Though he’d spent most of his 32 years as an educator in Chicago, Sean Stalling had been in Kansas City long enough to know what Lee A. Tolbert Academy meant to its community.

“Tolbert has over 25 years of building trust,” said Stalling, the executive director of Kansas City’s DeLaSalle Education Center. “It is a brand people can rely on.”

But there Tolbert was, in early 2026, facing a real threat of being shut down.

The K-8 school — one of Kansas City’s original public charter schools from 1999 — was being dropped by its sponsor, the Missouri Charter Public School Commission, at the end of the school year. Without any options for another sponsor, the school at 3400 The Paseo would be done.

Somebody, Stalling thought at the time, needs to save the school that sits less than a mile from DeLaSalle’s campus at 3737 Troost Ave.

Stalling was finishing his sixth year of leading DeLaSalle, a public charter high school. Long known as primarily an alternative school, DeLaSalle was revisioning itself as a high school for all students — a school of first choice. Its performance on state measures was on the rise.

Maybe, Stalling and his DeLaSalle team began to believe, the rescuer Tolbert was looking for was its neighbor — DeLaSalle.

“Our growth had put us into position,” Stalling said. “So we approached the state (Charter Public School) Commission and told them we would like the opportunity to bring Tolbert under our sponsorship.”

The commission listened to DeLaSalle’s vision for the school. Since the commission also sponsored DeLaSalle, they knew well the kind of success it was having at the high school level, Stalling said.

“And they said yes.”

It’s been a whirlwind. The change announced in March provided a short window of time ahead of the new school year in August. But strong partnerships have helped, Stalling said. LINC Caring Communities have been supporting Tolbert — now named Tolbert at DeLaSalle — with before- and after-school programs and family and community programs. The school this year is also partnering with the real-world education program Build Trybe, and is collaborating with the Urban Neighborhood Initiative.

“We can pull all that together,” Stalling said. “We have the capacity to do this now. We can come together on the right things.”

LINC has been providing before- and after-school care for Tolbert’s elementary grades and supporting the community since Tolbert’s first year in 1999. It’s exciting to know that Tolbert at DeLaSalle is keeping that community together, said LINC Chief Operating Officer Jeff Hill.

“We’ve seen firsthand what Tolbert has meant to generations of families,” Hill said. “This is a school that needed the opportunity to continue its work. For DeLaSalle to step in, with its own proud legacy of serving the community, and lead this forward is a great benefit to everybody.”

Tolbert was named for the late minister and community leader, Lee A. Tolbert, when community members led by Tolbert’s son, Bishop Mark Tolbert, opened the charter school in 1999 in the education space at the former Christ Temple Pentecostal Church, now named Victorious Life Church.

From its beginning, the charter school partnered with LINC. Over the past 27 years, the education landscape has gone through many changes with many charter schools closing and new schools rising. But Tolbert and LINC continue to serve families on The Paseo, generation to generation.

Meanwhile, Stalling was in Chicago, building a diverse resume of education experience — teaching, coaching and serving in administrative roles, in Catholic schools and public schools, some of them struggling schools that needed complete turnarounds. Eventually he rose to the position of a Chief of Schools with Chicago Public Schools.

“It prepped me for DeLaSalle,” he said, and for the challenge to show “what alternative education can mean for a city.”

Now DeLaSalle is embarking on an ambitious new course.

Before seeking to bring in Tolbert, DeLaSalle was already working with Operation Breakthrough, the early education and social services center at 31st Street and Troost, to launch a K-5 school in its building. That school, Breakthrough Academy, adds some 160 children to DeLaSalle’s more than 200 high school students. And Tolbert, with more than 300 enrolled, pushes the DeLaSalle system’s overall enrollment to 700.

It’s been a lot of shifting and adding teachers, administrators and staff, and a lot of meeting new families.

DeLaSalle is asking its new students and families at Tolbert to enter into the same covenant it made with its DeLaSalle families, Stalling said.

The schools promise to deliver real-world education, with social-emotional learning that holds students together in restorative programs, not relying on suspensions, with attention to good mental health, in high-quality classrooms, Stalling said. And the parents’ part of it is to promise that their children come to school, and they come ready to learn.

Stalling imagines a big role for LINC, and LINC is ready to play it.

By bridging the hours between the regular school day and the time many parents gather their children after work, LINC not only expands educational and social experiences for children, it also gives many parents more opportunities to take part in the life of the school.

“We can take advantage of the parent engagement,” Stalling said. “We can leverage parents to show up. But show up to what purpose?” Stallings answered his question:  “Educating kids. That’s going to be the magic moment.”

He envisions a full K-12 system with community support that shepherds students along a challenging educational journey to graduation.

“It is an ecosystem that requires partnerships and sacrifices,” he said. “Then Kansas City becomes a safer place, a more productive place and a wealthier place.”