Education

Meet the Ramsay HS student, en route to Yale, who earned more than $2M in scholarships

THE BIRMINGHAM TIMES — Ramsay High School senior Jillian Jolly, 18, has dreamed of attending Yale University since she was in kindergarten.“ I always heard that Yale was the school where smart people went. It was the top school, and I wanted to be there,’’ she said. Thirteen years later, her dream has become a reality: She has accepted a full-ride, four-year scholarship worth nearly $300,000.

Published

6 years ago

May 4, 2019

Oakland Post

By Erica Wright

Ramsay High School senior Jillian Jolly, 18, has dreamed of attending Yale University since she was in kindergarten.

“I always heard that Yale was the school where smart people went. It was the top school, and I wanted to be there,’’ she said.

Thirteen years later, her dream has become a reality: She has accepted a full-ride, four-year scholarship worth nearly $300,000.

“It’s not just a big accomplishment for me, it’s a win for the whole community,’’ said Jillian, who’s ranked No. 4 at Ramsay High School with a 4.4 GPA. “I don’t look at it as, ‘Jillian got into Yale.’ I look at it as everyone benefits from it.’’

On Wednesday, Birmingham City Schools (BCS) Superintendent Dr. Lisa Herring, along with staff and board members recognized Ramsay High School students like Jillian and staff members for being named among the Top 25 High Schools in Alabama by US News and World Report on Wednesday, May 1.

Among The Best

Ramsay was ranked No. 11 among some of the best schools in the state.

“One of the most exciting things I can do as superintendent is celebrate the accomplishments of our scholars and I say this everywhere I go, whether I see you in public or whether I see you at the park or in the school hallways or run into you at the mall, our core business is about teaching and learning . . . so whenever there is an opportunity where we can celebrate our scholars and the staff who are invested in educating them, that’s a powerful day,” said Herring.

Out of the 17,245 high schools in the U.S., Ramsay ranks in the top 6 percent, Herring said.

“I want to be very clear that this celebration is about what you give to Ramsay, what you provide in your intellectual property, what you do in your ability to make the right decisions,” said Herring, during the celebration.

Ramsay’s principal, Cassandra F. Fells said she is proud of her students and her staff and the recognition of their hard work.

“I always knew that Ramsay was top notch and I’m so thankful to be a part of your history and know that I love you and I expect great things from you,” she said.

At the ceremony, Jillian, with her mother, Jacqueline Harrell, announced that she would be attending Yale. Mother and daughter both wore shirts with the name of the Ivy League institution while Jillian’s classmates, teachers, school administrators and some family members applauded.

Wasn’t Easy

But getting where is wasn’t easy for Jillian.

Some people doubted her ability, telling her that only 5 percent of applicants are accepted into Yale, that her ACT score was too low or that her school did not have the resources as other students accepted into Yale. It was hard for Jillian to hear people say she had a “slim chance’’ of being accepted, or Yale was a “reach school’’ for her. Doubt crept in, and she almost didn’t apply. But she eventually reminded herself she was made for Yale. She had to at least try.

Following the recommendation of her 11th grade language arts teacher at Ramsay, she applied to College Choice Foundation. The Alabama-based nonprofit, which is funded by donations, was created to help high-achieving and academically talented students from low-income families apply for college and find their best and most affordable college fit.

Among other things, it helped Jillian identify colleges, covered costs for multiple college visits, offered ACT prep classes, helped her complete financial aid applications, prepped her for college scholarship interviews, helped her with her resume, reviewed her college application essays, paid for college application fees, and offered weekly one-on-one mentoring. Additionally, College Choice Foundation will continue to provide guidance to Jillian during her time at Yale and even graduate school.

$2.3 million in scholarships

Not only did Yale accept her and offer her a full scholarship, but so did most of her 11 other colleges. Collectively, she has amassed more than $2.3 million in scholarship offers from the 12 colleges, including Wake Forest University, Howard University, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Tuskegee University and George Washington University.

Jillian’s mother said she is thankful and is happy with the choice her daughter has made.

“This is a leap of faith for her because Connecticut is over 15 hours away and she’s never visited that part of the country before so it’s going to be a lot of new beginnings for her and for our family but I’m just happy for her because she’s worked so hard her entire school career and just to see her hard work pay off, I’m just excited for her,” said Harrell.

Jillian is the second Ramsay High student in the last two years to get accepted into Yale. In 2018, Ramsay student Brooklin Ballard received a full-ride scholarship.

