STAR KIDS SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM – NEWPORT/FALL RIVER

A sponsor’s view: Pretty cool!

To coin a cliché, what a difference a year makes. One short year ago, I was made aware of a young woman struggling to make it through the Seventh Grade in a Public Middle School. This is not a condemnation of Public Schools. It is a tale of matching the “right” school, with the needs of a particular student. It goes to the heart of what Star Kids does well—placing kids in schools that help maximize the academic, social and spiritual life of that unique child.

All Star Kids face some formidable challenges—Parents struggling with substance abuse, incarceration, often both and the vagaries of those parents flowing in and out of a child’s life.

My Star Kid faced a series of obstacles that can crush a child and put them on a path of pretty destructive behavior. My Star Kid faced the reality of both parents being incarcerated. She was doing relatively well living with her Grandparents in the South—until they became too old to cope with the responsibilities of raising a young girl, especially one just entering her teenage years.

She was sent “up north” to start Middle School and live with her stepmother who assumed legal custody of a pretty emotionally beat up young person. The real day to day nightmare started when she began attending a Public Middle School. How would you feel, coming home every single day, crying because of bullying, pressure to fit into a very different culture and having the Administrators at her Middle School, respond to the child’s cry for help, the step mother’s cry for help met with the words: you’ve got to figure it out yourself, we’ve got kids with bigger problems?

Here’s a child who had artistic abilities, was a good student, played the violin, sang in her church choir…those activities were suspended because of the peer pressures at school.

Stepmom and Aunt had their sights on the right prize—they knew the school environment was not meeting this deserving child’s needs. They contacted a local “mission based” Private school and, in turn, the school reached out to Star Kids. Can you help? Can you take a careful look at this student? What they were really asking was; can you throw this child a lifeline?

It’s one year later and our Star Kid has blossomed! Excellent grades, healthy peer relationships, exploring her artistic interests—most importantly—a happy child. Not all our kids have such dramatic turnarounds…it doesn’t always go in a straight line—but we keep trying.

It comes down to this Star Kid’s words: I’m somebody at school and they really love me. Pretty cool!