Voters are heading to the polls locally twice in the month of May. First up is the elections on May 5 for several city council and school board seats in Dallas and surrounding cities. Then on May 22 voters will select the final winners in runoff races from the March 6 primaries including governor and congressional seats. NDG will spotlight those races in our upcoming edition.
Dallas ISD School Board Trustee, District 9
The race to represent District 9 on the Dallas ISD Board of Trustees features incumbent Bernadette Nutall facing three challengers in Ona Marie Hendricks, Justin Henry and Edward Turner.
Nutall, a graduate of Sam Houston State University, is the co-founder and executive director Circle of Support an organization offering academic and enrichment summer learning program. She touts her achievements to secure funding for four campuses and sponsored initiatives such as college tours and the Lincoln Culinary Arts program.
Hendricks is a grant writing consultant and entrepreneur. She has served as the Vice President of TCW Executive Board, and as the Ambassador for Good Samaritans of Garland Food Pantry. She is an active advocate on issues ranging from youth awareness, parental engagement, domestic violence tasks force, anti-racism, and volunteered with Dallas ISD. Hendricks has previously run for offices with the county and school board.
Henry is a former math teacher in Los Angeles, who later went to law school before returning to Dallas eight years ago. Key issues outlined in his campaign include early childhood education, racial equity, improving how the district’s teachers are recruited, mentored and rewarded. Henry believes community engagement is vital to closing the gap between the classroom and the student’s home.
Turner is a native of South Dallas and graduate of Texas Southern University with a degree in Finance. After seeing the closure of four community schools, Turner decided to leave a career in finance and became a community organizer with a focus on developing and encouraging parental involvement. His focus is early childhood development, community engagement, better preparing students for college or the workforce, and closing the pipeline to prison.
Carrollton City Council
The easiest choice for voters in Carrollton comes in the Place 5 race, as incumbent Glen Blanscet is running unopposed. Blanscet is currently serving as mayor pro tem, and has been on the city council since 2015. He is a former general counsel for Atmos Energy, and subsequently served as a Baptist minister.
In Place 1 there is a three-way contest for the council position; including incumbent James Lawrence, along with challengers Therese Beckley and Steve Babick. Lawrence, a native of California, has experience in the Army Reserve and works in sales management. Currently he serves on the Audit/Finance Subcommittee and is a liaison for two advisory committees. He was first elected to the council in 2015.
Beckley has lived in Carrollton for 47 years according to her filing for candidacy. Information on Beckley is hard to find as she has no campaign website, and has declined to respond to recent media requests for information.
Babick arrived in Carrollton in 1992. As a Chief Financial Officer, Babick describes himself as “a finance guy” and sees himself as someone qualified to “dig into the numbers” on behalf of the city. Babick served on the Carrollton City Council from 2014-17 before falling short in a runoff race for Mayor.
Place 3 also features three candidates; with Zul Mohamed, Richard Fleming and Pat Cochran vying for the seat.
Mohamed is the CEO of a web design and digital marketing agency and holds a BA in economics from the University of North Texas. Being successful in efforts to thwart a proposed hotel construction project, he was inspired to further his public service and sees himself as a “fresh face” to represent the shifting demographics of the city.
Fleming comes to the race with experience on the Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD school board, where he was the first African-American board member and had to fight a legal action in order to be seated. He is the CEO of a tax advisory and consulting firm, and says he wants to make Carrollton more “business friendly” and eliminate inconsistencies between the council and planning and zoning.
Cochran is a real estate agent and business owner with additional experience as an art director in Old Downtown’s Plaza Arts Center and community volunteer. She describes herself as a “community builder.” As a bi-racial military child, she says the ability to “rise above the noise,” work past differences and value diversity is one of the keys to her success.
In Place 7, incumbent Deputy Mayor Pro Tem John Sutter is facing challenger Austin Stroh.
