AT&T grant funds Netter Center youth outreach program

Since receiving $300,000 from the AT&T Aspire Local High School Impact Initiative for the Academic Support & Enrichment Program, the Netter Center for Community Partnerships has been hard at work to encourage ninth graders at Sayre and University City High Schools to improve their academic performance and graduate on time.

Faculty at Sayre High School, on 58th and Walnut streets, and University City High School, on 36th and Filbert streets, are using the grant money to spark an interest in life after high school.

The Netter Center was one of over 1,000 applicants to the grant, and the only recipient in Pennsylvania. They proposed a program that would focus on the ninth grade, the key dropout year in urban public schools across the country. According to Netter Center Associate Director Cory Bowman, 50 percent of ninth graders in certain Philadelphia high schools drop out.

Sayre used some of the money to expand the current Penn’s Pipeline Program to ninth grade students. Twice a week, two different groups come to Penn to learn about health science from Penn Medicine students and their undergraduate assistants. According to AT&T Aspire ninth grade coordinator Alex Rausch, the small age difference between Penn undergraduates and high schoolers allows the ninth graders to see what the undergraduate experience is like.

“It’s not just for kids with a health science interest,” Rausch said. “The main theme is just exposure — students in ninth grade don’t even know what they’re interested in.”

Using the AT&T grant money, Sayre was also able to include freshmen in the Class of 1980 Mentoring Program that had previously only focused on upperclassmen. Graduates of Penn’s Class of 1980 serve as mentors for Sayre students and donate money that allows students to take field trips once a month to visit different career paths. This semester, their plans include taking the students to theEnterprise Center and to City Hall to talk to a judge.

The brunt of the grant money is directed at ongoing college visits to Penn, Drexel University and Temple University, as well as a variety of after-school workshops.

“The AT&T grant is special because it allows us to focus on the entire ninth grade and to start building from that year with a comprehensive set of supports and activities and with have a maximum impact on college readiness and college completion,” Bowman said.

According to the University City High Community School Site Director and Director of the Student Success Center Patrice Berry, even though seniors have a more time-sensitive need, focusing on college and careers early on in high school will help students stay on track for success.

“By not focusing on the ninth grade and on the 10th grade we’re replicating the problems seniors face,” Berry said.

UCHS adopted a program similar to Sayre’s. Recently, they hired Academic Support and Enrichment Coordinator Anthony Brown, who interviewed every freshman at the high school to tailor workshops to the students’ specific needs.

From these interviews, Brown decided to avoid conducting the traditional large group college visits. Instead, he takes groups of five to seven students on college visits twice a week with mentors from the school. Brown is also bringing in a variety of Philadelphia business leaders to present on different career opportunities.

In order to measure their success, the Philadelphia school district is providing the Netter Center with student record data in the program to help them monitor their impact and make necessary revisions.

The high schools’ faculty have already noticed improvements: UCHS noticed more freshman traffic in their Success Center than ever before, and officials at Sayre will soon see students’ report cards for the first time since the new programs were launched. They plan on giving special attention to those with lower grades.

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