Mayor Ras J. Baraka today held the first graduation ceremony of the Newark Street Academy, at the Marion Bolden Student Center, located at 230 Broadway, in the City’s North Ward. The Mayor created this innovative program to change the lives of disengaged young people ages 16-24 who are out of school and without jobs. The Newark Street Academy is designed to ensure that out of school youth will remain off the streets, complete their high school educations and get good jobs. The Mayor served as the ceremony’s keynote speaker.

At the ceremony, participants were presented with certificates for completing the 12-week program, which taught a wide array of subjects, from GED preparation to nutritional awareness.

“Today we are seeing the first results of this vital program, which is re-connecting youth and young adults who were disengaged from paths to achievement and personal success with those paths. In doing so, the Newark Street Academy is saving and transforming lives, and building a prosperous and brighter future for these residents as individuals, their families and neighborhoods, and our City as a whole. I congratulate every participant in this program on their graduation today,” Mayor Baraka said.

The program of re-engagement includes social, emotional and academic learning and guidance, community involvement and outreach, volunteerism, mentorship, and cultural exposure enabling a new start to life. Ramid Brown, Project Coordinator, for the Newark Street Academy participated in the 2004 Newark Gang Truce. He has worked since then to motivate and help disengaged youth turn their lives around. 

The academic component is delivered by Dr. Margaret Stevens and academic team which are supported by Mr. Brown and his NSA Outreach staff each day with case management and reinforcement intervention.  The academic component also exposed the NSA participants to various field trips throughout the 12 weeks as well as high school equivalency preparation and nutritional awareness.  The NSA utilizes the Marion Bolden Student Center and Vince Lombardi Center for their programing.

Mr. Brown and the outreach staff are the foundation of NSA, offering the daily support system which insures that the students are situated personally and socially for the academic and community based activities in the program. The outreach staff conducts weekly assessments, keep contact with the youth both during and outside of the daily program, and offer the case management components which are so often missing from traditional educational institutions, thus making NSA a significant shift in how to approach and understand adversity in urban education.

Inclusive of this academic norm and outreach support, there is a mandatory community service component that each participant of the street academy carried out which includes public service and volunteerism. Throughout the past 12 weeks the NSA participants worked closely with volunteers from Jersey Cares as part of their Service Works and Capstone projects. Jersey Cares under the leadership of Greg Tarnacki, worked daily with NSA and coordinated their weekly volunteer efforts throughout the City of Newark in various locations such as Goodwill Rescue Mission, SWAG Project Community Garden, Branch Brook Park and St. James Social Service. In addition to their volunteer efforts, Jersey Cares provided the NSA participants on-site job training and development as part of their “Success Friday” initiative. The NSA participants also visited AT &T in Bedminster, NJ and USG in Woodbridge, NJ several times throughout the 1st cohort as part of “Success Friday.”

Once youth have completed NSA, they will be referred to the Opportunity Youth Network (OYN) – a cross-sector collaboration between the: Newark Public Schools, youth-serving community-based organizations, Rutgers University Joseph C. Cornwall Center for Metropolitan Studies, Office of the Mayor, YouthBuild Newark, and the private philanthropic community. As an emerging, innovative youth-focused initiative, OYN advocates for and provides direct educational and support services for opportunity youth in Newark – putting them on a path to academic attainment and economic security. OYN’s vision is driven by: a set of common goals and priorities; coordination and alignment of programs and services across sectors; and shared effective practices and research – all in an effort to establish a uniformity of standards for high-quality academic and workforce development experiences for young people. 

The participating community-based agencies include: La Casa de Don Pedro, Urban League of Essex County, New Community Corporation, TEEM Gateway, and Leaders for Life.  OYN represents a systems-change approach to re-engaging and effectively serving out-of-school youth.  Opportunity youth now have a viable pathway to securing high school diplomas, high school equivalency diplomas (depending on their path), and/or a workforce credential.  The “innovative disruption” of the school-to-prison pipeline is slated to contribute to the Newark City of Learning Collaborative’s goal of increasing the percentage of Newark residents with post-secondary degrees, certificates, and quality credentials from the current 17 percent to 25 percent by 2025.

