A nonprofit built around one thesis: that high school should be a launchpad into financial freedom — not a holding pattern.
Reimagining the role schools play in providing students with personal pathways to financial freedom — and then scaling those opportunities so that more students may excel in school and after graduation.
That mission is not a tagline. It shapes every decision about curriculum, staffing, career partnerships, and what a graduate leaves with on the last day of their senior year.
Rooted School Foundation is a nonprofit organization operating public charter high schools and youth programs across the United States. We partner with communities — not just in them — to build schools that work for the students who need them most.
C.R. Neal Academy is a direct expression of that approach. The vision for this school existed in Columbia before Rooted School Foundation arrived. We brought the infrastructure to make it real: the management systems, the operational playbooks, the network of industry partners, and the replication capacity to turn a community vision into a school that opens on time, performs at a high level, and endures.
The community brought the mission, the name, and the reason it matters. That relationship does not change.
Every Rooted school runs on the same foundation — and is then built specifically for the community it serves.
Students learn by engaging with real problems that don't have a single right answer. They work in teams, produce things that have to hold up to genuine scrutiny, and build the habits of mind that college and career actually require. Problem-Based Learning is not a technique layered onto a traditional classroom. It is a different theory of what school should feel like and what it should prepare students to do.
Every Rooted school identifies the industries in its region where students from under-resourced communities can build genuine economic mobility — and develops deep, sustained partnerships with employers in those sectors. At C.R. Neal Academy, those pathways are in STEM and technology, healthcare, and advanced manufacturing. Not because they are prestigious. Because they are careers that open in South Carolina, pay living wages, and value credentials students can earn before they graduate.
A Rooted graduate leaves with more than a diploma. They leave with industry certifications, college credits, and documented competencies that employers and postsecondary programs recognize. Across the network, 39–44% of Rooted graduates earn advanced credentials compared to a 14–15% state average in Louisiana. These are not resume items. They are access points.
From internships to project partnerships to employer job shadows, C.R. Neal Academy students will work alongside professionals in the fields they are preparing to enter. Structured, sequenced, and tied directly to what students are learning in the classroom.
Rooted School Foundation's Green Balloon Fellowship places graduates directly into full-time career employment for one year — ensuring the transition from school to financial independence is supported, not left to chance.
Where the model started. Founded by Rooted Schools CEO Jonathan Johnson, Rooted School New Orleans began as a 15-student pilot inside an existing high school and grew into one of the most recognized public charter schools in the country. Now a Louisiana Early College Academy with dual-enrollment through Southern University of New Orleans — an HBCU — giving students college credits before they graduate. An "A" School Letter Grade in 2023, 39–44% of graduates earning advanced credentials, graduation rates that consistently exceed the district, and recognition from the Center for Reinventing Public Education, Transcend Education, and LAPCS (twice named the most innovative charter in Louisiana). Operates independently of Rooted School Foundation but shares the founding model and mission.
Opened Fall 2020 in partnership with Eastern Star Church's The ROCK Initiative. Connects students with local technology companies and Ivy Tech Community College for career and collegiate pathways. In 2026, secured a 15-year charter renewal — a significant statement of confidence from its authorizer. Operates independently of Rooted School Foundation.
Rooted's Pacific Northwest campus. Opened Fall 2023 as the first charter school in Southwest Washington. Currently operating with a technology career pathway in a region where engineering and IT employers project thousands of job openings over the coming decade. 77.5% whole-school ELA proficiency against a Washington State average of roughly 56%. 84% of 10th graders proficient in ELA on the SBAC. Zero findings on the school's first state special education audit while serving the highest IEP population rate of any charter school in Washington State.
Rooted School Foundation is actively pursuing authorization in Cleveland. Applications will be submitted this summer. When authorized, Cleveland will extend the Rooted model to a city with a deep educational history and a workforce economy in transition.
The first HBCU-authorized charter school in the United States. Authorized by Voorhees Charter Institute of Learning, the charter arm of Voorhees University. The only school approved out of 17 applicants. Opening Fall 2027 in Richland County.
Rooted Schools' earliest campuses built the operational knowledge — the hard-won lessons of launching and sustaining high-performing schools in real communities. Over the past several years, that knowledge was translated through an implementation science lens: codified into the systems, structures, and infrastructure that now govern every new school from day one.
C.R. Neal Academy opens with both. The experience and the discipline to scale it.
Every new Rooted campus launches under a formal Education Services Management Agreement, giving Rooted School Foundation direct operational authority over instruction, coaching, and performance accountability from day one.
Twenty-two operational playbooks govern every system from enrollment to graduation. The lessons of eight years are built in.
Conducts quarterly cross-campus calibration reviews. Best practice flows in both directions across the network.
Observed, scored, and reported — not aspirational. Accountability is a system, not a goal.
Voorhees University in Denmark, South Carolina is a historically Black college and university with more than 125 years of commitment to Black education in this state. When Voorhees established its charter authorizing arm and selected C.R. Neal Academy as its first — and only — approved school, it made history. No HBCU in the United States had previously authorized a charter school.
The result is a school accountable to an institution whose mission aligns directly with the students C.R. Neal Academy is built to serve. That accountability is not bureaucratic. It is moral and historical.
It connects to a thread already running through the Rooted network: Rooted School New Orleans' dual-enrollment partnership with Southern University of New Orleans means that two Rooted-affiliated schools now carry deep, formal ties to HBCUs — one through its college partner, one through its authorizer.
At Rooted schools, equity is not a program, a policy section, or a professional development module. It is a design principle. It shapes who teaches, who leads, how discipline works, who gets access to rigorous coursework, and how the school talks about and with the students it serves.
Students who attend C.R. Neal Academy come from communities that have too often received low expectations in place of real opportunity. This school is built to change that — not by lowering the bar, but by ensuring every student has the support to clear it.
Enrollment for our founding cohort opens October 2026. Families with students currently in 5th or 8th grade are welcome to mark their interest now.