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Transplanted Yankee Scott Shirey is committed to raising academic standards in Helena-West Helena by ‘working hard and being nice.’

HELENA-WEST HELENA — When Scott Shirey arrived in Helena in January 2002, he knew time mattered. He was there to open the first KIPP charter school in Arkansas, and he had just six months in which to do it. Six months to hire teachers, enroll pupils, renovate a building and start his own new life in the Mississippi Delta.

Shirey grew up in Holden, Mass., and was educated at a small liberal arts college in Maine. The cotton fields and poverty of the Delta were nothing like his New England upbringing.

KIPP stands for Knowledge Is Power Program, a free, open-enrollment charter school system tracing its origins to inner-city Houston in 1994. The nation’s 109 KIPP schools are established in areas where organizers think children are underserved in their existing educational system. “Kippsters,” as the students are called, abide by two rules: Work hard and be nice. Respect for the teacher and for one another is fundamental at every KIPP school. Determination to succeed and go to college is instilled in the students as soon as they hit the door. In fact, “Next Stop: College” is painted on the back of each KIPP Delta school bus.

Armed in 1998 with a bachelor’s degree in history from Colby College, Shirey joined Teach for America, a national organization that places new college graduates in public schools across the country, requiring of them a two-year commitment. He chose Louisiana and was assigned to a middle school in Baton Rouge. There he taught reading, social studies and music appreciation. When his tour of duty with Teach for America ended, Shirey enrolled in KIPP’s leadership program at the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley.

In the fall of 2001, two administrators of the Arkansas Department of Education, Janinne Riggs, assistant director of school improvement, and Randall Greenway, program administrator, attended an education seminar at UC-Berkeley. After hearing a presentation by KIPP leaders, Riggs and Greenway told them that if they ever wanted to open a school in Arkansas, just to let them know. KIPP was interested, and after considering several locations in the Delta, they settled on Helena. (Helena and West Helena consolidated on Jan. 1, 2006, and merged their school districts.)

RIGHT TIME, RIGHT PLACE

Shirey, who by then had been certified to open and oversee a KIPP school, went to Helena to gauge the degree of community support he and a new school could expect.

Cathy Cunningham, a community leader, was immediately impressed by him. “We drove around looking at possible locations for the school, and I introduced him to everyone in town,” Cunningham said. “I think he liked what he saw, and we were able to lease the old freight depot in downtown from the city for a dollar a year.”

So, full of youth, energy and missionary zeal, Shirey arrived in Helena.

How to get the word out about the new school and sign up pupils? He relied, memorably, on shoe leather. He became a familiar sight roaming residential blocks.

“Yeah, I was pretty conspicuous,” he remembers. “Here I was, a tall white guy walking up and down the streets, knocking on doors, asking if there were any fifth-graders who might be interested in coming to a new school. If a parent invited me inside, I’d sit down and explain that KIPP was a free school just like the public school, but offered a different way of teaching, and the kids would learn better.”

Word got around quickly. When kids would see Shirey, “they’d come up, asking for an application.”

Nancy Banks’ daughter Danielle Ferguson was one of the fifth-graders who signed on.

“One day, Mr. Shirey just showed up at my door,” Banks recalls. “We talked about the new school and he was so excited. We signed up Danielle right away.”

Danielle spent the next eight years at KIPP, graduating in 2010 in the first class of seniors. She is a sophomore at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway.

“A book was assigned in her English class [at UCA] early on and her professor was very surprised to learn that she had already read it,” Banks said. “She aced that class.”

Banks’ son Jermaine Burchett graduated from KIPP this spring. Although he received a letter of acceptance to college, he chose to join the military. Shirey was disappointed but accepted his decision.

“Our mission is to prepare each student for college. If they choose not to go, we have still equipped them with the knowledge and skills to succeed. My feeling about Jermaine is ‘mission accomplished,’” Shirey says.

With those two successes, Banks is optimistic for her four children still at home. At 16, 14, 9 and 7, all are enrolled at KIPP.

“KIPP really makes a difference. Mr. Shirey and the teachers are awesome and so dedicated and so supportive,” she says.