It’s important to note that each NSA youth participant earns a stipend incentive for their 12 week attendance however, their full compensation will be earned upon obtaining high school equivalency completion and/or either enrollment into college or career path skill education, military service or obtaining full time employment.

Thus the NSA will remain dedicated to changing the systemic problems of the community to ensure that the out of school youth population enrolled in this program will remain off the streets, complete their high school education and become gainfully employed and productive, contributing citizen to their communities.

The Newark Street Academy runs four programs annually {four separate back-to-back 12-week sessions) and targets 60 out of school youth (15 per session). It serves out of school youth who have not succeeded in a traditional academic environment. The program provides education preparation and job training so the youth can re-engage with their communities, become productive citizens and go on to help others. It offers participants educational, job training, and social-emotional preparation and motivates them to see a connection between graduating from school and career opportunities.

The Street Academy has two components:

The first component is the learning academy, which is a classroom component that youth attend in the morning. This component presents learning in a way that out of school youth find engaging. It serves as a transition for students to either go back to pursuing a traditional education path or obtain their high school diplomas and enter the workforce. The smaller learning communities build on the students’ knowledge base in a way that is relevant to them. It engages students in small group instruction with curriculum materials that are related to and drawn from the environment where they live. Classroom instruction is integrated with field-based learning experiences. Outreach workers act as mentors to the youth, engage them in the classroom, and assist them with completing learning assignments and catching up on any missed assignments. 

The learning academy is closely tied to the community and participants have individualized non-academic goals that help them succeed. Each student has an outreach worker who is assigned to be their mentor and assumes the role of counselor, teacher, father image and whatever the student may need to succeed in his particular situation. Students are supported with guidance counseling, crisis intervention, school-based health services, substance abuse and violence prevention/intervention, housing assistance, college planning and youth leadership opportunities.

The second component is community service. Students engage in a community service project or internship in the afternoon. This is a service learning-process that connects community service learning experiences to their academic learning. Youth are empowered as a group to choose a community service-learning project that incorporates what they are learning in the classroom, contributes to the community, and develops their leadership skills. They are accompanied by their outreach worker/mentors while completing these projects. Once the community-learning project has been completed, participants have the opportunity to participate in an internship with a community, business or government organization. Each student is able to learn the soft skills associated with holding employment and to gain on the job training in a field that interests them.

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About the Newark Street Academy:The Newark Street Academy will remain dedicated in all of its efforts to go above and beyond the established norm to serve and operate with the universal mission and mindset of being a viable, tangible resource and support system for the city’s most dis-engaged youth who have struggled with obtaining success in their past endeavors due to various adversities that have been bestowed upon them. Thus our universal vision is to empower these dis-engaged youth on a transitional path of re-engagement inclusive of social-emotional learning, civic proficiency, community outreach and volunteerism essential to guiding them to become productive contributors to society here in Newark and abroad through positive mentorship, guidance and cultural exposure of transformational success.

Core Values

1. Knowledge of Self – Establish inner relevance of one’s culture and universal consciousness to affirm themselves with a level of heightened community awareness and sustainability.
2. Self-Directed Leadership – Development of the critical-thinking leadership skills necessary to make positive contributions to self and society here in Newark and abroad.
3. Innovation & Entrepreneurship – Infinite creation of innovative ideas and possibilities of entrepreneurship and ownership. 

Guiding Principles & Goals 

1. Dedication – Heighten Social-Emotional Learning Capacity; Increase Cultural & Civic Proficiency
2. Discipline – Refine and Develop Self Determination & Accountability; Establish Humility & Pride; Increase Universal Awareness and Decision Making Skills 
3. Sacrifice – Development of Community Service, Outreach & Volunteerism; Establishing Norms, Protocols & Goals

Achievement – Transitional Re-Engagement: HS Diploma/Equivalency; College; Career Path/Vocation/Skill/Trade Training & Employment; Positive Contribution to Society & Program Completion Incentive