My Brother's Keeper Model Community: Tulsa, Oklahoma

[Music] tulsely is really a city that is becoming more acquainted with understanding what it means to support Boise Yemen of color from Cradle to Career there are still some work to be done I'm glad that my brother's keeper gets to be a significant part in making that work happen Tulsa has experienced so much tragedy and Trauma the 1921 race Massacre completely destroyed our Greenwood Community it attempted to destroy the spirit of our black community in Tulsa with My Brother's Keeper Tulsa stands for he is a revitalization of that Spirit to say that you did not destroy us we are really striving to ensure that every part of this city is a part where bosium and color feel like they belong you know I'm from North to us it's a big part of me and who I am breaking the bills Tulsa Public Schools really solve the need for a intentional focus on early childhood and Pre-K enrollment we know that when our students participate in high quality Early Childhood programs that they are going to be much more ready to be successful in kindergarten and that includes literacy skills numeracy skills as well as the social and emotional skills that outlook for students of color and their families was really Bleak families were trying to figure out how they were going to maintain pain for child care for their children and coordinating their work schedules it was so helpful for pre-k to be available for our children it helped our family connect the kids to Athletics that was offered through the schools academic enrichment and more importantly the Arts they were exposed to that at a young age because of preschool available to us we first started working with impact Tulsa and my brother's keeper because we knew that we couldn't do this alone impact Tulsa is a collective impact organization that really strives to support school districts and understanding Equity to ensure that every student has an opportunity at success that began with efforts around spreading the word about enrollment and really engaging more with our community to understand what some of the barriers were for their participation one of the key things for them was convenience to be able to access programming that's right in their neighborhood and so we now have pre-kindergarten programming accessible in every one of our elementary schools so because of our work together with impact Tulsa and My Brother's Keeper from 2013 to 2019 we saw a 33 percent increase in the percentage of our students of color who were enrolled in our high quality pre-kindergarten programs students were 12 more likely to enroll in two and four-year universities and colleges because they went to pre-k and that's tremendous that tells us that the story of post-secondary Readiness and success can be written as early as Pre-K for my son he needed the support early on when it came to language acquisition and and saying certain words he flourished and now my son is in third grade and he is probably the most vocal outspoken person I have met he enjoys public speaking and that's kind of the benefit that we've seen when it comes to an early intervention in preschool here in Tulsa the advice that I would give to other school districts is to continue working collaboratively with community members our work is going to be more effective our results will be stronger and our students will be better served when we're all working together Tulsa is so excited to be selected as a model Community we have worked so hard at ensuring that boys and young men of color in this city have Early Access to pre-k enrollment and to be able to share our learnings with other communities it opens up opportunities for us to perceive additional funding and also for us to be able to access more tailored support from the MBK Alliance I can't even contain the excitement that we have to be selected as a model community thank you foreign

Channel: Obama Foundation

Views: 1,068

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Id: QVLqiIZ8pNQ

Length: 4min 44sec (284 seconds)

Published: Wed May 10 2023