PIVOTAL FIFTH GRADE

When KIPP opens a new school, it starts with a fifthgrade class and adds a higher grade each successive year. KIPP’s founders, Dave Levin and Mike Feinberg, were fifthgrade teachers with Teach for America in an inner-city school in Houston. Frustrated, they watched their students lose their way in middle school.

“Research has shown the tumultuous nature of those middle-school years,” Shirey says. “Starting in fifth grade enables us to get a head start on the hormones and hopefully provide enough structure to enable students to be successful as they transition from children to teenagers.”

Nationally, KIPP’s 109 schools are in 20 states and Washington, serving more than 32,000 students. At KIPP Delta, three schools with an enrollment of 744 draw students from Helena-West Helena, Marianna, Elaine, Forrest City and Marvell. Ninety-five percent of the students are black, 3 percent are white, and 2 percent are Hispanic.

KIPP Elementary Literacy Academy serves kindergarten through third grade. Fourth grade will be added next school year. The College Preparatory School serves grades 5 through 8. And the Collegiate program serves grades 9 through 12.

Although charter schools are free, open-enrollment public schools, they are bound by different rules and regulations from those of traditional public schools. Charter schools enjoy a certain amount of autonomy and aren’t obligated to maintain the bureaucracy required in other public schools. Proponents say this allows the teachers to focus on teaching and establishing high academic standards for their students. If a charter school does not deliver on what it promises, it can be closed by the state education board.

Charter schools receive money from their state government based on the number of students attending the school, but they do not receive millage or funds for facilities. Significantly, charter schools like KIPP are at liberty to hire teachers who have not been certified by the state.

“I’d rather have a bright, energetic, well-educated teacher with a biology degree who knows a lot about the subject than someone with an education degree who has a general knowledge of biology. We can teach the teachers how to teach, and we try different methods,” Shirey says.

Maisie Wright is a good example.

“Maisie came to Helena as a first-year Teach for America [math] teacher. Three years later, [her students] had some of the highest math scores in the state,” Shirey says. “She is a great example of what can happen when bright, young TFA teachers are put into the right environment with the right support.”

Last year, Wright moved to Blytheville to open the KIPP Blytheville College Preparatory School. Following the KIPP tradition, it opened with a fifth-grade class. Last month, those pupils moved into sixth grade and a new class of fifthgraders took their place. KIPP Blytheville has 125 pupils enrolled in the two classes.

Shirey says 80 percent of his instructional staff (teachers, assistant school leaders, and school leaders) are current Teach for America members or alumni of the organization. The starting annual salary at KIPP Delta is $36,190.

Unlike Teach for America, which requires a two-year commitment, KIPP believes in an at-will agreement of employment.

“It is quite rare that a teacher only stays one year for us,” Shirey says. “We have some staff [who] have been with us since our early days in 2002 — such as Betty Sanders.” Sanders spent a number of years as a middle-school English teacher in Marianna and is celebrating 42 years of teaching.

LIFE CHANGES

Not only did Shirey find a great career challenge in the Delta, he also fell in love with his future wife.

Angela Frierson grew up in Helena and graduated from Helena Central High School in 1999. She received a degree from Tennessee State University, a historically black college in Nashville, and a master of business administration degree from Arkansas State University. She and her daughter, Kennedy, moved back to Helena, where she became a loan officer with Bancorp South.

In 2005 she was a community volunteer, mentoring young girls at KIPP, when she met Scott Shirey.

“He absolutely loves kids. That really drew me to him. The KIPP kids and their parents are so important to him. It’s very personal with him. And the people who work for him notice it,” she says.

The couple married in 2007, and their daughter Olive was born last September. Angela has recently become regional director of development for Teach for America.

“The love of education that Scott has is contagious,” Angela says. With the opening of the second KIPP school in Blytheville, she anticipates that they will continue to live in Arkansas, and Scott may eventually open more schools in the Delta.

According to Cunningham, Shirey and KIPP have had a very positive impact on Helena-West Helena. “Having an educational choice for families resonates with the community,” she says. She remembers, though, how frustrated Shirey was in the beginning. “He was very impatient. He wanted everything to be at the level it is now. He had to wait until everything was on track, and that took a while.”

Shirey admits that all did not go smoothly at first. Like the school buses.

