What’s Right With Our Schools: Chatt Prep Class of 2025
CHATTANOOGA, TN (WDEF) – Chattanooga Preparatory School is an all-boys public charter school. It opened its doors in Highland Park six years ago. Many students in this year’s senior class were there, from the very beginning, as sixth graders. Their remarkable journey is an inspiring example of what’s right with our schools.
Diamond Kelley is the principal at Chatt Prep.
She says, “Today, was definitely a different Chattanooga 300, and as I start to think about it, I tear up. This is the last day, first the last first, day for several of our scholars. Fifty of them to be exact, because they will be graduating um really soon, May the 17th. They were our very first class, and we started with a class of 65, 7 years ago. Now, we’re up down to 50 but they have stuck with it. Um, They can tell you what grit is like because they’ve stuck through all the AP classes, through thick and thin, through brothers leaving, through hard times, but they are here, and they are here and ready for college.”
Gueller Gonzalez is a senior at Chatt Prep.
He says, “They’ve been training us from the beginning to get into college and through college, and so it’s been a blast. I know college is probably going to be a whole different journey for each of us, but it’ll be it’ll be very interesting to look back and think about the friends that we made, and the stories that we have to tell.
Brad Scott is the CEO for Prep Schools.
He says, ” Yes, I saw their success coming. I believed in them since day one, we all as a team have believed in them. I think what is humbling about today is operating two schools 700 young men in two different cities here in East Tennessee.”
Principal Kelley concludes, ” Our mission and vision is to get scholars to and through college, and there is no doubt that these 50 scholars will step foot on somebody’s college campus next year. We want to make sure that when they leave our campus, they are ready for a college campus. So, we do a lot of simulating, and you can see that they transition throughout the campus without adults the same that way that they’re going to do when they’re on a college campus. We make sure that the curriculum that they’re sitting in front of is just like college material so that when they sit down on a college campus, they won’t be intimidated. So, I have no doubt that in just a couple of months that we will watch 50 Scholars sign and tell us where they’re going to go to college. They have become my young men. I graduated my own son last year and it’s just repeating, repeating itself 50 times.”
