8th Graders Visit A College Campus

My name is Amy Piller, and I am the Assistant Principal at the Urban Assembly Unison School.  I am raising money so that we can hire a bus to take our 8th graders to visit Marist College.  

This is our fourth year as a middle school and we serve brilliant students who lack access to the resources that many other children their age have. Nearly 25% of our students have special needs, 14% live in temporary housing, 10% live in foster care, 17% speak English as a second language, and 92% live in families whose aggregate family income falls below the federal poverty line. At the beginning of sixth grade, our current eighth graders, on average, read at a second-grade reading level. In the middle of their eighth-grade year, on average, these students were reading at a seventh-grade level and we're excited to get them to the grade level by the end of the year.

We work everyday to inspire our students to strengthen their literacy and critical thinking skills so they can grow up to be leaders in their communities and beyond.  To realize these dreams, they need access to vantage points that allow them to see these tangible possibilities.  We secured a tour of Marist College, but do not currently have the funds for the bus to get there.  The trip is scheduled for this coming May 3rd.  We need the money by April 23rd in order to secure the bus reservation.  

It would mean the world to me and to our students for you to contribute to this opportunity.  Just the simple taste of a college campus before leaving our middle school as the light to guide their way through high school will have a powerful impact on their odds at graduation and college enrollment.  Please make any donation possible to allow our students to have this opportunity.