Our Bridges

The Challenge

The education gap between the wealthy and poor is one of the major contributors to the socioeconomic disparities that affect many of our urban neighborhoods. Having access to quality schools is a necessary step to bridging this gap, but this alone is not enough. Successful, sustainable urban community reform requires a comprehensive approach that simultaneously considers and addresses the barriers and needs across a child’s school, home and community environments, which may include:

  • Lack of access to high-quality education
  • Illiteracy
  • Homelessness
  • Limited parental involvement
  • Substance abuse
  • Limited access to public-health facilities

The UBB Grassroots Approach

UBB seeks not only to build an excellent school, but also to develop a community support-services network to help meet its families’ needs. To that end, we will:

  1. Build an affordable, high-quality school, starting with early childhood education and extending to 8th or 12th grade, depending on community needs.
  2. Get to know our school’s families, actively listening to our students and their parents, to learn about their needs both inside and outside the classroom.
  3. Partner with local nonprofits and agencies, exploring ways to collaborate and to comprehensively address our students’ and their families’ needs.
  4. Strategically build out (previously unavailable) services to address unmet community needs.

The diagrams below illustrate our vision for (1) harnessing the diverse skills and perspectives of local stakeholders from the educational, home, community, political, and business environments and (2) leveraging these resources to develop a collaborative, comprehensive effort providing parents and children in socioeconomically-disadvantaged communities with the resources and support they need.

The UBB Model

Bridge Diagram

Bridge Diagram

We have formed three bridges by which to achieve this vision of collaborative, comprehensive urban community reform:

  • Our Education Bridge – operates our Christ-centered, mixed-tribe neighborhood school
  • Our Grassroots Bridge – works to understand the socioeconomic barriers in the lives of the families in the local community
  • Our Community Bridge – establishes partnerships with local agencies and nonprofits that are already serving the community in order to provide comprehensive support for our students and families