One City Signs Its Secondary School Charter with UW Systems: Rough, Rewarding Journey

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Above: Kaleem Caire signs One City’s secondary school charter with UW Systems Interim President Tommy Thompson and others look on.

Part 1 of 2

By Jonathan Gramling

It was like a dream come true for Kaleem Caire on February 23rd when UW Systems Interim President Tommy Thompson, came to One City to sign the contract that would allow One City Preparatory Academy to become a reality. What was once a dream over 12 years ago would now eventually serve of 900 students at One City’s Fisher Street and Broadway facilities, teaching students from two-years-old through 12th grade and beyond.

In order to bring his vision to fruition, Caire had to undergo a gauntlet of institutional pushback, skepticism and severe capital limitations in order to bring One City to where it is today. Caire began to implement his vision when he returned to Madison in 2010 to become the Urban League of Greater Madison’s CEO.

“One of the things was we were going to address is the issue of education and I was going to look at starting a charter school,” Caire said. “There was some conversation about that, but I don’t think they understood what it meant. When I was hired, that was one of the first things I did. I called the school district and said, ‘Hey it’s me Kaleem Caire. I’m back in town. I would love to meet the superintendent.’ That was the first place I started. And we also worked on workforce development. t was there that I then requested data in June from them.

It was a nine-page data request. It took them a couple of months to give me the data, which was a little surprising that it would take that long because I was used to push a button at that point. There was a lot of data that I requested they had never looked at. And then they couldn’t give me any of the evaluation data, assessments of all of the things that they had done. I just said over the last 20 years. What are your evaluations of the programs that you have invested to move children and the achievement gap forward? Could you share those with me? They didn’t get back to me until January and said they didn’t have anything, that they had never evaluated any of their programs. They would invest millions and millions of dollars, but never evaluated the impact whatsoever.”

Caire’s research confirmed that nothing much, if anything, had changed in terms of the achievement gap over the past 20 plus years.

“When I found out that 45 percent of all Black boys in middle school are in special education, that sent me over the roof although all of it was bad,” Caire said. “Then I called up and said, ‘We have to do something. I’ve got a plan. What do you think?’ I sat down with Dan Nerad and he said, ‘Ah, I don’t think we can go with that. The union will never go for this, that and the other.’ I said, ‘Alright.’ I came back and I was figuring out what to do.”

Caire decided to work towards creating a charter school in spite of the perceived and real obstacles. After some initial organizing, Caire announced that they would go before the MMSD school board and propose the creation of Madison Prep. The teachers union was one of the biggest roadblocks Caire faced.

“When I met with John Matthews, the head of MTI, I said, ‘John, just don’t block it,’” Caire recalled. “’Just let us go.’ And he didn’t know what to do. He said, ‘We’re not into these private charters.’ I said, ‘I said there’s no such thing as a private charter school. They’re all public.’ He pretty much left me alone until ACT 10. When Walker did that with the legislature in the dark of the night, that day, the union was unreasonable with me and everyone else. They closed ranks. Everyone became unified around that. Even people who were disunified within the union became unified. They had a singular enemy. And so we got caught up in that. And it became an ‘us versus them’ thing. And we lost 5-2. I was in bad physical shape. I still haven’t lost all the weight to this day that I put on as a result of that.”

Caire left the Urban League and while he was tempted to pursue some opportunities outside of Madison, he and his wife Lisa decided to stay put in Madison for the sake of their children. An opportunity arose to transform Child Development, Inc. on Fisher Street and so as Caire said good-bye to the Urban League, he took a short walk to CDI where One City would find its genesis. But just as Caire was getting started, tragedy struck.

“And then a week later my son Jabari was almost killed,” Caire said. “I was walking out of the building talking to Greg Doby. He was working at the Boys & Girls Club. And I got the call from my son Sekani about my son being attacked. I went over to this place off of Verona Road. It was an apartment complex. And I was shocked to see my son laying on the couch looking like the Elephant Man with blood all over his face. He looked terrible. The medics came to take him to the hospital. It was ridiculous. I was going through all of that. That put me in a state of suspension. I just was working on this school and sitting at home with him. We were all worried. He literally had to sit in a dark room with sun glasses on and no noise for 4-6 weeks to let his brain heal because he had so much blood on his brain. I remember sitting there. They left a little slit open so that the blood could drain off of his brain. And he would just have a stream of blood coming down his face. That was about two months where I was just focused on him. And then when he could come back upstairs and start moving around, I started to get out there a little bit more again. It felt like a whole year had gone by. Whatever loss I was feeling about being gone from the Urban League, it was like gone.”

Once he was back in action, Caire relied on Sue Crews, Melissa Scholz and Sally Martyniak to help him lay the foundation for One City. And a grant from Steve Goldberg and CUNA Mutual got the ball rolling.

“He gave me the $5,000,” Caire said. “I used it as leverage for others to give. And so I started the $10 campaign and opened the Network for Good account. I went on social media and I said, ‘Hey everyone, we’re doing this campaign. We’re going to start this school.’ Judy McNeil was the first one to donate. I saw her $100 come in and all of a sudden, I started getting more to my email. And within three weeks, I raised another $8,800. And so I had $13,800 to get started. I started a website and working on the design and getting a logo made so that I had something pretty to share with people so they would take it seriously.”

Caire was all set to go public with One City, but then tragedy struck once again.

“We had the kick-off at CUNA Mutual,” Caire said. “That’s what convinced them to hold this meeting with me. Steve Goldberg said, ‘Kaleem, I’ve never seen anyone pull this many people out for an organization that doesn’t exist yet.’ We were like, ‘Man this is great.’ We went to Bonefish Grill and Chef Rod cooked us some food. We were having a good time and I got this call from my cousin Brandi Grayson and she told me what happened with Tony Robinson. I was like, ‘You have to be kidding me.’ And then we were all focused on that. There was no press on what happened at CUNA although the press was there.”

From there, it was almost an effort of financial community organizing where one gift led to the next, laying a financial foundation one gift at a time. And Caire needed help to get some doors open for him.

“I went to Jim Berkenstadt and Holly Cremer,” Caire said. “I got to know Jim through the Urban League. I told him what we were doing. They said, ‘We’ll give you $50,000. However, we’re going to give it to you in two stages. We’ll give you the first $25,000 to get you going. And if you make the marker that you set, we’ll give you the other $25,000.’ I said, ‘That’s good. I like that. That will help me go out and raise more money.’ I went back to CUNA and Steve gave me another $20,000. And then he started talking to people for me too. And then it was me getting in touch with Joe Krupp and his daughter Jennifer Owens.”

Next issue: The Road to Broadway