04 Aug Kansas City Girls Preparatory Academy (Girls Prep) Receives $1,000,000 Grant from SchoolSmartKC

Kansas City Girls Preparatory Academy (Girls Prep) was recently awarded a $1,000,000 grant from SchoolSmartKC to build capacity for standards-aligned, research-based instruction in its leaders and teachers.

Girls Prep will use grant funds to support three key goals. First, Girls Prep will adopt research-based, Common Core State Standards (CCSS)-aligned curricula. Second, Girls Prep will use those curricula to develop aligned CK and PCK in all staff. Finally, staff will use their curriculum and developmental experiences to increase high-need students’ achievement in terms of growth and proficiency, thus addressing the achievement gap for students within KCPS boundaries.

Girls Prep addresses a community need for more opportunities for young women in neighborhoods that have been negatively impacted by historical de jure segregation and contemporary de facto segregation. Girls Prep will serve young women living in the Kansas City Public Schools district boundaries, with a geographic preference for students from zip codes with the largest gap between demand for and supply of quality schools.  Girls Prep will establish a school community that prepares students not just for academic and career success, but also ensures that young women from under-served communities develop the knowledge, skills, and agency to define for themselves what a meaningful, impactful life will be, and to act in service of the values and equity-focused critical lens that they’ve developed within their school community.

Girls Prep will be the first single-gender, open-enrollment charter public school in Kansas City. It will enroll 100 fifth grade girls beginning in Fall 2019 and grow one grade per year to form a 5th – 8th grade middle school and a 9th – 12th grade high school. Girls Prep is committed to designing and implementing innovative curricula and strategies to provide low-income girls, and especially girls of color, with an excellent college preparatory education.