Miami Grad Kelly Bolanos: ‘It wasn’t some regular school; it was like this second chance’

Kelly Bolanos is on a roll. A high school diploma in hand, college credits to her name and, soon, a career that feeds her passion for nurturing young children.

Bolanos, though, will be the first to tell you that the road leading her to this point was a protracted one. Attending a public high school in Miami for four years, Bolanos was simply going through the motions up until the very last day of the 2016 school year.

She had slipped significantly behind in her credits, and it became clear by her senior year that she wouldn’t graduate. The only reason Bolanos kept showing up, she said, was because an administrator told her she’d face disciplinary action otherwise.

“Prior to Acceleration Academy, I was not a good student,” Bolanos, 23, said. “I was very lost.”

In the spring of 2016, Bolanos left high school without a diploma, without any ambitions and without a path forward.

Bolanos was working a sales job as a means to earn money for rent and put food on the table. But not long after she graduated, she found an unhealthy escape.

“I was addicted to methamphetamine,” Bolanos said. “I just didn’t care about anything. Like, I didn’t care about myself, I didn’t care about getting ahead in life.”

After about a year of aimlessness, Bolanos received what would prove to be a fateful phone call from an administrator in her school district. Miami-Dade Public Schools was partnering with a non-traditional education program — Acceleration Academy — to provide students with the tools they required to complete their high school diplomas tuition-free and at their own pace.

Bolanos enrolled and, after some initial reluctance, allowed the staff at Miami-Dade Acceleration Academy’s Homestead campus to help her piece together her future.

“They didn’t know specifically what I was addicted to … but they didn’t judge me at all,” Bolanos said. “They really pushed me, you know? They would constantly call me and ask if I was OK. Even if I said I wasn’t going to class that day, they would just, like, try to help me out with my problems that I was facing at the time.”

It was the kindness and compassion demonstrated by educators, she said, that motivated her to get clean and become a part of MDAA’s inaugural class of graduates in 2018.

“It’s like they genuinely cared, like they wanted to see us succeed,” Bolanos said. “They weren’t just like staff members and directors. They were like friends you can count on.”

One of those people was Jessica Kinard, who is the operations coordinator at Miami-Dade’s Homestead campus and developed a close relationship with Bolanos.

“This is not just a school where you come and do your coursework and then you leave,” Kinard said. “This is the family that you need when you have a problem you’re going through.”

On the day Bolanos was scheduled to come in and meet Kinard for the first time, she was several hours late. But when she eventually arrived, she connected with Kinard immediately.

“I knew that she needed that moment with us and that she could do something with her life,” Kinard said.

The moment served as the beginning of a year-long journey to earning her diploma. “It wasn’t some regular school, it was like this second chance,” Bolanos added. “You know, not many people take it, but it reached my heart.”

Bolanos is on track to earn a childcare certification and is looking forward to a career in early childhood education.

“I plan on working at a childcare center to gain that experience, but also like I don’t want it to stop there. My goal is to work with special needs kids,” she said. “I want to feel like I helped them accomplish something, you know? Just like so many people at Acceleration Academy that helped me.”

— Michael Majchrowiz