Ten days after Detroit Achievement Academy, a free public charter school in Detroit, founded by Kyle Smitley '07, opened its doors this school year, burglars broke in and stole the computers.
Smitley sent out an email asking for help to raise money to replace the computers. After contacts forwarded on the message a few times, it ended up on the desk of Ellen DeGeneres and her production team. Smitley was flown out to the Ellen Show and interviewed on Nov. 1 about the school. The photo printing company, Shutterfly, donated $25,000 and the show matched that donation.
In six years since graduating, Smitley has opened a charter school in Detroit and before that, launched an organic clothing line for children, named barley & birch [sic]. The clothing company has celebrity moms as clients and pledges over half of its profits to social issues around the globe.
The charter school educates forty children and currently has two grades, kindergarten and first grade. The school plans to add a new kindergarten class each year until it serves kids through eighth grade.
"Every kid in Detroit deserves to have a high quality option," Smitley said of the city's education system.
Seeing areas of improvement with public and charter schools, Smitley realized there was an opportunity to do a lot of good.
"Nothing really held a candle to Detroit," Smitley said, realizing after traveling around the world. She is drawn to how historic and relevant the city is.
Although Detroit has become victim to crumbling aspects, Detroit Achievement Academy hopes to reverse that pattern. Their goal is to deliver the best results for students and to become the best school in the country. Smitley says they can accomplish this by hiring really accomplished teachers and having small class sizes.
In addition to the unexpected gifts received earlier this month, the school has fundraising models of its own. When schools don't fundraise and stick to the state budget, they often get teachers who are underpaid and under-qualified. Detroit Achievement Academy has started to sell the kids' artwork. The pieces brought in nearly $10,000 to date, Smitley said.
At DePauw, Smitley was a geoscience and philosophy double major, and also worked as a DJ for the radio station. She recommended that students take classes that might not seem to have an apparent use in a future career.
"You're nineteen-you have absolutely no idea what you're going to be doing, even though you think you might," Smitley said.
She took a year off after graduation, lived in California, and then earned a law degree from the University of Toledo. She is from Defiance, Ohio. While in law school she launched barley & birch, which she recently left to establish the charter school.
"Take a job that you are excited about," Smitley said for advice to current seniors. "Don't take a job that you think you need to take."
She recommended that since you are only 22 once, you don't need to take a job that you are going to be doing for your entire life.
"Take a job that you really want to experience," she said, because that is the only way you won't end up forty-five and miserable.
At 28, Smitley has the life she wants, working on the school and living in the Midwest, close to friends and family. She has returned to DePauw several times to teach senior capstones on entrepreneurship.
Thursday she was on campus to teach Beth Benedix's First Year Experience class "Fixing Broken Systems."