Higher Ground Boston can speak to the importance of the Massachusetts Education Equity Partnership report released last week (“Mass. advocates want more focus on education,” Metro, Sept. 15). Following our launch in 2011, founder Hubie Jones and I met three Roxbury school leaders and asked how we could help. They flagged early childhood development, student homelessness, and support for educators.
We supported Crispus Attucks Children’s Center to ensure it avoided shutdown around 2015; helped the center improve its funding base, increase enrollment, and become a Boston Public Schools universal prekindergarten community site; and implemented a $4 million capital project.
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In 2018, we helped launch a collaborative effort to address student homelessness with three nonprofits (the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, Project Hope, and New Lease for Homeless Families) and three Boston agencies (BPS, the Boston Housing Authority, and the Mayor’s Office of Housing), and housed 400 homeless students and their families. We and 13 nonprofits formed the Surround Care Coalition to create a school network and provide excellent education for 1,000 children at the Crispus Attucks Children’s Center and three neighborhood schools.
Our partnerships demonstrate the importance of collaboration, sharing resources, mutual accountability, and the positive impact of collective effort. We are prepared for the long road ahead and confident we can advance equity in education.
Mossik Hacobian
Executive director
Higher Ground Boston
Roxbury
