African Achievement Leadership Program SFUSD
African-American Leadership Initiative!
This is the way
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Testimony on growing the program
“AAALI's purpose is to promote the success of African American students and families by supporting academic and social-emotional learning, elevate effective practices and strategies, and cultivate leaders in the work of deconstructing systemic barriers to African American achievement.” African Achievement Leadership Program SFUSD
~ Dorothy Clark and Adrian Perez
The African American Achievement and Leadership Initiative or AAALI was created 11 years ago to interrupt the undesired educational outcomes affecting African American students. The interruption starts with holding SFUSD, city agencies and all stakeholders accountable for providing and supporting educational opportunities. Their work to strategize and implement supports to create tools that allow the success of Black students, their families/communities is a great and equitable resource.
The AAALI team’s four programs, led by Laticia Erving has seen success in outcomes for participating students according to their 2022-2023 annual report:
AAPAC, the African American Parent Advisory Council serves over 300 families monthly. Mauricha Robinson manages the program with a 100% satisfactory rate for participating families. Offering Affinity spaces for families to advocate collectively and freely in a safe space. These meetings also uplift the children’s first educators, and the parents. They are given tools and strategies to continue their education in the home. Many parents, me included, leave these meetings with the power to advocate for their families.
BSR, Black Star Rising is a STEM program designed to allow Black students an opportunity to experience a culturally relevant, rigorous coursework focused environment. This program had a successful 2 sessions of 62 students and 81.6% being on track to graduate. My son, Adrian, was one of the 62 students in the Freedom Academy and Summer. Below are his thoughts on his experience:
BSR stands for Black Star Rising and it's a program for young black scholars on the weekends during the school year or weekdays in the summer. In BSR, you learn STEM by building and completing projects as a group.
Having Black male role models in the classroom teaches me about STEM materials. An example of this is Mr. Bey who taught us how to build a moon base. He then taught us the engineering behind the moon base to protect the astronaut. We also learned the mechanics of airplane flight. While Mr. Bey was teaching us this, he was also teaching us advanced ways to solve math problems. I still use some of the methods to this day and they have helped me, especially on tests. I think all the staff (Mr. Harris, Mr. Bey, Mr. Stuart) and their styles of teaching benefit you in ways you may not realize until months later. Mr. Harris taught me discipline and motivated me to have good habits. Mr. Bey taught us how to expand our thinking and always be open-minded. Mr. Stuart taught us to stay consistent with not just working on math problems but in real life. Also, when you stay consistent, you will see results. During this program we didn’t just learn about STEM we learned about our culture and how Black is beautiful and powerful. He would constantly drop so much knowledge on us, that I couldn’t pick it all up.
This program helped students like me because it kept me busy, and out of trouble and it’s not every day you get to learn stem from a black mathematician. While in this program we explored a science lab and we got to see a human brain which was really cool. Also, we got to talk with scientists and that made me want to explore other career paths.
I can’t wait to begin BSR as a new coming 10th grader and what I'll learn about myself and culture.
PITCH, Professional Capacity, Instructional Guidance, Transformational Midsets, Collaborative Culture, and High-Quality Staff. This multi-year program addresses barriers to student achievement in 20 elementary and middle schools. Funding is received for strategies to create high-quality learning environments. A 21.7 decrease in absenteeism was achieved in these schools. As the parent of two students who attended PITCH school, seeing the constant improvement of both students and staff was encouraging.
The next program is one that I would love to see in every school with a Black population.
MCI, Mastering Cultural Identity, classes are taught during school days by Black teachers. A mentoring program that offers lessons of historical and present culture, while developing a positive identity, leadership skills, and agency. MCI students have a 93.9% attendance rate with 65.5% showing academic growth.
In my opinion, the reason why these programs continue their successful trajectory is because of their understanding that the success of the child is dependent on the care of the whole child.