Kevin Dobson

Principal and Founder, Capital College & Career Academy

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Kevin Dobson has never been one to wait. He became a teacher at 21, bought his first house at 26 and was a school principal by 29. Along the way, he also got married and became a father to two children and a stepfather to another. So last year, at 33, what was left for Dobson to do? Open a career training academy in North Sacramento.

Dobson is founder and executive director of Capital College & Career Academy, a public charter high school on Arden Way that trains teenagers to work in construction. The school had its first day of instruction last August and is currently serving its freshman class. Previously, Dobson taught at different schools in the Sacramento area and coached Little League on the campus of Grant High School in Del Paso Heights.

“I just kept seeing here locally … article after article for skilled and trained workforce and this need,” Dobson says. “And I got these high schoolers that are graduating, have no idea what they want to do. And I’m like, ‘Look, there’s all these amazing jobs that are high paying.’”

Dobson had a contact at the Sacramento Regional Builders Exchange. So in 2019 he made the call that led to him opening his school last year.

It’s just the latest thing for Dobson, who is originally from New Castle, Delaware, near Philadelphia, and played Division 3 football at what was then known as Western New England College in Springfield, Massachusetts. A history major, he got into teaching after deciding law school wasn’t for him.

“I just kept seeing here locally … article after article for skilled and trained workforce and this need. And I got these high schoolers that are graduating, have no idea what they want to do. And I’m like, ‘Look, there’s all these amazing jobs that are high paying.’”
 

After finishing college, he returned to Delaware for a brief time before deciding he wanted something else. “In Delaware, it feels like you’ve done everything by the time you’re 10,” Dobson says.

So he moved to Sacramento in 2012, drawn in by the city’s affordability and its relative proximity to the ocean and mountains. “Whether it’s snowboarding or hiking, going camping, just any opportunity I can to get off the grid, get outside is stuff that I really enjoy,” Dobson says. “And that’s kind of how I recharge.”

“Just picking their brains and hearing from them and what they’ve done and what they’ve learned over their careers was incredibly helpful,” Dobson says.

He admits he progressed through the different stages of the educational profession with a degree of frustration as he saw the limits of what he could do solely as a teacher. Dobson realized he wanted to do more. “I want to be able to make decisions that’s in the best interests of kids and that pushes learning forward,” he says.

He also wanted to help prepare young people for adulthood better than traditional education systems sometimes might. “We get these kids that get to graduation and have no tangible real-world skills, nothing to put on their resume other than what we made them do as part of their senior project,” Dobson says. “What a disservice we’re doing for young people.”

Dobson’s academy is still in its early stages, with just 60 students and around a dozen teachers, since the school must have staff for a range of subjects. He’s hopeful about the road ahead, though, with goals that include growing the school beyond its campus.

“We really do feel like this is a model that can be replicated,” Dobson says.

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