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Ninth graders Zaire Sadiki (left) and Troy Dorsey (right) travel across town to attend Saturday morning classes at Georgetown University.
The program is poised for big changes with a donation of $10 million from Boston businessman Daniel Meyers, who learned about the program from Georgetown president John DeGioia. The newly renamed Meyers Institute for College Preparation will accept a new cohort every year for the next 10 years—no more five-year gaps between groups. The first of those incoming 7th-grade classes enrolled last fall. DeGioia says the Institute will “allow Georgetown to strengthen [its] commitment to—and engagement with—the educational success of students in the District of Columbia.”
That means Brown-McKenzie needs more staff. With more than 50 new 7th graders each year, she will need an assistant program manager as well as separate middle and high school coordinators. She is determined to preserve the program's intimacy by hiring colleagues who will match her devotion to the kids, and in that regard she is getting plenty of help. “Parents who've been in our program come and meet every candidate,” she says, “and we ask some of the alumni to come in too because they have an intuitive sense” of who has what it takes and who does not.
Bullock hopes that alumni will return to sustain the program. “These young people will lead the change in their community,” he says. “Some of them have already asked what it would take to start their own charter school so that such an experience isn't just for a few kids at Georgetown on a part-time basis but one that happens Monday through Friday in a regular school setting. When I hear alumni say this, I tell them 'If I die tomorrow, I will be just fine. I've achieved every possible dream I could have because of their success.'”
If the program grows according to plan, coffee shops surrounding Georgetown and other D.C. universities could be full of the confident voices of students with the same life experiences and drive as Dominique Cauley, who says she's learned how to hold her own.
“There are certainly times on this campus where voices like mine aren't heard. And if I have to be the one screaming it, I'm okay with it.” She smiles, “I'm so okay with it.” 
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On a Saturday morning this past October, the 9th-grade students in Georgetown's newly named Meyers Institute for College Preparation trickled into a classroom in the campus Intercultural Center. A two-gallon jug of Sunny Delight sat on a table in the front of the room, next to stacks of plastic cups and SAT worksheets.
Whether slouching in their seats, leaning forward over their notes, or perching with careful high school nonchalance, nearly every student participated in class, answering questions or commenting on others' answers. When most of the students clamored to debate a math problem on the board, a boy in the back wearing a hooded sweatshirt said the answer under his breath. The girl sitting next to him looked over and asked quietly, “You good at math?”
College is a high priority for these 9th graders. When asked where they'd like to go, a soft-spoken boy named Derrick Thomas who plays bass drum in the school band and designs Web pages ran his hand over his hair and said, to the side, “I want to go far, far away.” Tiara Mundaray has her sights set on Atlanta's Spelman College, an historically black liberal arts college for women.
These students clearly care about their education, even amid many other commitments. Michelle Tate, a lean girl with a high ponytail, listed her responsibilities outside the program: “I play basketball, softball, I run track, I do community service at my recreation center, and sometimes when I've got free time I watch TV, help my sister out with her two babies, or go outside and be with my friends.”
How does she stick with the program? “It's just that we got to set our priorities about what comes first and what comes last,” she said. “My education comes first.” She tries to encourage her friends to get on board too. “I'm like, 'It's going to be fun.' And they just don't feel like it, and I say, 'Y'all are missing out.'”
—S.D.
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Photo: Hector Emanuel
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