Sutter, a 36-year resident of Carrollton who came to Texas from Georgia for college, is a licensed risk management assessor and insurance agent. He was first elected to the city council in 2015, and currently sits on the Audit/Finance subcommittee and is a liaison to three community committees. He is also president of a national youth sports league and a board member of US Soccer.
Stroh is an activist candidate whose political aspirations stem from arrests during the Democracy Spring protests. He sees cost of living, racial inequality and a closed system of city board participation as his top three issues. He works as a customer and application support professional with a BS in Computer Science ad devotes numerous hours to volunteer efforts.
Irving City Council
The Place 6 election for the Irving City Council has two candidates – Shayan Elahi and Albert Zapanta – facing off for an open seat.
Elahi is an attorney and a legal expert who has been featured on numerous TV news outlets. His top priorities are protecting diverse communities, funding police to fight crime, and “smart growth policies” to bring more jobs and retail to Irving.
Zapanta is a business, Vietnam veteran and has served as the president or president of numerous business and cultural organizations, and board member of the Irving Symphony Orchestra Association. His top priorities are infrastructure, water and flood control and transportation and land use.
Irving School Board
The Irving ISD school board race in District 4 is a three way race with Sanko S. Prioleau, Nuzhat Hye and Kendrick Paul Perry.
Prioleau has more than a decade of service with the District Improvement Committee and has served as a student tutor, according to a Youtube video recorded for a previous school board race. Information is difficult to find on his current school board run.
Perry is a fixed income specialist for a major brokerage firm, with more than 20 years of experience in financial customer service. He sees this financial experience as being key to serving the district effectively as a trustee. He is a parent of two children, one of which is in college after attending all her years at Irving ISD.
Hye has 35 years of experience in education; having been a teacher, principal and founding several educational institutions. She moved to Irving in 1989 and has witnessed the city’s growth over the ensuing years. College readiness and parental engagement are her key priorities for the district.
Early voting in the joint election for cities and schools has begun and is underway until May 1. Election Day is May 5.
(Editor’s Note: See more coverage of Hye’s campaign from NDG staff writer Rachel Hawkin’s visit with the candidate on April 21.)
The community is outraged. The options are limited. The time to do something is upon us.
The Houston Independent School District (HISD) has come to the point where it is being forced to relinquish control of ten Black and Brown schools in the Greater Houston area, in compliance with a 2015 law they have to deal with because of their failure to improve academic performance at these campuses.
The controversial and much-talked-about law, SB 1882, has forced HISD to make some very tough decisions about what they have to do about these ten schools; and many Houston taxpayers and families are not happy about the proposed actions the district is set to take.
To be compliant with SB1882, HISD has until Monday, April 30th, to have a signed contract submitted to the office of the Texas Education Agency (TEA), in order to avoid having their schools permanently taken over by the statewide educational governing body.
To help you better understand SB 1882, it basically allows HISD to enter into a contract with a qualified entity, such as a charter school, to operate a district campus and share teachers, facilities, or other education resources on that campus. More importantly, however, under the new state law, the TEA can legally takeover any school within HISD, if that school has received an “improvement required” rating for poor academic performance for five consecutive years.
The ten HISD schools on the chopping block, that fit that criteria this year include: Blackshear, Dogan, Highland Heights, Mading and Wesley elementary schools; Henry Middle School; Woodson PK-8; and Kashmere, Wheatley and Worthing high schools. All of these schools are made up of predominately Black and Brown students.
Because HISD did not want to run the risk of having TEA takeover the schools, they met on this past Tuesday to propose their next steps in order to comply with the state law.
According to HISD Board President Rhonda Skillern-Jones, the vote on Tuesday was simply to give interim HISD Superintendent Dr. Grenita Lathan the authority to negotiate a contract with their chosen qualified partner, which happens to be one of HISD’s existing charter school operators – Energized For STEM Academy.
There are many questions swirling, as to whether Energized For STEM Academy is the right entity to takeover these 10 underperforming Black and Brown schools.
