Children born to poverty are most at risk for dropping out of high school. And high school drop-outs make up 82% of the current prison population according to the National Dropout Prevention Center Network.
With the achievement gap linked so closely to poverty, Building Bright Futures is taking steps to try and keep local children on the right path. The effort is collaboration between a number of local groups, ranging from early education to mentor programs to health care. It reaches out to children from infancy through college.
Monday night, the network of organizations met for a progress report. With Building Bright Futures only in its second year, the full impact is not yet known. But the success stories of at-risk youth on-hand for the program, give a glimpse into the difference advocates are making.
Amber Franklin faced an uphill battle from the beginning. One of six children raised by a single mother, she never even knew her father. "My older brothers were in and out of jail. One of my oldest brothers got stabbed where we were staying, gang-related. And things like that."
She was determined to go down a different path, but she needed some guidance. She found it her senior year of high school with the help of mentors with the Boys & Girls Club.
Kiera Kelly needed help, too. "I didn’t get along with my mother,” she said, “It wasn't going to well. And I got involved a lot with the courts, just a lot of violence and stuff."
She found herself at Boystown, where she graduated high school last year with plenty of patience and support from the adults around her.
For both young women, it would have been easy to keep going down the wrong path. The organizations that helped them are just part of Building Bright Futures.
John Cavanaugh, Executive Director of the collaboration explains, it’s "a comprehensive effort to improve education for all of our youth, and focusing on the achievement gap and the problems of poverty."
The gap is apparent he said, in taking a look at some local statistics. Out of approximately 10,000 babies born in Douglas and Sarpy counties each year, 3,500 are born in poverty. A third of them will not reach elementary reading or math standards. Nearly half of them will drop out of high school.
Working through Building Bright Futures, six Omaha area schools now have school-based healthcare for students whose families cannot or do not provide it for them. “We have an attendance program to improve school attendance and reduce truancy,” Cavanaugh said.
"We are continuing to expand and reach more children beginning at birth, those first three years are critical."
And then there’s the Avenue Scholars program, which is working with 500 high school students across the metro. It’s currently helping to fund college education for 75 students, as long as they keep up their grades. Franklin and Kelly are among those students.
"It just helped me to learn how different people see things,” said Kelly. She can now see a better future. For her, it means working toward a pre-medicine undergraduate degree. She wants to be a pediatrician.
She and Franklin are both taking their basic courses at Metropolitan Community College. Franklin is in the honors program. "Teaching and acting are in my heart,” she said. “I can't really decide which one I want to do, but right now I'm majoring in elementary education."
And that, coming from a young woman who was the first in her family to even graduate high school.
As part of the Avenue Scholars program, students are matched with mentors called Talent Advisors to help them reach their personal and college goals.
Building Bright Futures partners are helping some 5,000 at-risk students this year. Within the next five years, they hope to expand to serving 35,000 students. Click here for more information on programs, volunteering or donating to the efforts.
