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How One Education Leader's Newark Nonprofit Became One of the Few DeVos Takes Tough Stance as Storytime, Livestreamed: Congressional Democrats How One Texas Principal Is Hammer Her on Budget Using Facebook to Read Her Cuts, School Choice Students — and Thousands of Fans Around the World — Bedtime Stories Every News The 74 Interview How One Education Leader’s Newark Nonprofit Became One of the Few Minority-Led Groups to Win a $30 Million Federal Grant to Fight Poverty February 11, 2019 By MIMI WOLDEYOHANNES Updated Feb. 12 Mimi Woldeyohannes is a special projects & community manager at The See previous 74 interviews: Sen. Cory Booker talks 74 about the success of Newark’s school reforms, civil rights activist Dr. Howard Fuller talks equity in education, Harvard professor Karen Mapp talks [email protected] family engagement, former U.S. Department of Education secretary John King talks the Trump TALKING POINTS administration, and more. The full archive is right here. Founder and CEO of @BrickAcademy Dominique Lee talks ominique Lee made headlines as a 25- about winning $30M D year-old when he and four other fed grant, “breaking Teach for America alumni took over a failing down walls and Newark elementary school and turned it into building up kids” in #Newark’s South BRICK Avon Academy, the acronym standing Ward. for Building Responsible Intelligent Creative Kids. As was widely reported, a fustrated South Ward Lee decided to launch his own school with Children’s Alliance fellow teachers afer seeing ninth-graders at plans to use $30M @usedgov grant to the city’s Malcolm X. Shabazz High School expand health care, unable to name the seven continents or the housing, early state’s governor. childhood and other services to Newark's most distressed Now 33, Lee, and the nonprofit network that residents. began with BRICK Avon and later came to include two other schools and the South Former Ward Children’s Alliance, are poised to @TeachForAmerica increase their impact and reach. The alliance educator and current founder and CEO of was one of the few minority-led @BrickAcademy organizations to receive a competitive $30 Dominique Lee runs million Promise Neighborhood grant fom N.J.’s 3rd-largest the U.S. Department of Education in 2017. CMO, only one led by person of color. Newark’s South Ward is the city’s most distressed neighborhood, where “children and families [are] exposed to significant adverse childhood experiences and toxic stress,” according to the BRICK Education SIGN UP FOR Network. Its approach to alleviating that THE T74 generational disadvantage is to offer a NEWSLETTER continuum of high-quality schools and wraparound services for children and Enter Email Address families fom birth through college and career. The $30 million will allow the SUBMIT alliance and its partners to offer greater services in several key areas, including housing, health and early childhood. The school network includes BRICK Peshine MOST READ Academy, a pre-K-8 school run in partnership with Newark Public Schools 6 Reasons Why Singapore Math Might Just Be the (Avon Academy returned to traditional Beter Way district oversight) and Achieve Community Charter School, which launched in 2017 with Chavous: For Kids in students in the early grades and will Traditional Schools, Testing eventually extend to eighth grade. With a Can Be a Challenge. For Some Kids, Parents & soon-to-be-announced partnership with Teachers in Online Schools, another school network, BRICK aims to It’s a Nightmare educate 3,000 students in Newark over the next few years, making it the state’s third- Janus v. AFSCME: 5 Things largest CMO and the only one led by a to Know About the Latest person of color. BRICK is also looking to Union Dues Case Headed to the High Court open schools in the South Bronx and Buffalo, hoping to reach some 6,000 students and Sex Ed, America, 2016: their families in New York and New Jersey. Where the Information Is Ofen Absent — or BRICK recently celebrated its first year of Medically Inaccurate impact as one of the partners of the South What You Never Realized Ward Promise Neighborhood at a Jan. 24 You Were Teaching Your event noted by U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, who Child About Grit & recently announced his bid for president. Resilience: MIT Study Captures Techniques That Work for Babies as Young as “Every child deserves access to a quality, 13 Months affordable education in order to help prepare them for future success, both in and out of 74 Interview: Former North the classroom,” Booker said in a statement. Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue “As the former mayor of Newark, I know that on Educating a 21st Century Workforce & the ‘Most it’s strategic partnerships like this that lif up Horrific Public Discussion’ our children and help them reach their full She Ever Heard potential. Through this federal funding, South Ward Promise Neighborhood will be able to take steps toward this goal by closing the achievement gap while restoring hope of a brighter future for Newark children.” RELATED Exclusive: Presidential Candidate Cory Booker Reflects on the School Reforms He Brought to Newark as Mayor and the Education Legacy He’s Lef Behind This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length. The 74: Prior to leading The BRICK Education Network, you were one of six teachers who helped drive school turnaround efforts at Avon Academy. Can you tell me more about your experience as one of the teacher-leaders involved in these turnaround efforts? How did this experience ultimately help inform your leadership as the founder and CEO of The BRICK Education Network? Lee: The beauty behind the turnaround efforts at Avon Academy was that I was a part of a group of teachers spread throughout the district that came together and wanted a shot at transforming one of the chronically underperforming schools in the heart of the South Ward. Thankfully, the superintendent at the time was gracious enough to give us a shot at leading this initiative, and restarting Avon Academy definitely propelled us to where we are now on several different fonts. It really gave us a true diversity of student need that has really transformed our model to what it is now in addressing the holistic needs of every single child in the building, instead of simply using a school model that pushes or coaches children out or a model that isn’t conducive to accommodate the needs of different children. When you have 600 bright-eyed and bushy-tailed kids fom the neighborhood, they’re all going to have different types of experiences, so you have to design the holistic model to support all of them. Can you discuss why you formed The BRICK Education Network? I’ve always had a tenacity to ensure that black and brown children can be successful. Growing up, I was exposed to the power of education through the lens of my parents. I’m actually third-generation college educated through my dad’s side and first- generation college educated through my mom’s side. My mom is a part of the working-poor class and my dad is a part of the upper-middle class, and fom an early age, I saw my mom working multiple jobs, while my father’s life was so much easier, and it was solely because of the education my father was able to attain. As a person of color, I always knew that education was at the core of our march toward equity, which is what essentially directed me to the classroom to pursue education law. I eventually deferred my law program to enter the Teach for America corps and then I ended up stayed in the teaching profession. The moment that sparked the creation of BRICK was a graduation ceremony I attended while I was teaching. At that point in time, I was working with an aferschool tutoring program for struggling seniors to help them on their alternative assessments they needed to take in order to graduate. I quickly realized that many of these children were not able to read, and I also noticed that many of them ended up graduating because we had passed them along, and that was not something that I was willing to continue to endorse. Ultimately, I didn’t want to be involved with schools where kids, especially black and brown children, weren’t leaving the way we wanted them to. This was essentially one of the sparks that motivated me to do something different and to start as early as possible. How does your network’s charter school model stand apart fom others in New Jersey and elsewhere? When you look at our model, you can look at it in four buckets: one, strong academic programs; two, character development; three, wraparound services; and four, changing public policy. What really makes us different is how we think about school culture. We don’t look at it through a lens of control, but rather, we look at it through a lens of how we’re working to empower children to own and know their identity and essentially use their identity as an asset to society. We can achieve this by providing a safe place for our children to actually explore their identity. What we mean by this is that every child needs to have a caring adult or some relationship in the school. There also needs to be a warm, nurturing environment where children walk in and feel like they’re able to be who they are. Of course, routines and structures will be in place because kids and adults like order and we need order to ensure that things are functioning well.
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