Bright Star community,
As we wrap up the 20-21 school year, a year like no other, I’m thrilled to share with you some highlights of our work and success at Bright Star Schools.
Make no mistake, the past 15 months have been tough. The pandemic has impacted our students, families, and communities, and we know there will be lasting repercussions for many of us.
But we’ve also seen our students, teachers, staff, and families come together to support and uplift each other during these incredibly challenging times.
Our students remain determined to succeed, and we’re proud to support them no matter what so they can achieve the biggest dreams they can dream.
Here are some bright spots of what we achieved together this year:
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2021 Graduations, College Access, and Higher Education Support |
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Despite having to complete their senior year in distance learning, our seniors persevered.
The majority of our seniors, nearly 90%, graduated last week from Bright Star Secondary Charter Academy, Rise Kohyang High School, and Valor Academy High School!
We’re incredibly proud of them.
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The financial support they've received includes full-ride scholarships from QuestBridge, the L.I.F.T. Foundation, the Leonetti/O’Connell Family Foundation, Posse Foundation, and the Kayne Foundation.
As Rise Kohyang High School grad Jonathan said of his college scholarship to UCSD: "it's absolutely life changing."
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Watch a video interview with Jonathan about his experience at Bright Star Schools and what his scholarship from the Leonetti/O'Connell Family Foundation means to him:
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All of our graduates are now part of Bright Star's Alumni Support and College Success program, which provides individual, higher education support for up to six years to ensure they succeed and graduate.
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Academic and Social Emotional Support
Academic Support
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In the 20-21 school year, we distributed a Chromebook to every Bright Star student (a 1:1 technology ratio for our 3,500+ students) and supported families' technology needs.
During our robust distance learning program, our students showed up and engaged: we saw an average daily attendance of 94%.
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Our teachers made learning accessible and engaging through technology and culture building activities with students, and they kept the social and emotional well being of students at the forefront of their planning and interactions.
As a result, in spring 2021, 76% of students in grades 5-12 reported positive relationships with their teachers, a 24 percentage point increase over spring 2020. (Panorama student survey results: 76% of students in grades 5-12 report positive student-teacher relationship in spring 2021 vs. 52% of students in grades 6-12 in spring 2020.)
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Our counselors logged over 1 MILLION counseling minutes this year to support our students during an incredibly challenging time. Two of our staff received public recognition for their work:
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In addition to providing over a half-million (520,000) grab-and-go meals to our families, counseling support, and resources to meet their needs, for the first time, Bright Star was able to offer higher education support to our families through a partnership with SoLa I Can Foundation.
Eight Bright Star family members and alumni were awarded COVID Retraining & Recovery (CORE) Fund $5,000 vocational scholarships. Some recipients were featured in the LA Times and in Pace News.
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We’ve subsequently implemented anti-bias trainings and diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) sessions for our staff, shared and continue to update our Race and Equity Resource Toolkit, and started talking a lot more about DEIB as an organization.
While we have more DEIB work to do, we were heartened to see that in a 2021 spring staff survey, 97% of staff reported that they agreed or strongly agreed that “Bright Star Schools values diversity, anti-racism and inclusion,” with results that were consistent across racial/ethnic groups. We will continue to prioritize our work to become an antiracist organization.
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We’re looking ahead to the fall with optimism. We plan to re-open our campuses for full in-person instruction, and look forward once again to have classrooms and schools filled with our students and their joy, learning, perseverance, and success.
With your support, our students’ futures will always be bright.
If you’d like to support our work with a financial gift, we’d be grateful. Your gift, of any amount, will be applied to meet our students’ and alumni’s highest needs and help us ensure they find joy and fulfillment in school, higher education, career, and life.
With gratitude,
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Hrag Hamalian
Executive Director
Bright Star Schools
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