ORLANDO, Fla. – Youth listened to inspirational speakers and got the chance to experience their future careers on second day of the Disney Dreamers Academy with Steve Harvey and ESSENCE Magazine on Friday.
The theme for the day was “Be 100: Great Risk. Great Reward.” Along with hearing inspirational speeches, Dreamers participated in hands-on workshops in various career fields around Walt Disney World.
The Dreamers attended the “Be 100 Breakfast” program in the morning where they learned valuable skills about networking and leadership.
Speakers during the day included former Disney Dreamers Academy alumnus and motivational speaker Princeton Parker and motivational speaker Jonathan Sprinkles.
[/media-credit] Motivational Speaker Jonathan Sprinkles speaks at the Disney Dreamers Academy
“We are starting a brand new decade of Disney Dreamers Academy and I believe we have a fresh new crop of special students who see more, they dream bigger,” Sprinkles said. “I believe we’re going to see some people get out here and change the world.”
Tracey D. Powell, Vice President of Deluxe Resorts and Disney Dreamers Academy Executive Champion, hosted programming during the day for parents.
In the afternoon the Dreamers participated in “Deep Dives” at Disney University and throughout the Disney Park. Dreamers were given a more personalized experience in small groups based on their career interests.
Sean Smith, 14, who is attending the Dreamers Academy from Basking Ridge New Jersey participated in a Deep Dive with engineers from Walt Disney World
“It’s really a lot of fun and I’ve met at of people,” he said. “The speakers were really inspiring and it changes you to hear their stories and makes you a better person. We’ve learned so much.”
[/media-credit] Sean Smith participating in a “Deep Dive” at the Disney Dreamers Academy
The day ended with a networking event where Dreamers were able to network with professionals including guest speakers and Disney executives and partners from
On Saturday, the Dreamers are splitting up into male and female groups to participate in sessions about image awareness.
Famed educator Dr. Steve Perry, Brandi and Karli Harvey, Dr. Alex Ellis and author Sonia Jackson Myles are also hosting presentations. There will also be a celebrity panel featuring former NFL player and businessman Emmitt Smith, singer Ne-Yo, Empire start Jussie Smollett and Ruth Carter, costume designer for the film Black Panther.
Dreamers will showcase what they learned and created during their “Deep Dives” in the evening.
AMSTERDAM NEWS — Newark Public Schools is back under the control of the city, ending nearly 25 years of state control. The formal transfer was made at a news conference at Science Park High School last week. New interim Superintendent A. Robert Gregory, Mayor Ras J. Baraka, members of the Newark Board of Education and students were in attendance.
The state took control of the school in 1995 after years of low high school graduation rates and low standardized test scores. Christopher Cerf was the state-appointed superintendent of NPS. He resigned when the city regained control.
“I know firsthand the important role Newark schools play in the lives of the thousands of young people who attend them,” Gregory said. “On their behalf, we must move forward with a continued sense of urgency. I look forward to working closely with the school board, our educators and the Newark community to ensure that we are doing everything we can to continue to improve outcomes for Newark students.”
In December, the commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Education approved the transition plan that allows for the Advisory Board to become the official Newark Board of Education Feb. 1. The plan provides the board the full authority and responsibilities afforded to local school boards and includes a detailed timeline and set of milestones to guide the district’s transition over a period of two years.
The search for a new superintendent will be headed by a seven-person committee made up of school board members and Newark stakeholders.
“This day has been in the making for some time and is long overdue,” said Marques Aquil Lewis, chairman of the Newark Board of Education. “The Board has worked very hard to make sure that the district is returned to local control. Now, all decisions rest with us and we are ready, willing and have the capacity to take Newark Public Schools to the next level.”
NPS serves approximately 36,000 students and is the largest and one of the oldest school systems in New Jersey. Nearly 90 percent of students are Black and Latino.
Black college database The Hundred-Seven has published a list of public Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) that are recognized for their affordability. The 16 colleges have been identified because of their lower overall costs (before and after financial aid packages) compared to other similar colleges- in state and out-of-state.
The entire list of colleges can be found on the Hundred-Seven’s website. Among the schools on the list are Alcorn State University in Mississippi, Fort Valley State University in Georgia and Southern University and A&M College in Louisiana.
Even with the current “HBCU Renaissance” many experts say is going on as a result of the current political climate, some families remain resistant about sending their child to a Black college over concerns of cost. Students living in areas where there are no HBCUs are often faced with paying out-of-state tuition. Many of the schools on The Hundred-Seven list have low out-of-state tuition rates and are recognized nationally for their value.