Energized For STEM Academy, which has been run by Lois Bullock since 2008, currently operates middle and high schools within HISD with approximately 1,000 students combined.
Zeph Capo, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers (HFT), held a press conference this past Monday to express his wide-ranging concerns about the proposed entity and the lack of details and information surrounding the selection.
However, Skillern-Jones says the district has no other choice but to choose a partner they are familiar with on a local level, and one that meets the criteria.
“SB 1882 is the law governing these schools, and while we don’t agree with it, it is the law,” said Skillern-Jones. “We have to find the best options to help our students. The other options are closure, or do nothing, and allow TEA do come in and do what they will with our campuses. Right now, we need to focus on getting a partnership in place, getting these schools off the list and getting them back. In addition, we have to ensure that no others join them and that’s where our focus needs to be.”
To be eligible for the benefits of SB 1882, HISD has to partner with two types of entities in order to operate the charter. HISD had to either, on approval by the TEA Commissioner, (a) choose an institution of higher education, a non-profit, or a government entity that has been granted a charter under Subchapter C, Chapter 12; or (b) choose a State-Authorized Open-Enrollment Charter School in good standing.
Skillern-Jones said that while Energized for STEM Academy was the recommended option, she believes avoiding school closures and keeping control at the local-level, is the best way to deal with the challenges the district finds itself faced with, because that is what her constituents want.
According to Skillern-Jones, the HISD Board reached out to various entities in the area, as well as across the country, such as the City of Houston, Texas Southern University, Houston Community College, University of Houston, Johns Hopkins, and others, but could not find any takers for a variety of reasons.
For the most part, Skillern-Jones states that the entities they initially targeted had concerns about potential legal issues and challenges they would face having to oversee these schools, as well as the potential liability they would undertake by becoming a qualified partner with HISD.
According to Skillern-Jones, when the request for applications went out to solicit partners, only two entities responded back to HISD – Energized for STEM Academy, which is local and already operating in the district; and Generation Schools Network, which is based out of New York.
This is an unprecedented situation, which has the current HISD Board of Trustees flying blind, and having to solely rely on HISD’s legal counsel to provide direction and guidance.
As far as the details of what HISD can and can’t do, along with other critical details, Skillern-Jones states that the board won’t know anything until they have a negotiated contract to review. Skillern-Jones did say, however, that all of the schools would keep their names, identities and school identification numbers. As it relates to governance and academic control, HISD would have no regulation over the administration of the academic plan, as well as no say over who gets hired or fired, according to the rules of the partnership under the state law.
TEA did not finish writing the final rules for SB 1882 until recently, and per their own website, the final rules were not set to be published until February 26th or sooner. The final rules articulated, among other items, the definition of what “to partner to contract to operate” actually meant. The, new TEA rules (regulations) became effective on April 4th.
In essence, there is no way HISD could have known what the full criteria would be until then.
There are other questions lingering out there, such as whether the impacted schools will be allowed to keep their sports, fine arts, and other UIL-related programs and activities. Will these expectations be in the final negotiated contract? Has the HISD Board given Dr. Lathan instructions as to what the district wants to see in the final contract? Will current HISD employees be paid by HISD or by the selected entity? How will the employees’ pensions and retirement be handled? There are so many unanswered questions that the community won’t know until the negotiated contract has been finalized and prepared to send to TEA.
Getting to this point didn’t happen overnight, but unfortunately, the day of political reckoning has now come. By entering into a partnership, HISD would be able to hold off having the state takeover these schools or close them down for at least two years.
Many in the community are asking HISD to sue the TEA over their failure to comply to state testing laws, as well as for discrimination based on race through the accountability system.
HISD is on a time crunch and the clock is ticking. If they don’t submit a negotiated contract with their chosen partner before the April 30th deadline, they’ll have to either quickly find another partner within days, or simply adhere to the state sanctions, which could include school closures.
In the meantime, the Forward Times will continue to follow this issue and keep the community abreast of the latest happenings.