“I bought the buses and had ‘Kipp Delta College Preparatory School’ painted on them. They had been on the road for a couple of days when I realized that ‘Preparatory’ was misspelled.”

KIPP outgrew the old freight depot where the first fifth-grade class began in 2002, so he bought an empty building across the street. The high school opened in 2008 in temporary buildings joined by covered walkways. Today, the combined KIPP schools occupy several city blocks downtown.

“Scott has also brought a lot of young people, young teachers to Helena,” Cunningham says. “Their youth and enthusiasm has created a lot of vibrancy in downtown. Scott has established a high standard of what he expects of his teachers, and he sees everything as teamwork — team and family. He says, ‘It’s not rocket science’ — it just starts with discipline and respect.”

Shirey has recently arranged for KIPP to lease the historic Malco Theater from the city. KIPP will make necessary repairs to the building, pay the utilities and maintain it. It will be used by the school for presentations and events but will also be available for use by the community. He told the Helena-West Helena City Council that “we have transformed what used to be a desolate part of Cherry Street into a corner of accomplishment, that we hope will be reflected in the lights of the new and improved Malco Theater.”

ACCEPTANCE LETTERS

There are always special students in a class, and one standout is Domonique Bragg, who was the valedictorian of the first graduating class in 2010. Domonique was in the first fifth-grade class when KIPP opened in 2002. Shirey remembers a very smart, very driven pupil who had to overcome some family obstacles along the way.

Bragg attributes her success to two men in her life — her father, who has given her strong support all along the way, and Shirey. She says, “Mr. Shirey is like a second daddy to me. He’s been my mentor and supporter. He has really pushed me to try new things.”

Bragg is a sophomore at Vanderbilt University, considering a double major in sociology and public policy and a minor in African American and Diaspora Studies. But whenever she returns to the Delta, she checks in with the man she calls “Mr. Shirey.”

“It’s sort of funny,” she says, “when he started KIPP, he was so young and I was young, and we’ve sort of grown up together and have gone through a lot together.”

Perhaps the greatest accomplishment for Shirey so far are the two classes of seniors that graduated in 2010 and in May. In the high school a huge bulletin board bears the names of the 27 members of the class of 2011. Below their names are copies of the letters of acceptance each student received from various colleges across the country. The colleges include the University of Arkansas institutions in Fayetteville, Little Rock, Pine Bluff and Monticello as well as Hendrix College, UCA and colleges in surrounding states. One letter from Johnson & Wales University, a culinary arts school, was received by a student who wants to become a pastry chef.

As the third class of seniors begins its final year at KIPP, Shirey confides that the attitude of each class has evolved. The class of 2010 was unique; they were the pioneer graduates, and all 23 students were accepted into college. In one of the poorest counties in the state, where 89 percent of the students are eligible for the free school lunch program, this was a major milestone.

“After watching the class of 2010 receive acceptance letters for college and graduate, the class of 2011 was much more driven and confident about their future. However, the class of 2012 is amazing. They are already gung-ho about college and they have all these college people on speed dial.”

SELF PORTRAIT

Scott Shirey

DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH June 6, 1976, Worcester, Mass.

MY FAVORITE THING ABOUT SCHOOL WHEN I WAS GROWING UP WAS I loved learning. I loved reading. I always wanted to be the best.

WHAT I LIKE MOST ABOUT HELENA-WEST HELENA IS Its potential.

THE BOOK THAT IS ON MY BEDSIDE Actually it’s in a Barnes & Noble Nook — Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor.

IF I RETURNED TO TEACHING I could teach any grade. I love fifth grade. But I am happy as a clam in a kindergarten classroom.

MY FAVORITE TIME OF DAY IS When school is over, going home to my wife and daughters.

SOMETHING FEW PEOPLE KNOW ABOUT ME IS That I love it when people defy expectations.

IF I COULD CHANGE ONE THING IT WOULD BE The fact that a high quality education is too often only provided for those who can afford it.

MY FANTASY DINNER PARTY WOULD INCLUDE Bruce Springsteen, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Andre Agassi and my wife, Angela.

AT THAT DINNER PARTY, I WOULD SERVE Grilled lobster — either from Maine or the Caribbean.

ONE WORD TO SUM ME UP Passionate.