Volunteer

In her free time, Jillian has volunteered to address youth crime in Birmingham, tutored students, served as a youth leader at church and collected canned goods for the needy. “I guess I’m a voice for the voiceless,’’ she said.

This fall, Jillian plans to major in psychology and later become a surgeon. “I just have this desire to help people and fix things,’’ she said. “I’d also like to start my own nonprofit that helps inner city kids navigate the college application process and make students more aware of the options that they have.’’

She has also impressed local city leaders.

“I’m proud of her,” said Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin. “Any time you have a Birmingham graduate who is a hard worker and is motivated and supported by family, community and her school, the Mayor’s Office and the City of Birmingham are happy to support her, too. She already has a local network of Yale graduates cheering for her, and she hasn’t even walked across the graduation stage yet. What she is doing has inspired me, and I hope she will inspire others.’’

To see Jillian’s Kiwanis Club video interview, which starts at the 4:32 mark, please visit: https://bit.ly/2IRMTji.

College Choice Foundation is now accepting applications for the 2019/2020 school year. The deadline to apply is May 24, 2019. Applicants must be a rising junior or senior currently enrolled in a Birmingham or a Homewood public city school. Applicants must meet several qualifications, including having at least a 3.5 GPA. For more information, please visit www.collegechoicefoundation.org.

Chanda Temple of the City of Birmingham Public Information Office contributed to this article.

This article originally appeared in The Birmingham Times.

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Activism

LIVE! — TOWN HALL ON RACISM AND ITS IMPACT — THURS. 11.14.24 5PM PST

Join us for a LIVE Virtual Town Hall on the Impact of Racism hosted by Post News Group Journalist Carla Thomas and featuring Oakland, CA NAACP President Cynthia Adams & other Special Guests.
Thursday, November 14, 2024, 5 p.m. – 6:30 p.m. PST

Published

2 weeks ago

November 12, 2024

Oakland Post

Discussion Topics:
• Since the pandemic, what battles have the NAACP fought nationally, and how have they impacted us locally?
• What trends are you seeing concerning Racism? Is it more covert or overt?
• What are the top 5 issues resulting from racism in our communities?
• How do racial and other types of discrimination impact local communities?
• What are the most effective ways our community can combat racism and hate?

Your questions and comments will be shared LIVE with the moderators and viewers during the broadcast.

STREAMED LIVE!
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Art

Brown University Professor and Media Artist Tony Cokes Among MacArthur Awardees

When grants were announced earlier this month, it was noted that seven of the 22 fellows were African American. Among them are scholars, visual and media artists a poet/writer, historian, and dancer/choreographer who each receive $800,000 over a five-year period to spend as they see fit. Their names are Ruha Benjamin, Jericho Brown, Tony Cokes, Jennifer L. Morgan, Ebony G. Patterson, Shamel Pitts, Jason Reynolds, and Dorothy Roberts. This is the third in the series highlighting the Black awardees.

Published

3 weeks ago

November 4, 2024

Oakland Post

Tony Cokes. Photo courtesy of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

Special to The Post

Tony Cokes

Tony Cokes, 68, is a media artist creating video works that recontextualize historical and cultural moments. Cokes’s signature style is deceptively simple: changing frames of text against backgrounds of solid bright colors or images, accompanied by musical soundtracks.

Cokes was born in Richmond, Va., and received a BA in creative writing and photography from Goddard College in 1979 and an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1985. He joined the faculty of Brown University in 1993 and is currently a professor in the Department of Modern Culture and Media.

According to Wikipedia, Cokes and Renee Cox, and Fo Wilson, created the Negro Art Collective (NAC) in 1995 to fight cultural misrepresentations about Black Americans.^[^5]

His work has been exhibited at national and international venues, including Haus Der Kunst and Kunstverein (Munich); Dia Bridgehampton (New York); Memorial Art Gallery University of Rochester; MACRO Contemporary Art Museum (Rome); and the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts (Harvard University), among others.

Like a DJ, he samples and recombines textual, musical, and visual fragments. His source materials include found film footage, pop music, journalism, philosophy texts, and social media. The unexpected juxtapositions in his works highlight the ways in which dominant narratives emerging from our oversaturated media environments reinforce existing power structures.

In his early video piece Black Celebration (A Rebellion Against the Commodity) (1988), Cokes reconsiders the uprisings that took place in Black neighborhoods in Los Angeles, Detroit, Newark, and Boston in the 1960s.

He combines documentary footage of the upheavals with samples of texts by the cultural theorist Guy Debord, the artist Barbara Kruger, and the musicians Morrisey and Martin Gore (of Depeche Mode).