By the time Tasha was 14, she had been in and out of nine detention centers. She started running away from her abusive home in South Los Angeles two years before and it was clear she didn’t want to go back.
Inside a detention center one day, Tasha was matched with a writer who bonded with her and taught her how to write a “Moesha” television script. Tasha loved it so much that she decided she wanted to pursue a career in the film and television industry.
With the help of mentors years later, including the writer who first taught her how to write a script, Tasha received a scholarship from Warner Brothers. With that money, she went on to attend the University of Southern California’s Film School Program and later completed a year of law school in Chicago .
From her early years as a troubled kid, Tasha has gone from being a runaway teenager to a college graduate, an author of three books, a licensed real-estate agent, a paid script writer, a traveling standup comedian and a documentary filmmaker.
Create Now CEO, Jill Gurr
And it’s all thanks to Create Now, the nonprofit that helped Tasha find positive outlets through writing and the arts during a dark time in her life.
And since 1994, Create Now has transformed the lives of other at-risk youth like Tasha through arts education.
“We offer eight programs to at-risk youth throughout Los Angeles and Orange County,” said Jill Gurr, the nonprofit’s founder and chief executive director.
The organization offers programs in music, fashion design and digital media, and the visual, performing, culinary and literary arts.
Its most unique program, called Cultural Journeys, organizes outings for youth to concerts, plays, museums, sporting events and much more. Often, those cultural expeditions are the first time a child has attended a live performance or event, Gurr said, which is really exciting for them.
The art programs are offered to thousands of children all over the city who face life challenges, be it poverty, abuse or homelessness. And Create Now reaches children in need in several ways.
The first matches one of its 110 volunteers to a child in need.
“We have networks with 165 youth agencies like shelters, schools, rehab and detention centers, where we set up different types of arts programs and life skills programs,” Gurr said.
The second is inside the classroom. Nonprofit volunteers go into schools with a high percentage of low-income families, where they offer anything from one-hour workshops to more long-term ones that last from 12 to 16 weeks. These Title 1 schools, as they are called, often don’t have the financial resources to offer students arts education, Gurr said.
The third is inside communities. “We organize arts festivals and community events in disadvantaged neighborhoods,” Gurr said.
In August, the organization will host an arts festival at Venice Hope Park in downtown L.A. that will feature “an open mic and prizes, arts and crafts and face painting.”
And in the historically underserved South L.A., Create Now is working on instituting a writing program in the fall at John Muir Middle School.
It is also in that neighborhood where Gurr envisions the future of the organization. She said that she and everyone at Create Now dreams of opening an art center in South L.A., where they hope to continue transforming the lives of more at-risk children like Tasha once was.
As the cost of college grows, research shows that so does the number of hungry and homeless students at colleges and universities across the country.
Open Your Heart to the Hungry and Homeless is offering 10, $2,000 scholarships for the 2018-2019 school year to Minneapolis Community and Technical College (MCTC) students who are currently homeless or have experienced homelessness in the past two years. Funds can be used for education or living expenses.
With demand for technical and skilled trade positions at an all-time high, and with MCTC’s nearly 100 percent job placement rates for students graduating from their career and technical education (CTE) programs, Open Your Heart is confident that the benefits of this scholarship are twofold.
In addition to filling high-demand jobs, students are offered a real and permanent escape from a homeless life.
Since 1986, Open Your Heart to the Hungry and Homeless, a Minnesota non-profit, has supported hunger, homeless, and domestic violence programs throughout the state.
Entirely funded by the private sector, mostly individuals, Open Your Heart has also worked to ensure that homeless students have the same access to educational opportunities as all Minnesotans.
For more information please visit www.oyh.org. Scholarship applicants should apply online at www.minneapolis.edu/collegescholarships by the June 1 deadline.
—Information provided by Open Your Heart to the Hungry and Homeless
Autism is the fastest growing developmental disability in the world and in “Help Me Understand My Child: A Mother’s Truth About Autism,” author Florence Bracy introduces readers to the world of special needs.
