The Black Student Achievement Program (BSAP) at Hammond High School hosted a senior’s award banquet recently .
The Howard County Public Schools System (HCPSS) BSAP which was established in 1986 was created to close the achievement gap between black students and the general student population. Its mission is to steer students on a path to academic and career success through expectations of maintaining high grades and becoming active in school activities and in their surrounding communities.
To keep the program’s purpose relevant, Hammond’s senior award banquet is more of a celebration for its black student participants on graduating from high school, according to Hammond’s BSAP coordinator, Jaracus Copes who is serving in his second year at Hammond. “Not everybody is going to go to college and we need to show them that this is a big deal that you’re graduating from high school because we know that a lot of students do not graduate from high school,” said Copes.
In the 2015-16 academic school year, Copes says there are 145 BSAP senior students at Hammond. For a variety reasons, some students were not able to make the event but Copes estimated that around 50 0r 60 students attended last year’s BSAP senior award banquet.
Some students at the event were recognized for their academic achievement in their ability to maintain a 3.0 grade point average (GPA) or higher. Back in April, Hammond hosted the “Celebration of Excellence” where seniors from every high school who met the GPA standard were awarded certificates and medallions by the council of elders of the BSAP. At this year’s award banquet Copes handed out the certificates to those students who couldn’t attend the event.
“From where it started it’s an ever revolving program. I like the fact that every school is different and we have great people at all the high schools who are really pushing minority students towards success,” said Copes.
In in an effort to uphold its goals of ensuring black student success, Copes noted that plans were discussed in the last parent meeting for the year. During the meeting, teachers and parents talked about ways to increase parental involvement in their student’s academic endeavors. Specifically, plans for next year that were mentioned were about taking students to the Congressional Black Caucus and touring the White House. “The key is to get them exposed to things that they may not be exposed to normally and to show them that this is attainable just by being there and experiencing that,” said Copes.
“I think that we are doing well where we are,” said Copes, in term of funding the program’s events and services offered to it students. Copes pointed out that a lack of funds is usually the main cause for many programs to cease its operation all together. “I would like to see more money being put into it to really be able to affect some changes in the black community. Just think what we could do and how many more lives we could affect if we had more money to do it, said Copes.
The BSAP award banquet was held inside Hammond’s cafeteria at 7 p.m. For more information about BSAP contact coordinator Jaracus Copes at jaracus_copes@hcpss.org.