Community

We work together for our students’ lifelong success.

Academic Excellence in Martindale-Brightwood

KIPP Indy is more than just a network of charter schools – we are a proud part of the Martindale-Brightwood community, forever dedicated to educating our neighborhood’s youth and setting them up for lifelong success. We believe that togetherness and belonging nurture academic excellence, so we go above and beyond to partner with the groups and organizations that share our values and make up the fiber of our community.

KIPP Indy and the Edna Martin Christian Center

KIPP Indy shares a long-standing partnership with the Edna Martin Christian Center (EMCC). The Center has been a cornerstone organization of the Martindale-Brightwood community for over 80 years, providing robust, intergenerational services that range from pre-school events to senior programs. We partner with EMCC and directly collaborate on solving the opportunities affecting our neighborhood. For instance, EMCC has used the KIPP Indy school building to provide all children in our neighborhood with summer programming and they directly support our students with before and after care during the school year, after-school tutoring, and mentoring middle school students.

Barato Britt, EMCC’s President and CEO, serves on KIPP Indy’s Board of Directors and provides strategic guidance to our network of schools. Our partnership deepened considerably in the spring of 2018 when we decided to collaborate on opening KIPP Indy’s first high school in Martindale-Brightwood. In 2015, EMCC acquired 13 acres of land at the intersection of 23rd and Ralston with the purpose of creating a youth hub for the neighborhood – which they did: the Leadership and Legacy Center hosts pre-k, youth, and senior activities. To bolster their vision, they entered a formal partnership with KIPP Indy that enabled us to acquire land adjacent to their center and create KIPP Indy Legacy High, the first high school built in the neighborhood in over two generations.

In the past two years, we have begun to deepen our collaboration with leadership and career trainings for our high school students and expanded our collaborative family engagement and social services supports. Furthermore, our two organizations are committed to advocating together for justice and promoting community in our neighborhood.

Community Council

KIPP Indy is committed to working with other neighborhood organizations to positively influence our community’s vitality. One structure we use to discuss areas of opportunity in the neighborhood is our community council, which is made up of leaders representing faith-based organizations, higher education institutions, city elected officials, and community-based groups.

The Community Council meets monthly to receive timely information about our schools, identify opportunities for partnership and collaboration, and create a network of support for the students and families of the Martindale-Brightwood community and surrounding neighborhoods.