Inside her new memoir, Bracy chronicles her inspirational journey of how she advocated for 12 years for her son who has autism. She shares the secrets of how she overcame many challenges and obstacles and what it took to support her son successfully.
One of the challenges she mentions was the act of gaining access to the proper services in school districts and regional centers that help assist children with special needs.
“Most parents are overwhelmed upon learning how to secure services and live with a child with autism,” Bracy said. “There are a lot of feelings and acceptance issues that come up. This book provides strategies on how to cope through this process.”
Florence Bracy
The book is a story of hope that will definitely interest families who have children with autism or adults with autism, and others who have an interest in the population. Bracy hopes that family members who have someone with autism are filled with a sense of empowerment after reading her book.
In addition to being an author, Bracy is a paralegal in a domestic violence clinic. She lives in Los Angeles with her family.
To learn more about the author and to join her support group, visit her website, florencebracy.com. Meetings are held in the Los Angeles area.
Bracy will have a book signing at South Central Los Angeles Regional Center from 6 to 8:30 p.m. May 4. To attend, rsvp at florencebracy.com.
“Help Me Understand My Child: A Mother’s Truth About Autism” is available for $18.95 or $9.99 (e-book) on Amazon.
In honor of April being National Autism Awareness Month, Sheletta Brundidge shares the first of a two-part story chronicling her discovery that three of her four children were on the autism spectrum.
My son Brandon was two years old when our autism journey began. He was playing with a couple of toys in the restroom while I was nearby bathing his then-one-year old sister Cameron (I was pregnant with their soon-to-be-born baby brother Daniel at the time). She was splashing around in the tub having fun and I guess he decided he’d look for a neighboring body of water to splash around in, too.
Brandon made a bee-line for the toilet and took a nose dive. Being a germaphobe I yelled out, “Noooooooooooo!” before sprinting over to pull his head out of the bowl. His face was wet, his hair was damp and he was as happy as he could be.
I immediately took Cameron out of the tub and put Brandon in, scrubbing him as hard as I could trying to get those toilet germs off his face. I remember looking at him in the eye and pleading “Son, don’t play in the toilet, okay?”
He looked beyond me with a blank stare, as if I wasn’t standing there. I knew instantly something was wrong. The light that had been in my son’s eyes was dimmed ever so slightly.
He couldn’t figure out what I was saying to him, and worse yet, he didn’t know how to respond. He began babbling and looking around as if imaginary butterflies were capturing his attention. He couldn’t give me direct eye contact.
“Oh no,” I thought, “Something is wrong with my baby!” Then I wondered, “How long has this been going on?” I blamed myself for not noticing sooner. How could I not see that my son was slipping into darkness?
I was working full-time, raising a growing family, being a mom, a wife, a daughter, an employee. I was busy keeping my house clean and too preoccupied with chores to have a handle on my child’s mental development.
I hadn’t taken a moment to notice —until my son dunked his head in a toilet — that he wasn’t behaving like a normal two-year-old.
He was lining his food up and not eating it. He was still drinking from a bottle.
He wouldn’t make eye contact. He was babbling instead of talking. He didn’t respond to his name when I called for him. I missed all the warning signs. I ignored all the clues.
My. Son. Had. Autism.
I cried. I stopped eating. I got down to 96 pounds. I was curled up in the fetal position under the table, unable to do anything except feel sorry for myself. My momma had to come and take care of my kids. I couldn’t even fold laundry or brush my teeth, because, of course, I made it all about me. I’m a narcissistafter all.
Somehow I thought I had failed as a parent and caused my son to have autism. So, instead of getting busy finding help for my child, I cowered in fear of what life had to offer a Black boy with special needs.
Since he couldn’t speak, would the police shoot him if he didn’t respond to their commands?
Would he ever be able to get a job and support himself? What about college? Without words, could he find a wife?
All the dreams I had for little Brandon were taking a nose dive out of the freakin’ window.
