A Nashville school leader recently traveled to Buffalo to learn more about Say Yes. WBFO's senior reporter Eileen Buckley says like Buffalo's school district, Nashville is experiencing high poverty among students and many English Language Learners.
“We have 88,000 students and 73-percent are in poverty. We have 150 languages and dialects. It’s huge. It’s a big challenge,” said Ron Corbin, Board vice chair of the RePublic Schools in Nashville.
RePublic operates charter schools. Corbin recently attended the Say Yes Buffalo community meeting. He wanted to learn how the scholarship program is helping students succeed. Corbin pointed out public education across the country struggles with the same problems.
"We are observing, looking for different programs that are working -- making a difference, so we can possibly take a few things back to Nashville,” Corbin explained.
Corbin tells us he is at a very early 'inquiry phase' in exploring how the Say Yes Buffalo program is offering free college tuition to students who are eligible. He is very interested in the support services for students through Say Yes.
"I think the wrap around services are really critical. We have a much bigger population that we are dealing with, but you know, there’s really no reason similar efforts can’t go forward and I was impressed with the wrap around services. The superintendent of schools has a real grasp of what’s possible and is doing a lot of those things. I’m very interested in seeing how the outcomes occur over time,” Corbin remarked.
Corbin is impressed with what he learned about the Say Yes and Buffalo School Superintendent Dr. Kriner Cash's 'education bargain'.
“That’s why I was asking Dr. Cash what the particular work was that created these outcomes ,with certain things that they’re looking at, because a lot of the work that I saw in the documents, that I read, were about the ‘what’, what about the ‘how’? You’ve got to execute,” said Corbin.
