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Why are So Many Highbridge Students Unprepared for College?

Josselin wants to go to college some day and her mother ,Maria Gama , is determined to help her, despite the odds. (VALENTINE PASQUESOONE/The Bronx Ink).

Maria Gama wants nothing more than to send her 15-year-old to college. The 34-year-old immigrant from Mexico was never able to complete high school herself, and she wanted something more for her daughter.  So Gama, who works as a housekeeper and a nanny in Manhattan, looked around her Highbridge neighborhood for advice.

She quickly realized help was hard to come by. It turns out that the neighborhood has one of the lowest rates of college graduates in the city. The U.S. Census reported that only 7.5 percent received a diploma from a four-year college, compared to 18 percent of around the Bronx.  About 19 percent of Highbridge’s residents enrolled in college at one time or another and never finished.

Even fewer–5.6 percent in Highbridge–received a community college diploma, a full 36 percentage points behind New York City’s average.

During her freshman year at DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, Josselin was able to find a summer program for promising high school students in Westchester County. She spent weeks there surrounded by college bound kids, which helped open her eyes to the possibilities. “She saw the difference between people who study and people who don’t,” said Gama.

Still the hurdles are only beginning. In Highbridge, only 13 percent of Highbridge students are ready for college when they graduate. Many point to something called the opportunity gap. A new report from the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University shows in statistical terms how living in a low-income neighborhood can affect high school students’ chances to go to college.

“The poorer you are, the worse your education is,” said Peg Tyre, author who works as a director of strategy at the Edwin Gould Foundation, a non profit dedicated to funding college readiness programs for underprivileged kids. “Education is probably the most powerful lever in reducing economic inequities.” In 2011, an adult with a bachelor’s degree earned an average of $1,053 a week in the U.S., according to the Bureau of Labor. Someone with no college education earned $415 less every week.

Residents in the mostly low-income Highbridge section of the Bronx are now starting to worry about how few of its youth residents go to college —an issue that had remained under-addressed for years.

“Most people don’t even think about college here,” said Chauncy Young, 36, a community education organizer since 2004.

The initiative to finally tackle it came from the United Parents of Highbridge. A member of the parent organization, Young was among those to identify programs to prepare students for college as a key issue for the year, during one of the organizations’ monthly meetings at the Highbridge Library on August 29.

Gabriela Silverio, a community activist, writes down ideas to help prepare students for college in the neighborhood, at a United Parents of Highbridge meeting on Aug. 29. (VALENTINE PASQUESOONE/The Bronx Ink).

Community organizers and education advocates talked about college trips and college fairs, discussions about colleges between teachers, principals and students in the neighborhood’s schools. “And explain what it really takes to go to college,” Young said. “What are the financial resources available? What are the steps? Parents just don’t know the options.”

Maria Gama, who wasn’t at the meeting, moved from Morrissania to the neighborhood in February. She said many of her friends there send their children to the closest colleges like the Bronx Community College. “They don’t know about the greater opportunities they might have,” she said. Maria Gama wasn’t aware of college possibilities for her daughter until a friend told Josselin to search admissions’ requirement for a variety of colleges.

“My family was talking about college, and that’s about it,” said Brigitte Bermudez, a 20-year-old resident who grew up in Highbridge. “Children don’t care about college. But teachers should have pushed us, they should have given us the information.”

Brigitte Bermudez, 20, hopes to return to college next year. (VALENTINE PASQUESOONE/The Bronx Ink).

Bermudez went to Boricua College in Manhattan for a year, but she dropped out in June. She said she didn’t like it after a while. Her professors in the second semester were not as engaging, and she felt it was high school again. She is now trying to apply to other colleges for next year.

Bermudez’s grandmother, Aida Davis, has taken her to a few United Parents of Highbridge meetings to help her with college searches. Otherwise, Bermudez said, “there’s nobody to go through applications with here.”

Schools and community organizations have so far only taken small steps to raise college awareness in the neighborhood. Last May, two college representatives came to the library to introduce their universities. Leticia Rosario, the principal of P.S/I.S. 218, said on August 29 that her school would hold a college fair in December.

Sarah Gale, a 32-year-old business consultant and member of the United Parents of Highbridge, said the process of choosing a middle school for her son —and worrying about college ahead of time— was “nerve-wracking”. “Unless we do the research to get our youth into the right schools, there’s not much hope for them here,” she said.

Her son now goes to the Thurgood Marshall Academy, a college-preparatory school in Harlem. “He’s 13, and he knows where he wants to go to college,” Gale said. “Most of his friends don’t talk about it at all.”

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