The Hundred-Seven was founded by educator, historian and HBCU expert, Leslie D.W. Jones to promote higher education through HBCUs. The website highlights the accomplishments of HBCU’s and their alumni along with the only online searchable database that features every academic program offered by every Black college.
NY AMSTERDAM NEWS — In the months since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, activists and scholars have converged, condemning his violent and divisive racial rhetoric. In response to Trump’s rhetoric, leaders are working to build a resistance against an agenda that not only divides the country but also sets precedence for violent and discriminatory policies and actions.
The New School, known for its innovative work in areas of social change, has launched “Race in the U.S.,” a free and public lecture series on race relations in America. It features a dynamic lineup of conversations with community activists, scholars and policy changers.
As if it were planned for such a tense moment in our country, the lecture series was originally inspired by New School students’ desires to connect on the topic of race.
Michelle DePass, dean of the Milano School of International Affairs and one of the course organizers, said students were inspired by the work of the Black Lives Matter movement years ago and started galvanizing around race politics then. Now, with the launch of the lecture series, there is an opportunity to build a new program that integrates both an academic class of advocates and activists in the area of race.
“As we follow and work with our student body, we find that our students are very intersectional, and we realized that after this election, we cannot be in our silos anymore,” DePass said. “What this course is really doing is intersecting race with so many different aspects and elements of our society and lifting up the cover and saying that you really think you exist in this safe zone or this zone where the issues of the system have not touched you, but they actually have.”
What do we do in the toxic climate we have today? That is the question for which the lecture series hopes to stir up an answer. The New School social justice masterminds and scholars DePass, Maya Wiley and Darrick Hamilton joined forces to create this platform for impactful conversations with activists, organizers and scholars such as Shanelle Matthews of Black Lives Matter and Linda Saursour, a Muslim rights advocate and Women’s March organizer.
Wiley, fairly new to the New School staff, serves as the VP for social justice at the university. She previously served as a counsel to New York Mayor de Blasio, advising on legal matters. Now she is
working with the school to integrate social justice actions from the school community level to engaging students on social justice matters through curriculum.
This course, she says, is about engaging various groups within the community of social change both in academia and on the grass roots level.
“One of the things that we’ve always had at the New School is academics who are not just researching areas of injustice and inequalities, but are also thinking about how they get solved,” Wiley said. “So part of the ‘new’ in the New School is forms of pedagogy that work on and engage in real world solutions.”
Hamilton, who oversees the Ph.D. students within the Milano School and is an associate professor of economics and urban policy, is anticipating that the course will be a training ground for an “army of social justice warriors.”
Through public lectures like those offered in “Race in the U.S.,” students will be challenged by ideas and equipped with the tools they need to enact social change in strategic ways.
The organizers of the course believe that without properly understanding how to read and interpret data, activists cannot serve their causes, and it is in this way the worlds of academia and grass roots organizing converge.
“This course would have existed whether or not Donald Trump was president because we were talking about it well before the election was concluded,” Wiley stated. “But I do think it’s elevated the critical nature of the time we are in, that the discourse of what happened during the campaign has become the national discourse. I think about our students that are both active and horrified at the world they are inheriting and having some space not only about what it means, but how they can do something.”
The course will be held Mondays through Dec. 11, 2017 at the New School. It will also be available on Livestream. It is free and available to the public. For more information, visit https://courses.newschool.edu/courses/UTNS2000?sec=7497.
(CNN Money) — Florence Yu can’t believe her luck. She’s starting college the same year New York made tuition free for middle-class students like her.
New York’s Excelsior Scholarship is the first of its kind. It covers the cost of tuition for qualifying students who are enrolled in a two- or four-year degree program at any of the state’s 88 public colleges and university campuses.
Plans for the scholarship were announced by Governor Andrew Cuomo in January. At first, students planning to attend college this fall didn’t know whether it would become reality in time. It was officially approved by the legislature in April.
“I called my Dad at work, and I’m like ‘oh my God, Dad, I could get free tuition.’ It was so exciting and I remember it so vividly because it was so life changing,” Yu said.
She’s now a freshman at Stony Brook University double majoring in business and health science.
Like other students, Yu had to apply for the scholarship and didn’t find out until August whether she qualified. The good news finally came, just before it was time to pay the bill. Her parents, immigrants from Myanmar, always wanted her and her brother to go to college, but were worried about finances.
