Rise Up Academy celebrating a great academic achievement today

SOUTH BEND, Ind - Today the rise up academy, an alternative school here in South Bend celebrated a great academic achievement for their graduating class of 2023. 

It was all smiles today here at Rise Up academy -- which is celebrating a major accomplishment-- an 80 percent graduation rate. 

On top of that, the school was just awarded up to a 3-million-dollar school improvement grant --over the next three and a half years. 

Francois Bayingana, has lived in south bend for 25 years, and started off as a teacher. 

Now he is the principal of Rise Up Academy and says he feels privileged to work with such amazing students. 

“Having students come in with credit deficit and sometimes behavior issues and then we take them in as juniors and at the end of two years they graduate, so that’s a really big accomplishment, so that’s why we are really passionate about helping the students, those who are really behind, maybe they never graduate from high school and now they graduate so that’s a big accomplishment,” said Bayingana. 

 Teachers here say they want to keep this momentum up for the 2023/2024 school year.