The cut, which the financially beleaguered district said was for budgetary reasons, is especially ironic given the recent national and local initiatives, many of them supported by Mayor Nutter, that target at-risk black and Latino boys.
Ron Walker, executive director of the Boston-based nonprofit Coalition of Schools Educating Boys of Color, said the district’s decision blew him away.
“To eliminate a program that was working in the service of what the mayor was expressing and espousing is ironic to me,” Walker said. “We still don’t realize that the greatest investment is in the people.”
Only one of the seven schools where Sankofa was in place still has a mentor, and he’s been working for free since Sept. 5. That’s because Marcus Delgado, the principal of One Bright Ray Community, an alternative high school in Fairhill, believes in Sankofa so much he is desperately trying to find the money for the mentor.
“I don’t know how I’m going to pay for it, but I think it’s important to sacrifice in other areas to maintain this program,” Delgado said. “For a school like ours, where we’re the last stop for students before they get put out on the street, here’s a program that really contributed to the success of young men in our school.”