Amanda Gorman, please speak at our graduation!

We are the Kauffman School, a middle and high school in Kansas City, Missouri serving 1200 students and in our 10th year of operation. Kauffman students are brilliant, passionate, creative and empowered by their identities and place in the community and develop a critical consciousness of the world around them – while having some of the strongest academic results in the state.

Our school has always had a special relationship with spoken word performance – we do a study on it every year in our English classes, and often have performances at events. When we saw you perform The Hill We Climb in November, we were blown away. When we asked students who to feature in the mural we were commissioning that would feature people who inspire our students, you were the most prominently named – and you’ll see that reflected in the picture of the mural below. 

Our current senior class will graduate this May 26th at Starlight Theater, an outdoor venue in Kansas City that is able to host a socially distanced ceremony. This class – all 91 strong – will be the third class to graduate from the Kauffman School, but would love to be the first to have a keynote speaker like you. Would you please consider joining us?