–2026 school year.
The pursuit of a more just world
Brooklyn Smith, who is in the fifth grade, was chosen to talk at the 2024 KIPP School Summit this summer in Orlando, FL.
Smith starts her speech by asking everyone to say the word kujichagulia with her.
As Kujichagulia says, it is “one’s right and duty to define, name, make, and speak for oneself.”
In her speech about her time at KIPP North Carolina, Smith says, “I learned new ways to express myself, help my community, and grow my brain.”
She tells them, “Every day you will teach students like me, and you have the chance to make your communities better and stronger.”
Smith talks about freedom of choice and “KIPPers like me making the world more fair.”
That same spirit can be seen in the peanut field where KIPP Gaston began, in Saintsing’s journey since college, in the constant changes and improvements to turnaround, math, and teacher prep, and in how KIPP North Carolina has grown over the years.