Kevin Johnson - St. HOPE

St. HOPE

In 1989, while still an NBA player, Johnson founded St. HOPE (Helping Others Pursue Excellence) as an after-school program for kids in his native Oak Park neighborhood of Sacramento, California. St. HOPE eventually expanded to run as a nonprofit umbrella organization that consisted of three divisions: St. HOPE Academy, St. HOPE Public Schools, and St. HOPE Development Corporation. This encompassed the new vision to be a nonprofit community development corporation whose mission is to "revitalize communities through public education, civic leadership, economic development, and the arts." Johnson served as CEO of St. HOPE until January 2008.

The St. HOPE Development Corporation, founded in 1994, has focused its efforts on Oak Park. The Development Corporation has enabled the renovation of a number of projects including historic bank building on Broadway, a Victorian house, and a 25,000 square foot art gallery and retail complex that includes the Guild Theater and 40 Acres Art Gallery.

St. HOPE Public Schools is a pre-K through 12th grade independent charter school system that provides education to nearly 2,000 students in seven small schools. One of the schools St. HOPE impacted was Sac High, where three generations of Johnson’s family including him attended. In October 2002 Sac High was at risk of being shut down and restricted into five smaller schools due to low test scores. But by January 2003, Johnson had raised seed money from the Gates Foundation and drafted a petition to reopen Sac High as an independent charter school. On September 2, 2003 Sac High opened as a charter school with 1,450 students. Since St. HOPE’s involvement with Sac High, student performance has improved. In 2010 Sac High’s API score improved to 719, compared to 610 in 2006. The number of students who completed all courses required for University of California or California State University Admission also rose between those years from 84% to 90.6%.

These improved test scores attracted the attention of a school in New York and St. HOPE eventually expanded into Harlem at the St. HOPE Leadership Academy Charter School which opened in 2008. Since 2007, the decision to expand St. HOPE to New York has been taught as a case study in the Entrepreneurship in Education Reform class at Harvard Business School. Following the case study, Johnson attends Harvard for lunch and a discussion students. The class works as a feeder program for students to participate in the Mayoral Fellowship Program in Sacramento.