How One School Offers an Education in Equity to a Whole City
As headlines across the country and data from a range of sources revealed this past year, the COVID-19 pandemic has not impacted everyone in the same way. In addition to disparate impacts on employment, food security, and health, communities of color have often also been impacted by unequal access to remote learning technology or in-person instruction and support.
While Nativity Prep’s students, families, and alumni have certainly faced significant challenges this past year, our school community is not new to the issue of inequity. For 30 years, Nativity has been providing a tuition-free, high-quality private educational opportunity to precisely the Boston communities that have been hit hardest in this past year.
However, it is our “from classroom to career” approach – providing an intensive extended-day, extended-year program for our fourth through eighth grade students and then lifetime graduate support programming to our alumni – that has made Nativity ready to address far more than educational inequity. In the wake of the racial unrest last summer, businesses and industries across the country have made public commitments to improving workforce diversity and building a more equitable business world. Our 30-year history has taught us that addressing economic inequity and workforce diversity starts much earlier than the hiring process. It is the combination of our rigorous educational program and extensive Graduate Support programming – made possible by support from the Johnson Scholarship Foundation and partners – that prepares our students not just to access opportunities at top high schools on full scholarship, but also to gain the tools, character, and commitment needed to thrive in a business world that is not always equitable.
In a recent NBC10 Boston/NECN special feature, “An Education in Equity,” this connection between educational equity and workforce diversity was explored more deeply through the lens of Nativity Prep’s experience. The program featured prominent Black leaders in Boston: Lee Pelton, President of Emerson University and CEO-elect of the Boston Foundation; Linda Dorcena Forry. former state representative and VP for Diversity & Inclusion at Suffolk Construction; Michael Holley, NBC Sports Reporter; and several Nativity alumni, faculty, and students in conversation about Nativity Prep’s “from classroom to career” approach, which offers one valuable model for addressing the inequities that are more apparent today than ever.
Watch the entire segment by clicking the link here.