BALTIMORE — The SEED School of Maryland is getting ready to host the seventh annual HeBrOpen—a fundraiser for the school.
The SEED School uses the money from the fundraiser to provide its students with experiences they might not otherwise have.
That money supports the futures of students like Alberta Taylor, a rising senior at the SEED School of Maryland.
She has always made sure that her grades were high.
“Once you go down a path, it’s really hard to get back up, and I didn’t want to allow that stuff, so I really paid attention to my studies,” Taylor said.
Taylor is one of the roughly 400 students that attend SEED. Nearly all of the students who attend the school will leave with a diploma.
Kirk Sykes is the head of the school.
“SEED Maryland has a 98% high school graduation rate,” she said. “But also, our students are going on to college and graduating college at five times the rate as those from similar demographic backgrounds.”
Degree attainment is the goal. But along the way, students gain a whole lot more.
“You create a lot of connections and bonds with people here, and you know those are people you can talk to outside of school,” she said. “I know if I ever had any issues or problems, I can always come back here. And they just get you ready for the future.”
Lessons learned in and out of the classroom at SEED have a lasting impact.
“They really led me to a new path and they showed me all of the opportunities that there are in the world and how it is to have a community there to actually support you,” Taylor said. “Where I grew up, there really wasn’t that there. ALl I had was my sisters raising me and my nephews. It’s just really opened my eyes to how things are outside in the world and not just where I lived at.”
Over the past seven years the HeBrOpenhas raised $500,000. The money supports students through field trips, paid internships, and international service learning opportunities.
Those external opportunities combined with the environment the SEED School provides have truly changed lives.