Serving students and their families at a critical juncture in their lives, Ki Charter stands as both a lifeline for hope and the foundation of a child’s academic success. The premier educational provider for students residing in residential facilities and day treatment centres, Ki Charter provides high-needs students with a career- and academic-focused curriculum to help them maximise their potential and grow to love learning. It then introduces them back into their respective schools with improved behaviour and fewer learning gaps. For more, we caught up with Superintendent Dr. Jerry Lager.
An open-enrolment public charter school with campuses across Texas, Ki Charter works with students from the first grade through to the twelfth grade, supporting their behavioural, academic, and developmental needs through these sites, which are located exclusively in residential treatment facilities, acute care facilities, and hospitals. Operating in these environments means that the team here work with a highly mobile group of high-needs students who are dealing with intense behavioural and psychiatric challenges.
Exploring the process in a bit more detail, Ki Charter serves students who have been removed from school due to these challenges, which have severely impeded their learning. These students have then been placed in local psychiatric hospitals, such as the San Marcos Treatment Center, as a last resort, and they are admitted and discharged based on the clinical determinations of medical providers, with the district having little input when a child is discharged due to medical decisions and insurance reasons. This is where Ki Charter comes in: it educates the students who call these facilities home.
Students in residential settings have an average length of stay of 150 days and in acute care setting, students usually only stay for around seven to ten days as they undergo acute stabilisation, before they are then transitioned into outpatient services. When their educational needs are picked up by Ki Charter, they are usually mid-year or mid-course, with their history of challenges meaning that their prior schooling has been marred by significant disruption. As a result, these students have some of the most demanding needs of any young people in the country, and yet they are often underserved by their communities.
Partnering with hospitals such as The San Marcos Treatment Center, Meridell Achievement Center, Millwood Hospital, Kingwood Pines Hospital, Canyon Creek Behavioral Health, Austin Oaks, Branches Arlington, Branches Fort Worth, University Behavioral Health of Denton, Collin Springs, Mesa Springs, Roy Mass Youth Alternatives, Clarity, Retreat 4 Kids, San Antionio Behavioral Health, as well as Texas State University in a partnership to develop the highest quality resident teachers, Ki Charter and its impassioned team help these students to develop the knowledge and the skills they need to become active citizens, something they achieve through an engaging curriculum and small class sizes.
The more immediate purpose of this is to make the integration of these students back into their respective schools – which they will reattend after having completed their treatment at one of the locations where Ki Charter is based – as seamless as possible. It does by plugging gaps in their education and teaching them good character skills. The reintegration is often the most challenging part for students, but by advocating for them both in and beyond the classroom, Ki Charter offers everything they need to thrive.
“We are fervently committed to reintroducing our students to their respective schools with improved behaviour, reduced learning/opportunity gaps, and improved social-emotional skills to succeed in anything they choose to do.”
Going back to the beginning of Ki Charter’s journey, its start came in the spring of 2013, when Jerry Lager and Philip Muzzy met to discuss what education in a residential treatment facility should (and could) look like. They agreed it had to be something innovative, and this mutual understanding and shared vision would lead to the formation of the Ki Education Foundation. More people would join the team soon thereafter, and in the fall of 2014, Texas’ Commissioner of Education approved their bid for a charter school district.
The resulting Ki Charter was founded on the premise of change. Its slogan, ‘every change has a story’, is a great example of this, chosen because the team here are not only educating students, but also changing the way they think about education. Students who attend Ki Charter receive intensive psychiatric evaluation and treatment- while Ki Charter ensures they do not fall behind in their respective studies.
As for how exactly it does this, Ki Charter leverages the skills of a highly qualified group of teachers who are all content-area and special education certified, meaning that they can strike a balance between core instruction that meets individual needs while also pushing students to achieve more than they would in a traditional academic setting. The curriculum taught here is based on fully integrated social-emotional learning and consists of both project-based learning and STEM classes taught at the elementary, middle, and high school levels.
Alongside this, students are also taught career and technical education (CTE) classes with vocational certifications and a number of credit recovery and acceleration options (including summer school) to see that they remain on track. However, as Jerry himself explained, the focus here is more long term: “We understand that not every student at Ki Charter will attend post-secondary education, so it is our responsibility to prepare them to become productive members of society before they leave our school. Through our vocational programming, CTE courses, and integrated STEM curriculum, we are accomplishing this goal.”
