ComEd’s “Stay in School” Initiative Good for High School Graduation Rates

Lee Edwards | As of Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Students across Chicagoland gathered at the Museum of Science and Industry this past Saturday to engage in a Stay in School Initiative workshop.
Students across Chicagoland gathered at the Museum of Science and Industry this past Saturday to engage in a Stay in School Initiative workshop.

ComEd, Exelon and United Way of Metropolitan have once again collaborated on the Stay in School Initiative mentoring program where the main event is when students, parents and well-wishers gather at the Museum of Science and Industry to unveil and display the student’s report cards.

Originating in 2004, the Stay in School Initiative was created to provide students from Austin and Humboldt Park with tutoring, social services, one-on-one mentoring, leadership and social engagement, and parental workshops from employee volunteers over the course of a eight month workshop series.

This year, the Initiative is expanding to include students from these neighborhoods and local community organizations: Young Men’s Educational Network (North Lawndale), Project Vision (Bridgeport), Corazon Community Service (Cicero), Chinatown and the Gary Comer Youth Center (Grand Crossing) to name a few.

“We created this initiative to keep you students on track for graduation and you’ll hear more about the recent successes here today. Again, I can’t stress enough that what really makes this program work is our mentors not only in ComEd and Exelon but with all the agencies we work with as well,” said ComEd’s Senior Vice President, Fidel Marquez during the event to the students. “One of our top priorities in our organization is education; that’s where we invest our time and volunteer efforts; we invest resources to further STEM education throughout northern Illinois. It’s also a way to help students with diverse backgrounds, again, to invest in your future.”

Marquez is responsibility for leading ComEd’s economics development strategy.

According to statistics derived report card grades of students who are in the Stay in School program, 92 percent of Stay in School students seniors are graduating from high school compared to the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) graduation rate of 65 percent; 98 percent of Stay in School students graduated to the next grade level; 90 percent of Stay in School students improved their core courses (math, science) by a letter grade; and 82 percent of Stay in School participated in post-secondary educational activities such as college and ACT prep courses.

“It’s my first year but so far I really think that this is going to benefit me through the years because they’ve been giving me so much advice on how to handle yourself and since I want to be a journalist this helps me build relationships with everybody,” said Gary Comer Youth Center student Alexandria Scott.

“It’s so inspiring that Exelon is leading the way in their commitment to the community in this way, not only through financial contributions which I might just say is $2 million a year, not only from the apparition itself but as from the employees,” said Director of Education and Community Investment at United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Mandee Polansky a former 3rd and 4th grade teacher.

“We’re going to hire 15 of these students and give them paid summer internships. They’ll either be at ComEd, Exelon or one of the partner agencies. The way that breaks down is each of the six agencies are required to keep one student,” said Exelon Employee Volunteer Manager Daryl Johnson. “United Way typically will take two and all the rest of them will spread out between Exelon and ComEd.”

Johnson, as well as several other mentors in the program are Chicago natives working to make a difference within their communities.

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