One afternoon in March 2010, Khaliah Fitchette, a 16-year-old student at Newark’s University High School, was riding home on a NJ Transit bus with her friends when an intoxicated man slid off his seat and onto the floor. The bus stopped and two Newark police officers ran in. Khaliah started filming them on her phone and the officers told her to stop. When she refused, the officers dragged her off the bus, handcuffed her, and threw her into the back of the police car.

Her friends started a #FreeKhaliah campaign while she begged to call her mother. But the officers confiscated her phone, deleted the video, told her they were charging her as an adult for obstruction of justice, and took her to the precinct where she was detained for six hours.

The story was picked up by multiple media outlets, including NPR, CBS, and Today, especially after the ACLU and the Seton Hall Law School Center for Social Justice filed a lawsuit on March 28, 2011, against the Newark Police Department on behalf of Khaliah.

She won the lawsuit. She continues to speak out for social justice. And, ten years after the bus incident, 27-year-old Khaliah Fitchette is running for the U.S. Congress.

To what does she attribute her extraordinary accomplishments?

In large part to KIPP New Jersey, an expansive public charter operator in Newark and Camden. Across the country, the network operates 255 schools serving more than 100,000 students and just announced a major initiative to help its alumni succeed throughout and after college.

Read NJ Left Behind's full article here.