My school is a public charter school that serves 400 phenomenal Black and Latino students, 75% of whom qualify for free or reduced lunch.
Our Speech & Debate Team provides students who are historically underrepresented in Speech & Debate with the opportunities to compete both locally and nationally in public speaking and debating.
Even though it was only our third year having a speech team, over 25 active members were extremely successful at local, regional, and national competitions this past year. We have had students advance to elimination rounds all around the country including at Yale, Princeton, Columbia, UPenn, Harvard, and Emory. We brought a record sixteen students to the State Championship last April and three kids to Nationals last year and look forward to building our program even further this year.
My Project
In order to qualify for States, students need to earn half-quals at two local tournaments. This one in March is one of our last shots for kids to get their half qual, so it's important we can take a bunch of kids. They are already working hard to put in hours after school to prepare for this tournament.
Our team is one of the only inner-city public schools competing on the national circuit.
Our kids are working so hard to represent themselves and our school at the State Championship. Last year, we had a finalist, two semi-finalists and a quarter-finalist, so we have a little bit of a title to defend!
More than half of students from low‑income households
Data about students' economic need comes from the National Center for Education Statistics, via our partners at MDR Education. Learn more
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