The academy is an offshoot of Steppingstone Academy, a 14-month program that prepares students to pass private school entrance tests as well as exams for certain Boston public schools. But the goal of the new initiative is to help students in the district earn college degrees by working with them from fifth grade until they graduate.
Kasey said he gets good grades when he is in class but admits to missing a lot of school last year, which hurt him academically.
“I hope this will help,’’ he said. “I want to go to college and get a scholarship to like Harvard because I know it’s the best college in the world.’’
The initiative kicked off this week with 50 students from Edison and the Jackson-Mann K-8, also in Brighton, that are part of the pilot program.
“I am so unbelievably proud of you,’’ Steppingstone founder Michael Danziger said as he beamed at the students. “Here it is an unbelievably sunny day, and you guys are here going to school so you can what?’’
“Go to college!’’ the students yelled in response.
The free, college-prep program starts in the summer with six weeks of intense learning at Suffolk and continues during the school year on the respective K-8 campuses with after-school and Saturday courses. Students are selected based on need and interest, not necessarily academic performance.
“You’ll see students across the whole gamut,’’ said Yully Cha, Steppingstone’s executive vice president of programs. “We wanted to look at such things as: How are they doing in school, test scores so far, what do their teachers have to say? We’re looking for families that might not have access to a program like this because of finances.’’
Brighton was chosen as the site for the pilot program because organization leaders said they wanted a geographic location where students were likely to attend elementary, middle, and high school in the same area.
