Every city high school will have a full-time “dream director,” according to the goal of a $500K campaign Mayor John DeStefano and business leaders launched Monday to expand an experiment hatched by recent Yale grads.
The experiment, called the “Future Project,” connects high school kids to adult mentors who help them draw from their passions to launch community projects, such as an anti-bullying campaign or a hip-hop recording studio.
Yale grads Andrew Mangino and Kanya Balakrishna launched the program in 2011 in New Haven and two other cities. Three city high schools — Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School, High School in the Community, and New Haven Academy — each have a full-time “dream director,” each working with a core group of 30 to 50 kids. (Click here and here to read more about the program.)
Some of those kids headed to Long Wharf Monday evening to join adults announcing the program’s next step. Lynne Fusco, president and CEO of Fusco Corporation and chair of the Future Project’s organizational board, invited top movers and shakers into the Water Club at the Long Wharf Maritime Center, aka the “Fusco building,” to hear about the project over prosciutto-wrapped melon slices, pigs-in-a-blanket, wine and bottled beer.
Mayor John DeStefano (pictured with Future “fellow” Kevin Rivas, a student at Wilbur Cross) reflected on the city’s school reform effort, which he launched in 2009 to address years of educational failure under his tenure. He recounted how the teachers union stepped to the plate with a landmark teachers contract that paved the way for reform, and how Yale and the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven followed through with a college scholarship program. Then he announced the next phase: becoming the first “dream city,” where all high schools have an official, full-time “dream director.”
Future fellows.
New Haven’s public school district plans to expand the Future Project to all nine high schools next year, DeStefano announced. That will happen not with city taxpayer money, but through private fundraising. He announced a goal of raising a half-million dollars to support the expansion. And he pledged to use his political capital to help make that happen.
“I and the Future Project will be following up with some of you,” DeStefano said.
The room included business executive Carter Winstanley, Yale’s Bruce Alexander, Gateway Community College President Dorsey Kendrick, state education Commissioner Stefan Pryor, and leaders from New Haven’s nonprofit world.
Tim Shriver (pictured), president and CEO of the Special Olympics and a member of the Future Project board, added a celebrity pitch. A product of the Kennedy and Shriver families, Shriver graduated from Yale University in 1981 and taught for a while at Hillhouse High School. (He noted that he once considered running for mayor against DeStefano, but thought better of it.) He called the Future Project a great example of grassroots school reform, where change comes from the bottom up, based on what kids want, not what adults deem best for them. He said the program embodies the old adage that good educators must “light a fire,” instead of “fill a pail.”
Future Project co-founder Mangino (a former Independent journalism intern), said the fundraising campaign has already gotten off to a start with support from Fusco and Yale. Yale President-Elect Peter Salovey just joined the Future Project’s organizational board, Mangino said. Yale has pledged $25,000 towards the effort, and a Yale undergraduate philanthropy class is contributing $15,000.
DeStefano Monday pledged to continue to find more donors. “We’ll make a list,” he told Mangino.
“These kids will pay it back over and over and over,” DeStefano told the crowd.
Students showed some of their talent in presentations before the potential funders and supporters Monday night. Yulonda Zanders sang a Futuristic version of Katy Perry’s “California Girls.” Gerald Conyers (aka Gmoney Da Truth) and Michael Rivera (aka AR Mike) rapped a few lines.
Gerald and Michael (pictured), both students at Wilbur Cross High, said they are working on launching a hip-hop studio at their school to serve as a motivator for kids keeping their grades up. Just as kids have to keep up their GPAs to stay on the football team, they said, students will have to do so to earn the right to record songs in their studio.
Click on the video at the top of the story to watch the students’ performance.