Twenty-five years after she founded a middle school in a church basement, KIPP D.C. chief executive Susan Schaeffler will step down early next year as head of the District’s largest and most prominent public charter school network.
She will be succeeded in February by Shannon Hodge, who has been the charter network’s president since 2022, school officials said.
Schaeffler, 55, revealed her decision to faculty, staff and families Tuesday afternoon but said her departure has been in the works for three years after KIPP created the role of president to help groom her replacement.
“It has been an amazing 25-year journey here with KIPP D.C. and I am looking forward to what might be next,” Schaeffler said in an interview. “But more importantly, I just want to make sure this transition runs smoothly, for the kids, families, the staff and for my successor. That is my top priority.”
Schaeffler and supporters brought the nationally known charter brand KIPP — originally an acronym for the Knowledge Is Power Program — to the District in 2001 when she launched KEY Academy with 80 fifth-graders. The network already had campuses in New York and Houston.
In D.C., KIPP quickly added AIM Academy in 2005 and six more schools by 2010. Now, KIPP D.C. has more than 7,300 students from prekindergarten through 12th grade across 20 schools, school officials said.
KIPP’s growth helped boost the broader charter system in the nation’s capital from a handful of campuses with a few hundred pupils to a 133-school sector that educates nearly half the city’s public school population with more than 47,000 enrollees.
KIPP D.C. devotees tout that every high school senior earns college acceptance letters and that 2,000 of its alumni have attended colleges so far. The system also created the program now known as KIPP Forward, which provides college-bound graduates with up to six years of advising, emergency financial aid and other assistance which officials said helped 500 alumni earn college degrees.
“I think we have just realized collaboration is a key and working well together with families has really been at the core of our success,” Schaeffler said. “We can accomplish almost anything, when we’re working well together.
“When we’re all on the same team, and we’re on the team of the child, then that’s a winning team.”
Schaeffler will leave at a time when she said KIPP D.C., the broader charter community and public schools are grappling with twin challenges to public education: the growth of artificial intelligence and bringing student performance back to pre-pandemic levels.
“AI is the biggest topic right now in education,” Schaeffler said. “How do we embrace it and say, well, our kids are going to be the best at this? Because that’s what they’re going to need to be successful.”
Hodge, 47, herself co-founded a charter school in the District, Kingsman Academy Public Charter School, which was designed to teach middle and high school students who were overage and under-credited, and who often had behavioral or emotional disabilities that led to attendance and truancy issues, she said.
Before joining KIPP three years ago, Hodge served in multiple leadership roles and as an attorney in the charter school sector, including as founding executive director of the DC Charter School Alliance — the city’s main charter advocacy organization.
Hodge said she had admired KIPP’s reputation in the charter world for innovation and sustained success, which she hopes to continue and build upon.
“KIPP itself is a legacy,” Hodge said. “We go hard for kids. You see people doing their all, giving their all for the students that we serve. I think that’s KIPP’s legacy and I’m excited to be a part of that.”
Hodge describes her leadership style as “a bit judicial” and wants to hear evidence-based arguments to help her make the right decisions. “Really making good decisions and leading the organization in the right way means getting in the right information and listening to folks’ perspectives,” Hodge said.
Schaeffler said she is confident that KIPP’s core mission will remain focused on using education to help students live “choice filled lives” and prepare them for careers of their choosing.
In a letter sent to the KIPP community, Schaeffler said she will move to a role as special adviser through the end of 2026 to ensure the transition plan works smoothly.
“I am excited to see the power of the past merge with the promise of the future,” Schaeffler wrote. “Know that I will be your loudest cheerleader … My heart will always be with you in every classroom.”
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