Of course, there is so much more to Ki Charter than just this curriculum, and the success it has fostered over the last decade is due in no small part to its governing board. Comprising five community leaders who work closely together to make key decisions regarding school policies, budget allocations, educational goals, and more, everything they do is grounded in the overarching aim of making sure that every student receives the best education. This is something that starts at board level and runs down throughout the school.
“We firmly believe in giving kids a second chance, as a lot of times, our students were dealt a bad hand. It is our goal to reinvigorate their love for education and to equip them with all the tools they need to be successful in life.”
On a day-to-day basis, those responsible for upholding this are the staffing team, and Ki Charter has made sure only the best educators are on hand to equip its students with all they need to navigate this traumatic period of their lives. To this end, all staff are trained in mental health support before anything else, with this including behaviour enhancement, verbal de-escalation, trauma-informed care, crisis prevention, and more. Only once staff grasp these concepts can they begin to relate to the students and make a real difference.
On the back of this, and diving deeper into the recruitment process, Jerry told us: “We recruit based on soft skills. Whereas the technical skills can be taught later, you can’t teach people how to be good human beings – that is innate.” He continued: “Last year we had a 100% rate of retention in our district. This speaks to our culture of accountability and excellence and standards which do not deviate. Our students are our highest priority and they all deserve the best care possible.”
Notably, this commitment to providing the best care goes beyond just the education itself, and also covers many of the other elements associated with the school day. For example, through The San Marcos Treatment Center, the school is able to ensure that an excellent nutrition programme is available at no additional cost for all students. Everyone is invited to take advantage of this service, which is yet another example of Ki Charter choosing to focus on the whole person and not just their requirements as a learner.
This is something that Jerry and the team here have been passionate about since the very start of this venture, as it is only through this level of holistic and encompassing support that the real transformations they seek can be achieved. They may start with education, but the environments they operate in necessitate more. It is for this reason that the next steps for Ki Charter are all about continuing to deliver this unique guidance, touching more lives without breaking from the principles it has spent more than ten years deeply rooting.
Looking closer at the future plans of this open-enrolment public charter school, Ki Charter is preparing to open a handful of new campuses over the coming year, as well as developing a tangible and highly relevant certification programme that allows its students to attain key qualifications before they leave. This will allow them to progress into more skilled jobs in fields such as dentistry, giving these students a chance to gain meaningful employment and thrive in a job market that is facing unprecedented levels of competition – without having to stay in education.
Interestingly, this is nothing new for Ki Charter, which has been offering qualifications for a long time as part of the vocational programming touched on above. Students have already come away with the likes of food-handling certifications and OSHA certification, and the welcome introduction of these new accredited programmes is a great way for those who are unsure which route to take to gain some invaluable experience.
“We strive to ensure that each student has the care and support needed to learn and grow, while creating a cohesive and safe learning environment for all.”
Following all of this, it is unsurprising to learn that the outcomes of Ki Charter students since it opened its doors have been incredible, and there is a lot of data that the school has to show that the students here are highly successful. For instance, those who attend Ki Charter have higher average reading and Math 180 levels than those in traditional schools. A lot of this is down to the learning that is delivered here being tailored to the individual student, an approach that is essential given that the year may finish with only 10-20% of the students it started with, this due to the high mobility rates of students.
Such a demonstrable impact across the lives of its pupils, along with the 100% employee retention rate mentioned above, are irrefutably two of the things that makes Jerry the most proud about the vision and mission he and his team have shaped through Ki Charter, simply as they reflect the time and effort they have put in to see that every student who passes through their ecosystem of learning and development ends up with best chance in life – a fate they would likely not be afforded at a more traditional school.
Thus, as Ki Charter continues to show, every change really does have a story.
Reflecting on its deserved recognition as the Most Dedicated Education Provider 2026 – Texas and being featured as the centrepiece of this year’s Non-Profit Organisation Awards, Jerry looked back over the last decade and shared what he believes is the greatest achievement of Ki Charter to date: “Serving tens of thousands of students placed in psychiatric facilities and seeing outcomes that would never have come to fruition without the great educators and high standards we strive for.”
This is undoubtedly a feat worthy of acclaim, with the same able to be said for the reduced rates of recidivism and the nullification of the school-to-prison pipeline in those areas where Ki Charter works. It is clear then that this is a vital service for so many young people across the state of Texas, not to mention their parents, families, and communities. Capturing the spirit of the Non-Profit Organisation Awards perfectly, we urge anyone inspired by this truly transformative work to visit Ki Charter at the web address linked below.
Contact Details
Contact: Jerry Lager, Ph.D
Company: Ki Charter
Web Address: https://www.kicharter.org/
Email: Jerry.lager@kicharter.org