I had decided, that at age two, my son’s life was over and there was no hope for him.
But God reached down and snatched me out from under the kitchen table and said: “I chose you!” My spirit awakened and I realized this was a blessing: Of all the women in the world, God picked me to be Brandon’s mother. What an honor that He selected me to be the shepherd of this little life.
I had to get it together for my baby, so he could live out his God-given destiny and reach his full potential. It was all on me to get it done.
First I went to the folk closest to me for assistance. But since I didn’t have friends who had kids with special needs, nobody could tell me what to do. I tried to call on my family but that quickly backfired.
My momma brushed off my suspicions about Brandon having autism as just me being dramatic. “Ain’t nothing wrong with that damn boy. You just looking for attention; he gon’ talk when he gets ready. Your cousin Meme didn’t talk until she was 3.”
My grandmother outright blamed me for everything, “If you had just got an epidural during your pregnancy,” she quipped, “the boy would be fine now. But you wanted to do that natural childbirth [expletive]. He probably ain’t get no oxygen to his brain. That’s why he ain’t talking. It’s your fault, Sheletta.”
Since family and friends wouldn’t come to my rescue, I turned to the professionals.
Everything that I read about having an autism diagnosis said early detection and intervention is the key to success. So I made an appointment at a children’s hospital to get Brandon evaluated and tested for autism.
After three hours of checking out my son, the doctor stepped out of the room and declared, “Yep, you were right, your child has autism. Have a good life.”
Now what? What do I do with my special needs child? Does he need a prescription to keep him from flapping his hands? Or some speech sessions a couple times a week to help him learn how to talk? They didn’t give me one damn referral — not even a tip on what kind of therapy he needed or how I could go about getting services for Brandon.
I didn’t know what to do or where to turn, but I kept hearing God say, “I chose you!”
I knew this was gon’ be a “Roll up your sleeves — against all odds — me and my baby against the world” situation. So I went to my husband Shawn and asked if I could quit my job.
Without the worry of working every day, I dedicated my life to learning more about autism spectrum disorders and looking for ways to heal my child.
I didn’t want to get help for him. Forget help! I wanted Brandon healed from this autism diagnosis, so he could grow up to be the man God designed him to be without deficit or deficiency. I prayed for God to send the answer and He did.
But in the meantime, both Cameron and my newborn son Daniel were diagnosed with autism as well.
Next week, Sheletta encounters an angel who guided her through the proper therapy and medication to heal her son Brandon from the effects of his autism diagnosis. She will provide a blueprint for other parents to find services for their special needs children and scholarships that are available to pay for it all.
Public school systems throughout the nation will now be required to be a lot more transparent when it comes to school funding.
According to the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2015, all public schools nationwide, will be required to give fully-detailed reports on how and where they spend institutional funding.
The ESSA reporting requirement for school funding begins in December 2019, and supporters of the rule, including the NAACP, believe it will help to encourage greater educational equity, particularly among schools serving large numbers of Black and Hispanic students in low-income neighborhoods.
“We need more equitable and adequate funding for all schools serving students of color,” said Victor Goode, the education director for the NAACP. “Why? Because education funding has been inadequate and unequal for students of color for hundreds of years. Second, privatization forces are working to eliminate our public schools and, with it, transparency, public accountability and access to all.”
Goode said that ESSA requires a breakdown of how student need is met with a focus on equity over equal distribution for funding.
Goode continued: “That explains the reason behind the school-by-school, per pupil spending report. This kind of public transparency is a good thing and can help provide more meaningful parental and community engagement, which is also essential to accountability and achieving educational equity.”
According to the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization, based in Washington, D.C., that conducts research on solving societal problems locally, nationwide and globally, to date minority students are still far more less likely than White students to have adequate school resources.
In addition, the Brookings Institution reported that schools with predominantly Black and Hispanic children, on average, are nearly twice as large as White schools—reaching an estimated 3,000 students or more in most cities, with lower-quality curriculum offerings and less qualified teachers (in terms of levels of education, certification, and training in the fields they teach), all of which George H. Lambert, Jr., president and CEO of the Greater Washington Urban League, believes can be rectified through adequate funding.
