Alumni Gazette

‘Not Your Old School’

Marc Mannella ’98 found himself at midnight one July evening sitting with a student in his school office. The principal of a Philadelphia charter school, Mannella had vowed to help the student finish every one of the 100 or so letters of apology that he owed for violating school rules.

The student’s mother brought him a dinner. Mannella ordered in his own dinner. By early morning, the student’s atonement was complete.

The lesson in personal commitment is a small example of the ways that Mannella hopes to help students at the KIPP Philadelphia Charter School find success. He’s been joined in the effort by two other Rochester alumni, Leila Henderson Gary ’98, and Rodney Morrison ’91, ’92W (MS), in leading a rigorous, college-preparatory program that offers new educational opportunities to students in troubled north Philadelphia.

Mannella, whose wife is a neurosurgeon, says, “I’m the slacker in our relationship. I only work 100-hour weeks.”

Located in a former warehouse, the school opened its doors in 2003 with an enrollment limited to fifth-graders and plans to eventually enroll students through the eighth grade.

Like other programs affiliated with the national nonprofit organization KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program), the Philadelphia school operates independently, but shares the common philosophy that through hard work, children from all backgrounds can succeed.

“They have to be perfect,” Mannella says. “Everyone in the outside world is going to expect them to fail.”

Guided by an emphasis on high achievement, responsibility, and results —part of KIPP’s “five pillars” of academic success—the school runs from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Mondays to Thursdays, 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Fridays, two Saturdays a month, and one month in summer.

Teachers carry cell phones and encourage students to call them for homework help. Students, parents, and teachers all sign a contract detailing their commitment to KIPP’s guidelines.

The program’s goal is something most of the students never dreamed of attaining: a college education. Some enter the middle school on a first-grade reading level.

Students quickly learn that at KIPP, “This is not your old school,” and that expectations for them are high.
Seventh-grader Markesha Burnett discovered that when she first arrived from a public school.

“I was bad,” she says. “I would react. Here, I learn more. They teach you respect and discipline. In my old school, we didn’t get any homework. Here we get two hours of homework every night.”

Though her friends at other schools call her crazy, Markesha says she loves KIPP.

“We have the best teachers in probably the universe,” says her classmate Anissa Steele.

Mannella, who majored in biology and psychology at Rochester, thought during college that he was headed to medical school. But his path changed during his Take Five year, a Rochester program that allows students to explore fields outside their major for a fifth, tuition-free year. Mannella called his program “Methods of Bringing About Change in Modern Society.”

From there, he joined Teach for America in Baltimore, then spent two years teaching science in a Philadelphia charter school. Mannella was accepted into a doctorate program in educational policy at the University of Pennsylvania, but he hesitated.

“I didn’t know that I wanted to step into an ivory tower and look down and criticize everyone else,” he says.

Along the way, he had met Mike Feinberg, cofounder of the original KIPP academy in Houston. Mannella was tapped to become a school leader and earned a fellowship to train for the job and to get a master’s degree in educational leadership.

While Gary didn’t know Mannella at Rochester, she also found herself straying from her original path. A history major who thought she was prelaw, she had never been interested in teaching but volunteered to tutor underprivileged children from Rochester’s 19th Ward.

“I got really angry that there were children in Rochester that were not being taught to read,” she said. “There were first-graders not knowing the alphabet, not knowing how to write their own names.”

After graduating, Gary earned a master’s degree in curriculum design at the University of Texas at Austin and taught in an Austin school. When she moved to Philadelphia, Gary heard about KIPP and found her fellow alumni on the school’s Web site. She’s now the director of outreach, in charge of recruiting, grant writing, and placing the students in high school.

Morrison, who works for a foundation that helps disadvantaged high-schoolers navigate the business world, serves on KIPP’s board. The former member of the 1990 championship basketball team majored in history as an undergraduate and went on to get a master’s degree at the Warner School. Before joining KIPP, Morrison worked in admissions at Rochester and the University of Pennsylvania.

“It was very rare to be able to accept a student from the city of Philadelphia,” he says. “They were just not prepared. To me, this school is part of the solution.”

—Cecilia Le ’02

Le covers education for the Wilmington, Delaware, News Journal.