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Bright Star Featured in Education Next

June 30, 2021

We’re thrilled that Education Next featured our Alumni Support and College Success program, our incredible alumna Lourdes Rea, and our ASCS director Genoveva Cortes! At Bright Star, we’re proud to stand with our students for nearly 20 years -- from their first day of kindergarten through their graduation from higher education.

From Education Next, “Charter Schools Go to College” by Jon Marcus: “An ‘alumni college success’ coach from Bright Star Schools, which runs three charter high schools in Los Angeles, helped Rea put together an admissions essay to transfer to the University of Southern California, get financial aid to avoid the debt she feared, and win a coveted digital-media internship at a major entertainment company—all while cheering her on along the way.”

“That high-school coach ‘has been the most important person in my educational journey,’ said Rea, now 22 and a junior at USC majoring in business administration with an internship at the Walt Disney Company on her resume. ‘She would always check in with me, and we would go back and forth with different situations that I had. Her support is not just school; it’s being there for me when things get really hard.’”

“The Bright Star Schools network has a coordinator of its alumni support and college success program (ASCS, pronounced “ask-us”) at each of its three high schools. These counselors help seniors with financial-aid applications and teach skills including time management. Students are required to get to know their ASCS counselors before they can receive their diplomas.

“‘If our students don’t know us and trust us, they’re not going to willingly let us track and support their progress,’ said Genoveva Cortes, the program’s director."

Read the full story on Education Next here.