Michele Campbell, the executive director of the LeBron James Family Foundation, recently took the opportunity to express her feelings about the way supporters of LeBron’s I Promise School were treated by the Akron Board of Education. In the board’s last meeting of the year on Dec. 18, Campbell directed her comments at outgoing president Derrick Hall over an email she allegedly sent to him in July that received no response, and what she believed was an unfairly conducted examination of the school’s performance.
“My email received no response. We all know what happened next,” Campbell said at the meeting. “At a very painful time, trust was broken. As I watched, countless others speak freely at board meetings without a shot clock closing in on them. Our supporters signed up to speak but were not granted the opportunity to do so … our parents, supporters and team members were cut off and not allowed to have their full voices heard.”
I Promise School Has A Herculean Task
LeBron opened the I Promise School (IPS) in his hometown of Akron, Ohio, in 2018. IPS is a joint effort between Akron Public Schools (APS), the I Promise Network, and the LeBron James Family Foundation. It’s a school under the APS district that receives traditional state funding, but it also receives support from the foundation, and offers a variety of resources that most district schools do not — like free uniforms, tuition to the University of Akron when students graduate high school, and family services like GED classes and job placement assistance.
Like any other school, the progress of its scholars is tracked and reported to determine efficacy.
In the first couple years the results were promising both on internal IPS tests and statewide standardized tests. IPS scholars are overwhelmingly economically disadvantaged, 29 percent were students with disabilities, 15 percent were English language learners, and over 80 percent were minorities. To bring this scholar population up to grade-level proficiency is a herculean task for all the obvious reasons.
Then the pandemic hit and the scholars experienced massive learning loss due to school closure, remote learning, and other pandemic-related issues.
Think of whatever issues were experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic and then imagine the impact on the poor and most vulnerable.
It Will Take A Connected Community To Help These Kids
Then in July of this year the APS released their findings on an examination into the school’s academic progress and the main takeaway was the current class of eighth graders at IPS hasn’t had a single student pass the state’s math test since the group was in the third grade.
Every media outlet ran with the story and it spread like wildfire. The results are what they are but there was nuance and perspective clearly missing from the headlines.
As any education expert will tell you there are multiple factors at play when looking at a school and its scholars’ academic performance.
IPS is a young school, only 5 years old, and it targets disadvantaged students performing a year or two behind their current grade level.
The work to help these Akron students will take a collective community effort, not adults bickering in the press.
