A school for homeless kids gets backing from Steve Jobs’ widow

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RISE High co-founder Eric Whalen works with a student.
RISE High co-founder Eric Whalen works with a student.
Photo: XQ Institute

A kid moving from shelter to shelter or in and out of foster case has more immediate needs than getting to school regularly. But what if the school could come to them?

Two educators in Los Angeles have a plan to do just that and their bold idea has earned them a $10 million grant from a school redesign competition funded by Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.

Kari Croft and Erin Whalen hope to reach more than 500 of Los Angeles County’s 30,000 homeless youth with a charter high school called RISE High, which will draw on space for classrooms from local nonprofit organizations and use a converted bus that will serve as a mobile resource center.

RISE High was one 10 schools to win grants from XQ: The Super School Project. Powell Jobs and contest administrators asked educators nationwide for proposals to update current high school models.

Details on the other award-winning proposal can be found on the XQ Institute website.

“We started to realize that . . . the traditional school setting that we were both working in was really limiting,” Croft told the Los Angeles Times in a story published Thursday. “They were getting penalized for missing the full range of services they needed.”

Croft, the founding principal, is currently running a pilot classroom to focus on academics. There will eventually be a few other sites around the city and the mobile resource center will be equipped with Wi-Fi, a classroom, and laundry to help the neediest kids.

Croft told the Times that RISE will operate year-round, train its teachers to help students who have experienced trauma and work with social service organizations to help students with health care, legal services, nutrition and other programs.

Source: Los Angeles Times

https://youtu.be/IUFIRUrwOSU

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