While demonstrations around Marin County are putting renewed focus on social injustice, an educational equity program in Marin City is under financial stress.
The Freedom School, an annual event for the past decade, is at risk of being about $50,000 in the red from coronavirus-related fundraising setbacks.
“The recent atrocities in our country highlight the need for the Freedom School more than ever,” said Mill Valley School District trustee Emily Uhlhorn, a program supporter. “The program is an incredible combination of impressive academic achievement, while also giving students voice and agency.”
The program is scheduled to run June 22 to July 31 at Bayside Martin Luther King Jr. Academy. School leader Bettie Hodges said the budget shortfall has arisen because the normal charitable funding streams were diverted by the pandemic toward emergency aid for such things as rent, food and diapers.
“The immediate charitable response to COVID-19 in Marin City and elsewhere was to support emergency basic needs,” Hodges said. “We thought it would be insensitive to try to raise money in an environment where our constituent families were so in need.”
Hodges said the uncertainty about whether the school could even operate this summer also hurt fundraising.
Even with the funding problems, the school aims to address education difficulties caused by the switch to remote learning during the pandemic. Many students in Marin’s low-income communities have lost ground because they lack internet access or adequate computer equipment.
“Freedom School has a track record of staving off summer learning loss and, in fact, improving reading levels during the six-week period,” Hodges said. “In a time where many low-achieving students have not done well in the distance learning environment or have had limited access to learning, Freedom School offers the ability to jump start the learning process again and provide the much needed social and emotional support that students have been denied during the shelter-in-place order.”
Bayside MLK, which has installed virus safeguards such as social distancing and sanitation protocols, is one of four Marin schools where pilot in-classroom programs are being tested in preparation for all schools resuming some type of in-classroom learning in the fall. Many of those children at Bayside MLK are likely to also attend Freedom School.
The program also plans to be active in calling for social justice in Marin and across the country. It will hold a walkathon in honor of Ahmaud Arbery, a black man killed during an alleged racial attack while jogging in Georgia on Feb. 23.
Hodges said the event is scheduled for the third week of the program with the theme of “I can make a difference in my country.”
“The entire Freedom School curriculum is built on social justice and cultural celebration and inclusion,” said Hodges. “Almost every single book is built around that theme.”
The school’s social justice focus is even more urgent now as local and national protests continue over police brutality in the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25. On Tuesday, some Marin educators called for new curricula in the schools to help children and youth process the pain, grief and anger playing out in cities all over the country.
Madeleine Ballard of Tiburon said the school takes steps to address historical educational disparities that exist in Marin and in the country between affluent and low-income communities.
“This program is such a change for the good at a time when we really need it,” said Ballard, a school donor for the last five years. “The tragedies that we’re seeing now are a direct result of a history of these kinds of social and educational inequities.”
Co’Dale Cook, a former program participant who returned as a teaching intern while in college, said the school “deepened my scholastic interests and strengthened my moral compass.”
Cook, 27, a public health specialist in Toledo, Ohio, said the program and its focus on self-awareness laid the groundwork for his career success.
“It didn’t occur to me then, but my voice was being tuned to occupy spaces in public health to convey the synergy between social justice and health promotion,” he said.
The Hannah Project, which runs the Freedom School in coordination with the national nonprofit Children’s Defense Fund, was created in 2008 to boost academic proficiency and college attendance by low-income youth of color in Marin City and elsewhere.
Since 2008, the Hannah Project has awarded more than $425,000 in scholarship aid to 62 students. The program also employs six to 10 high school and college students throughout the year and about 26 students as college-age teaching interns to help with the Freedom School.
Malachia Hoover, a doctoral candidate in stem cell biology at Stanford University, says she spent two summers as an intern in the Freedom School. She spent a third summer as a site coordinator in the program when she was an undergraduate at California State University, Northridge.
“I thought it was a really great way to give back to the community,” said Hoover, 29, of Marin City, a graduate of Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley. “It was very positive for the students to see people who look like them — a black teacher.” The books and curriculum also feature people of color, she said.
“They could really relate,” Hoover said. “They did a lot of reading — way more than usual. We made it fun. It was really positive.”
Donations to Freedom School can be made at the school’s fundraising page at GoFundMe.com.
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