School Overview

North Kenwood Oakland, affectionately known as NKO, wholeheartedly believes that our school community is better together. Our staff, our scholars, and our scholars’ families all play an instrumental role in building a bridge between learning at home and learning at school. Parents are our scholars’ first teachers, and we build strong relationships with NKO families so that we can better understand how to meet the social, emotional, and academic needs of our scholars. Rigorous classroom instruction begins with our full-day Pre-kindergarten program and culminates with 5th-grade scholars celebrating their rites of passage to middle school by completing four performance tasks: community service hours, Black History Wax Museum, Community Action “Shark Tank” Project, and a literary presentation that explains how they earned the right to matriculate to 6th grade. Our Pre-K through 5th-grade scholars’ character building is undergirded by our culture of STICK values, which stand for self-control, teamwork, integrity, commitment, and kindness. Weekly professional development for NKO’s teaching staff provides educators with opportunities to analyze data, conduct peer observations, participate in book studies, and create actionable lesson plans to refine scholars’ academic achievement across all subject areas. The NKO Experience is what sets us apart from any other school in the city of Chicago and across the nation. Many of our families are NKO alumni who send their children to NKO because they know our scholars receive a high-quality education rooted in social-emotional learning, cultural awareness, and critical thinking.