“I’ve never seen my Dad so happy. He knows I really wanted to go to Stony Brook and he was really stressed about paying. Now he’s able to, so it really changed a lot,” Yu said.
A ‘life changing’ option
When Governor Cuomo announced the program he said that college, like high school, “should always be an option even if you can’t afford it.”
While similar programs in other states have made tuition free for community college students, the Excelsior Scholarship is the first to include those pursuing a four-year degree.
The scholarship could save students as much as $27,000 over four years by cutting out tuition costs. The award doesn’t cover fees charged by the school, or room and board. Students must also agree to live in state after college for the same number of years they received the scholarship, or it will be converted to a loan.
Bonnie Tang, another Stony Brook freshman, is commuting from her home in Brooklyn, saving her about $13,000 in room and board costs. She’ll have to buy a monthly train pass. And she’ll still pay about $2,560 in fees this year. But everything else is free.
“My tuition is paid for and that saves me a lot of money,” she said.
Tyler Mendoza, also a freshman at Stony Brook, and James Martello, a freshman at the University at Albany, both say they probably would have gone to a community college instead if they hadn’t received the Excelsior Scholarship.
Gianluca Russo transferred to the University at Albany this year after finishing his associate’s degree from Schenectady County Community College. The scholarship, he said, convinced him to stay in state to pursue a bachelor’s in journalism.
Many won’t qualify
An estimated 75,000 people applied for the scholarship this year, but an initial projection from the governor’s office said only about 23,000 would receive it. An official number has yet to be released as summer course credits are counted and community college students continue to enroll for the fall semester.
Officials from several schools said the biggest reason why students were disqualified was because they receive other need-based grants that already cover the full cost of tuition. The Excelsior Scholarship doesn’t offer additional funds to help with other expenses.
Other students are disqualified because their family income is too high. This year, the scholarship is offered to those who earn up to $100,000 a year. The limit will rise to $110,000 next year, and then up to $125,000 for the 2019-20 school year and thereafter.
Some critics say the Excelsior Scholarship may spend too many taxpayer dollars subsidizing the cost of tuition for students who would be enrolling anyway, and still leaves students from the lowest-income families behind. The program is expected to cost $87 million this year, and $163 million annually once fully implemented.
The scholarship is designed to help those students whose families previously earned a little too much to qualify for financial aid.
“While many students with the greatest financial aid have always attended CUNY tuition-free, far too many families just above the income eligibility — which means most middle class families — received little or no state or federal aid,” said CUNY Chancellor James B. Milliken in a statement emailed to CNNMoney.
The Excelsior Scholarship will “help remedy this problem,” he said.
Income isn’t the only eligibility requirement. Students must be a state resident and they must maintain a full time schedule. That disqualifies many community college students going to school while working. It also makes it tough for adults wanting to return to school to finish a degree they started years ago.
Ahmad James, 35, is one of those students. He has stopped and started college twice. Once because two deaths in the family required him to help out at home, and once because of Hurricane Sandy, which forced him out of his apartment. He found a new place in Long Island, but it extended his commute to work and didn’t leave time for class.
But after he applied for the Excelsior Scholarship, he was told he was ineligible because he “did not earn a sufficient number of credits in each year” he was previously enrolled. The program requires you to take an average of 30 credits a year.
He’s working on finding other ways to help pay for college so he can advance his career in social services.
“I have the experience, but I need the piece of paper to do exactly what I want to do with my life,” James said.
A ‘positive buzz’ on campus
It’s too early to tell the impact the scholarship will have on New York’s college campuses.
Many incoming freshmen had to enroll before officially being awarded the scholarship. Transfer students, though, were more likely to find out about the scholarship before making their decision. The University at Albany saw an 11% jump in applications from transfer students this year, which officials attribute at least in part to the Excelsior Scholarship.
More students are certainly expected to receive the scholarship in the future, as the income cap rises and awareness grows.
“It’s creating a very positive buzz about public higher ed,” said Stony Brook President Samuel Stanley.
“If you go around the country the story has generally been states pulling back on support of higher education, putting more of the burden on students and their families. So this is really changing that narrative in a very dramatic way,” he said.
Black college database The Hundred-Seven has published a list of public Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) that are recognized for their affordability. The 16 colleges have been identified because of their lower overall costs (before and after financial aid packages) compared to other similar colleges- in state and out-of-state.
