Learning Communities Initiative Promotes Educational Achievement

Editor’s Note: The following is a feature from the USA Funds^® 2007 annual report. USA Funds Education Access Report is highlighting the students featured in the annual report to show how USA Funds is getting results for students. To access the full report online, you’ll need Adobe Reader.

Laura Gamez and her daughter Patty say a Dollars for Scholars scholarship and other offerings from the Learning Communities initiative motivate Patty Gamez to excel academically.

Patty Gamez is a 19-year-old freshman studying sociology at the University of Arizona in Tucson. She plans to one day pursue a master’s degree and perhaps even advance to doctoral studies.

And the $1,000 Dollars for Scholars scholarship is helping to make those educational achievements possible.

“Taking the burden of college finances off my back allows me to focus on what’s important: my dedication and focus on school,” Gamez says.

USA Funds provided a $5,000 matching grant to the Dollars for Scholars chapter in Tucson’s Sunnyside Unified School District, where Gamez attended school. She graduated at the top of her high school class last spring. With the help of USA Funds’ grant, Sunnyside School District Alumni Association collected more than $50,000 in scholarship funds to assist 60 students through its Dollars for Scholars program during the 2006–2007 school year.

Sunnyside is one of six communities that USA Funds and a coalition of nine other organizations are targeting in the Learning Communities initiative. USA Funds helped spearhead the effort, which incorporates the resources of the member organizations nationwide in working to increase the number of youths in diverse, low-income areas who finish high school and pursue higher education.

USA Funds supports Sunnyside’s scholarship programs as part of the Learning Communities initiative. In 2007 USA Funds awarded a total of $900,000 in grants to support programs that bolster college readiness and access at Sunnyside and the other five areas targeted by the effort:

• Orlando Learning Coalition, Orlando, Fla.
• Washington Community School, Indianapolis.
• Okolona School District, Okolona, Miss.
• Benning Heights, Benning Terrace, Washington, D.C.
• Wind River Reservation, Wyo.

At Sunnyside, Learning Communities efforts include activities ranging from Dollars for Scholars to USA Funds Unlock the Future^® .

Dollars for Scholars is a grassroots fund-raising program of Scholarship America, which also is leading the Learning Communities effort. USA Funds Unlock the Future is an early awareness program that introduces middle school students and their families to educational options available after high school. At Sunnyside some 60 students and family members have taken part in USA Funds Unlock the Future training.

The Gamez family came to the United States from Mexico in search of greater educational opportunities for Patty and her younger sister. Patty’s mother, Laura Gamez, believes that Sunnyside’s commitment to providing those opportunities through Learning Communities motivates all of the district’s students.

“I’m happy that the school district is taking this initiative,” Laura Gamez says in Spanish translated by Patty. “Without it, the students would be less motivated to do well in school, be involved and continue their education. The Learning Communities initiative encourages students to do better in general.”

Patty Gamez’s other involvement in Learning Communities programs at Sunnyside High School included serving on the district superintendent’s student advisory council and teaching elementary school children about financial literacy.

Since their start in 2005, Learning Communities activities have made a difference in the Sunnyside School District community. Manuel Isquierdo, the district’s superintendent, says the area is abuzz with talk about the schools’ added emphasis on high school completion and college attendance.

The school district is developing plans for tracking Learning Communities’ impact on high school graduation rates over time. But Patty Gamez says she already knows how the initiative is affecting the mindset of Sunnyside students and graduates like her.

“People think of Sunnyside as ghetto, as the poor, dumb side of town,” she says. “Sunnyside’s involvement in Learning Communities shines the light on the district and shows that there are good things going on here. It motivates me — along with other people — to prove that Sunnyside isn’t what people think it is.”