Say Yes Buffalo leaders had a chance to share their story as they appeared before a national panel. WBFO'S Focus on Education reporter Eileen Buckley says were invited to share how the local community has worked together for the college scholarship program.
"We have every major stakeholder group in our community not only supporting, but engaged with the process," said Alphonso O'Neil-White, Chair, Say Yes Buffalo Scholarship Board. He was part of the leadership team who traveled to Washington Wednesday. They appeared before 'A Working Model of Cross- Sector Collaboration' panel to explaining how it has successfully created a public-private collaboration in giving students an incentive to stay in school.
"Adding hope to the process, giving them some vision for their future and by keeping them engaged and excited about it," said O'Neil-White.
The group was led by Say Yes Buffalo executive director David Rust. Say Yes Buffalo received a national award and was recognized for the strongest collaborative governance model.
"In having higher education, the Board of Education, county government, city government, the parents, foundations and more all behind this common goal," noted Rust.
One of those foundations is The John R. Oishei Foundation.
“The John R. Oishei Foundation places a priority on funding community partnerships that strive to address social change in Western New York. To have one of those efforts, the Say Yes Buffalo Partnership to be recognized at the national level and be held up as a best practice for other cities to learn from is an incredible honor and rightly recognizes the dedication this community has demonstrated toward putting individual agendas aside to find new ways of working together to strengthen educational opportunities for students in Buffalo," said Blythe Merrill, Senior Vice President for Programs of the Oishei Foundation.
Say Yes appeared as part of a two-day celebration of the Talent Dividend Initiative developed to allow cities to promote high school and college completion as part of economic development strategy. Mayor Byron Brown joined the group in D.C. saying public-private collaboration is key to the city's economic success.
"It certainly demonstrates that this is being viewed national as a national best-practice, as a model that should be adopted in communities," said Mayor Brown.
The city has provided $1.3 million to the program.
Buffalo School board member Larry Quinn also traveled with the Say Yes group. Quinn said it's now time for the board to step up to improve graduation rates.
"We have so much systemic improvement that we have to make that to make really make real achieve I think the school board has a lot of work ahead of us," noted Quinn.
Long-time parent advocated of the Buffalo Public School District, Samuel Radford also traveled with the Say Yes group.
“Parents are excited about what’s going on in Buffalo schools with the Say Yes Buffalo Partnership—new services for students and families are coming into schools and kids are going off to college. The District Parent Coordinating Council is proud to be one of the founding members of the Say Yes Buffalo Partnership and looks forward to sharing this award with the many other community members that make this partnership one that gets results and one to be proud of," said Radford, President, District Parent Coordinating Council.
While Akron, Ohio received the top, $1-million prize for increasing the number of post-secondary degrees, Buffalo was still thrilled to be recognized as providing access to college for more Buffalo students.