“Through the availability of [ESSA] data, Black and [Hispanic] educators can begin to prove that Black and [Hispanic] students suffer from funding disparities and the lack of teachers in the classroom who look like them or represent their perspective,” Lambert said. “We need better, more transparent data on school funding. The availability of such data and our ability to access it forces greater urgency on what is, arguably the most important issue of our time.”
Lambert said that any discussion on educational equity should acknowledge the enormous achievement gaps that still plague Black and Hispanic students.
“If these gaps aren’t closed, our community doesn’t have much of a future,” Lambert said.” Even though high school graduation rates are better now than 30 years ago, we still face a situation where more than a quarter of Black students, for example, are dropping out. Most Black students in the largest U.S. cities are attending schools with high concentrations of poverty. Over half of our young, Black men are either dropping out or finishing K-12 late, hence 1 in 3 end up trapped in some fashion in the criminal justice system.”
Despite high approval from many civil rights organizations, school district administrators, like Robert Lowry, the deputy director of the New York State Council of School Superintendents still believe that the new law might shine light on imbalanced revenue and create the perception that some students are being shortchanged, even when this may not be the case.
“We question whether the state officials would even have the expertise and the capacity to evaluate spending levels between schools,” Lowry told Education Week.
Though Lowry’s concerns may be valid, Lambert believes that full transparency is a plus.
“This is a good way to learn about flaws in the system and how those flaws are aggravated by a lack of Black and [Hispanic] expertise and perspective in the curriculum, the classroom and the leadership office,” Lambert said. “We can also find out if school districts with a larger number of Black and [Hispanic] educators are experiencing high levels of funding disparities and uneven attention from policymakers.”
Houston Community College (HCC) is on a mission to thrill and educate young students in simulated flights to Mars, the Moon and beyond. That mission was officially launched in Greater Houston area this past Thursday, April 12, when HCC joined Challenger Center President and CEO Lance Bush to announce the new Challenger Learning Center – a place where elementary, middle and high school students will be taught how to apply the STEM subjects of science, technology, engineering and math to a trip to outer space.
This past February, HCC submitted a formal application to Challenger Center, headquartered in Washington D.C., to open a Challenger Learning Center at the HCC Southeast College-Felix Fraga Campus. HCC found out it had received approval late last month, clearing the way for the start of a $2 million fundraising campaign to support construction of the 10,000 square foot Challenger Learning Center.
“HCC is proud to have been selected as the site for the newest Challenger Learning Center,” said HCC Board Chair Carolyn Evans-Shabazz. “Houston put a man on the moon and now HCC is adding to Houston’s heritage as Space City with this project. This new partnership with Challenger Center is a perfect match made in the heavens.”
As a leader in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education, Challenger Center provides more than 250,000 students annually with experiential simulation-based programs that engage students in hands-on learning opportunities. These programs, delivered in Challenger Learning Centers and classrooms, strengthen knowledge in STEM subjects and inspire students to pursue careers in these important fields. Challenger Center was created by the Challenger families to honor the crew of shuttle flight STS-51-L.
“We are incredibly impressed with Houston Community College’s vision for a seamless STEM pathway that launches students on a trajectory to higher education and 21st century skills,” said Challenger Center President and CEO Lance Bush. “I congratulate everyone at Houston Community College on this extraordinary step to provide students in the area with a STEM experience that will spark a passion for learning that lasts a lifetime. We share both this vision and a passion for inspiring today’s youth, and we look forward to working together to open the doors of this new Center.”
The Challenger Learning Center at Houston Community College will join a network of more than 40 Challenger Learning Centers around the globe. Each Center is a fully immersive experience, including a Mission Control Room and Space Station where students work with hands-on labs, conduct experiments and analyze data during a Challenger Center Mission. Students learn teamwork, communicate with one another to complete tasks and solve problems when emergencies arise. Aligned with national education standards and informed by real science data, Challenger Learning Center Missions introduce students to careers in STEM fields and help them build important 21st Century skills.