Music from industrial rock band Skinny Puppy accompanies the imagery. In this new context, the scenes of unrest take on new possibilities of meaning: the so-called race riots are recast as the frustrated responses of communities that endure poverty perpetuated by structural racism. In his later and ongoing “Evil” series, Cokes responds to the rhetoric of the Bush administration’s “War on Terror.”

Evil.16 (Torture.Musik) (2009–11) features snippets of text from a 2005 article on advanced torture techniques. The text flashes on screens to the rhythm of songs that were used by U.S. troops as a form of torture.

The soundtrack includes Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” and Britney Spears’s “… Baby One More Time,” songs known to have been played to detainees at deafening decibel levels and on repeated loops. The dissonance between the instantly recognizable, frivolous music and horrifying accounts of torture underscores the ideological tensions within contemporary pop culture.

More recently, in a 2020 work entitled HS LST WRDS, Cokes uses his pared-down aesthetic to examine the current discourse on police violence against Black and Brown individuals. The piece is constructed around the final words of Elijah McClain, who was killed in the custody of Colorado police. Cokes transcribes McClain’s last utterances without vowels and sets them against a monochromatic ground. As in many of Cokes’s works, the text is more than language conveying information and becomes a visualization of terrifying breathlessness. Through his unique melding of artistic practice and media analysis, Cokes shows the discordant ways media color our understanding and demonstrates the artist’s power to bring clarity and nuance to how we see events, people, and histories.

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California Black Media

On Your November Ballot: Prop 2 Seeks to Modernize Public Education Facilities

Proposition 2 would authorize the state to issue $10 billion in bonds with $8.5 billion dedicated to elementary and secondary educational facilities and $1.5 billion for community college facilities. If approved, the proposition will make changes to the formula used to determine the amount each district is required to contribute to be eligible to receive state funding from the bond revenue. It would also require the state government to cover between 50 and 55% of construction project costs and 60 and 65% of modernization project costs.

Published

3 weeks ago

November 4, 2024

Oakland Post

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond (Courtesy Photo)

By Edward Henderson, California Black Media

Proposition 2 would authorize the state to issue $10 billion in bonds with $8.5 billion dedicated to elementary and secondary educational facilities and $1.5 billion for community college facilities.

If approved, the proposition will make changes to the formula used to determine the amount each district is required to contribute to be eligible to receive state funding from the bond revenue. It would also require the state government to cover between 50 and 55% of construction project costs and 60 and 65% of modernization project costs.

Supporters argue that the money is critical for making safety improvements in schools, as well as modernizing science labs, performing arts spaces and kindergarten classrooms. School districts in lower-income areas have no other way to pay for these improvements.

According to the Public Policy Institute of California, 38% of students attend schools that don’t meet the state’s minimum safety standards. The research shows that schools with sub-standard facilities tend to have students with lower attendance rates, lower morale and lower overall academic performance.

California Black Media spoke with a Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) spokesperson on why she believes it should be a YES vote on Prop 2.

“Measure US, Los Angeles Unified’s Local Public Schools Safety and Upgrades Measure on the November ballot would provide $9 billion to upgrade Los Angeles public schools for safety and 21st century student learning and college and career preparedness. The average annual cost to property owners is estimated at 2.5 cents per $100 of assessed (not market) property value. The Los Angeles Unified Board of Education adopted a Resolution on October 22 to support Los Angeles Unified’s Measure US, and State Propositions 2 and 4,” the spokesperson said.

Opponents argue that the state should include school repairs in its regular budget instead of putting the burden on taxpayers. Opponents also argue that the proposition would not directly impact students. The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association is on record as one of the organizations opposing the proposition.

“Proposition 2 is $10 billion of bonds, new state debt, to pay for school facilities. It is almost certain to result in higher property tax bills, because school districts must provide a ‘local match’ of funds in order to receive money from the Prop. 2 state bonds. That will lead to districts issuing new local school bonds, which are paid for by adding new charges to property tax bills,” said Jarvis.

Opponents also have voiced concerns about what they view as an inequitable distribution of funds. They believe that lower-income school districts should receive a greater share of the state’s sliding scale for matching funds.

“Enrollment is declining in both K-12 district schools and community colleges and the declines are projected to continue. But Proposition 2 commits California to pay an estimated $18 billion, including interest, for school buildings that may not even be necessary. Vote no on proposition 2.”

A “yes” vote gives approval to the state to issue $10 billion in bonds to fund construction and modernization of public education facilities.

A “no” vote will prohibit the state from issuing $10 billion in bonds to fund construction and modernization of public education facilities.