KIPP Comienza Community Prep - Huntington Park, CA

KIPP Comienza Community Prep is built on the belief that great schools and strong relationships transform communities. Our teachers, students, and families are centered around a vision that students will return to Huntington Park after college and continue to uplift the community. We believe that social change begins at a young age and must be cultivated by schools and communities. Comienza, which translates to "begin" in Spanish, is named after Cesar Chavez's quote that "once social change begins, it cannot be reversed." Our school values--courage, ganas, honor, and reflection--are embedded in everything we do, from curriculum planning to school field trips and community events.

Our mission is to teach the academic skills, cultivate the character traits, provide the learning experiences, and forge the community relationships needed for our elementary students to thrive in middle school, high school, college, and life. Our kindergarteners know the year they will graduate college, and we support them to and through their path to college.

We believe in developing the whole child so that when our students leave our school, they have the tools to be successful. This includes participation in comprehensive programming like art, physical education, science, and social studies, as well as creating a school culture where every teacher is a reading teacher and every classroom is named after a college. Additionally, our team regularly analyzes student achievement data to monitor progress towards mastery of the state standards. We also create flexible groupings of students through the blended learning model, which allows for further flexibility and differentiation.