“This will add to HCC’s growing innovative educational offerings that already include participation in the city’s new innovation corridor in Midtown and partnerships with NASA and the University of Houston to build a Mars surface habitat and other additional facilities for manned missions to Mars,” said HCC Chancellor Cesar Maldonado. “Today’s students are the innovators, explorers and designers of tomorrow. We must nurture their excitement and inspire their imagination.”
The Felix Fraga Campus, located on 11 acres at 301 N. Drennan St. in southeast Houston, offers a rigorous STEM curriculum that includes engineering, maritime logistics, drafting, math, physics and astronomy. It also has an astronomical observatory to serve students and the community.
The Challenger Learning Center will be a fantastic addition to the Houston community and will add to HCC’s growing innovation- based educational offerings.
For more information about Challenger Center, please visit www.challenger.org.
City Year believes in the potential of all students, especially those from low-income communities that attend under-resourced schools.
In an effort to bring out the best in those students, City Year Los Angeles was founded in 2007 as part of an education-focused national organization whose roots date back to 1988 in Boston.
“For the last 11 years in L.A., we have been partnering with local schools to keep kids on track to graduate from high school,” said Jonathan Lopez, the nonprofit’s managing director of impact.
Specifically, City Year L.A. partners with elementary, middle and high schools that serve children from impoverished neighborhoods who are more likely to experience trauma and are less likely to finish high school.
“In our program, we leverage AmeriCorps members to work in schools with students to help with their academic, social and emotional character strength, and we provide mentorship,” Lopez said.
The AmeriCorps is a federal civil society program that engages adult volunteers in public service work all over the United States.
With more than 250 AmeriCorps volunteers in classrooms in 31 schools across the Los Angeles Unified School District, the organization is making efforts to close the education gap with its Whole School Whole Child service model.
Through this model, AmeriCorps members between 17 and 25 years of age are placed in schools where they serve as additional resources for teachers and principals to improve all-around outcomes on campus.
“By deploying young people who are idealistic, who want do service for communities and are close in age to students, they can really help leverage positive growth,” Lopez said.
Many of the volunteers are at their assigned school sites all day, greeting students as they walk through the gates every morning, running after-school programs, helping them with their homework and providing free tutoring.
That added instructional time at the end of school is one of numerous ways the nonprofit seeks to address the needs on campus, Lopez said, which many schools can’t meet because of under resourcing.
And during school hours, these young volunteers run activities during lunch and recess “to encourage team building.”
But while the academic successes of City Year L.A. are apparent in its results, including a 2015 finding that showed an improvement in math and English assessment scores from schools partnering with the nonprofit, it recognizes that it is more than just about better test scores.
“It’s about social and emotional strength as well,” Lopez said. “[City Year L.A.] does work with students who struggle with attendance. When necessary, we refer students to school administrators to help students with those challenges.”
Besides providing behavior coaching, the organization also “runs a curriculum that helps with character strength like perseverance and optimism,” which supports students’ academic careers.
Though City Year’s influence is vast, reaching more than 320 schools across the country and serving close to a quarter of a million students, there is still a local need for more support in under resourced and underserved schools.
While the nonprofit hopes to expand its programs with more funding, it is also seeking to increase the diversity of its AmeriCorps volunteers. Because boys of color experience unique challenges in school and often live in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods, the organization is actively recruiting more men of color to serve as role models to them.
In this way, Lopez said, City Year L.A. hopes to serve “the communities we’re in more deeply around L.A.”
INFORMATION BOX
Local Executive Director: Mary Jane Stevenson
Years in operation: 11
Annual budget: $13.5 million
Number of employees: 63 full-time, 270 AmeriCorps members
Location: 606 S. Olive St., 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, 90014
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By Lauren Poteat
