Ignite Institute is the only public school of its kind in Northern Kentucky. Students must apply to attend the career-based regional school on the former Toyota campus in Erlanger.
Only 250 to 300 new students are admitted each year to learn skills in engineering, biomedical and allied health, design, computer science and education. However, the number of students trying to get into the school of choice is much larger.
Right now Ignite has a waitlist of 430 students and an enrollment of 1,020, principal Jerry Gels told LINK nky. About half the students enrolled are from Boone County and about half are from Kenton County, with others attending from river city districts.
No plans to bring another school of choice to NKY have been announced. But discussions are underway, and that talk is focused on the river cities.
The talk is about what a school of choice would look like in areas of NKY with the greatest need, EducateNKY president and CEO Tim Hanner told LINK nky. EducateNKY is a regional education incubator initially focused on improving lives in the river cities through “exploration and adoption of innovative approaches” to education from prenatal through 12th grade.
“What can we create that would allow kids to attend, serving river city kids first?” the former Kenton County Schools superintendent said when he shared the news with LINK last week.
Engaged in the discussion is Toyota, which donated the Erlanger property, which is now home to Ignite.
“We have had the preliminary conversation with Toyota. Toyota’s interested. But other corporations locally I know would be as well. What we’ve decided, until our strategic plan is finished, we’ve decided to continue meeting with the superintendents in the river cities,” Hanner said. “So I don’t think that concept is done.”
“Concept” is really the operative word here. EducateNKY – an initiative of the collaborative OneNKY Alliance – is now working on a landscape assessment of what is needed to improve learning outcomes in the river cities. So, exactly what a new school would look like remains to be seen.
“It is a school that could rise out of the ground,” Hanner told LINK. “In order to get to that, what kind of systems need to be in place – meaning, all the districts working together with business. We’re talking about creating structures that don’t currently exist in the state.”
The new school, should it develop, may not be even one school. It could be multiple schools, said Hanner — each with something to offer. School enrollment could start as early as first grade.
“All of that would be determined,” said Hanner.
There’s also the question of charter schools. Kentucky law allows them, but the Franklin circuit court has ruled public funding for charter schools unconstitutional (that ruling is pending review before the Kentucky Court of Appeals). Hanner said a new school of choice “doesn’t have to be a charter.”
“What kind of systems and structures need to be in place before we bring those opportunities to them” is up for discussion, he said.
EducateNKY will work with school districts, businesses and the state over time to come up with a model, Hanner told LINK. That input will help decide what a new school – whatever that may be – could look like. So school involvement is important to the visioning process.
“Newport and Covington are the two big river city districts. That doesn’t mean small river city districts aren’t involved. If the schools are going to help drive that, they need to be at the table,” said Hanner.
LINK nky has reached out for comment from Newport Independent Schools superintendent Tony Watts and Covington Independent Public Schools superintendent Alvin Garrison.
Holmes High School, in the Covington Independent district, is one of the high schools with students attending Ignite. More than 87% of students at the school are considered economically disadvantaged, according to the most recent Kentucky School Report Card. Other students at Ignite come from Dayton Independent, Dixie Heights, Boone County High School, Conner, Cooper, Ryle, Simon Kenton, Scott and Walton-Verona.
Of those students accepted into Ignite each year, a significant percentage are considered at-risk.
“One of the things about Ignite that people don’t realize is that we have more at-risk kids than seven of the high schools we serve,” Gels told LINK. At Ignite, they get the same opportunities as everyone else.
And they are taking advantage of them.
Two years ago, only 26% of Ignite’s free and reduced lunch students took dual credit courses to earn high school and college credit at the same time. Gels said that number jumped to 73% in 2023. At least a quarter of students have earned associate’s degrees by the time they leave Ignite, with around a third entering college as juniors.
“One of the biggest things we do that’s different is basically dual credit plus,” Gels told LINK. “If you come to Ignite we’re going to train you in ways that dual credit isn’t even going to train you so you can do skilled work that other adults generally can’t do unless they were trained like you. My kids can do things that take years of skill. They can design and code websites. They can build and deconstruct robots. And when I’m talking robots I’m not talking toy robots. My kids build robots that can climb monkey bars. It’s unbelievable what they can do.”
A new school of choice has the potential to bring even more opportunity to river city youth and NKY, said Hanner.
“But in order for something like that to happen,” he added, “what can we learn from what happened in the Boone County – Kenton County situation, and what would that look like in another part of Northern Kentucky?”