Summer is over! Argh! Well, we really never take a break anyway so it isn’t that big of a deal. Our seven school network staff in Gary, Indianapolis and Baton Rouge continued serving 3200 students throughout the summer to help students catch up and accelerate their learning.
Our schools in Indiana opened August 2nd and our schools in Baton Rouge opened August 9th. We are expecting a record enrollment, too.
In addition to our schools opening, we are launching a new virtual and on-campus hybrid school to serve all students throughout Indiana. Our new school, GEO Focus Academy, combines the best of virtual with our on-college campus classes model for our high school students and will provide students the opportunity to attend college classes and earn real credits and degrees at Indiana’s colleges and universities–all costs covered by us.
We received an $8.35 million grant from the Indiana Department of Education to help accelerate learning for high school students, too. We are partnering with five schools to share our model and cover the costs of college tuition, textbooks, counselors, social workers and tutors.
We’ve doubled the number of high school students in each of our high schools in Gary, Indy and Baton Rouge qualified to take college classes, too. This is so exciting. I often get asked how so many of our students are taking real college classes and I have to ask, why aren’t more high school students elsewhere taking real college classes. That’s the real question.
We find when we empower students, they soar. Students can do so much more than high school these days and they should be empowered to do so.
In any case, it is nice to see that our efforts are getting attention of local and national media. This weekend, Gerry Dick, host of Inside Indiana Business, features our efforts. Check your local listings for times and channels for his show.
I’ll leave it at that. But I must say this is one of the most exciting times for GEO and for me personally. I love seeing all our students in our schools succeed and go off to college fully prepared for success. And, I love to see the number of additional students in our high schools qualify to start their college journey, too. This is fun!!!
Sincerely,
Kevin Teasley
Founder & President
GEO Foundation
