By Taylor Johnson | OBSERVER Staff Writer
Working with the Children’s Defense Fund, the Roberts Family Development Center has served as a Sacramento site host for Freedom Schools for more than 12 years. This year, RFDC is expected to serve about 840 students in the six-week literacy-based summer program.
While the program helps students in local school districts such as Twin Rivers Unified, Natomas Unified, and Washington Unified, it also brings in recent graduates from across the nation to help recruit teachers of color and encourage graduates to stay in Sacramento.
Center founder Derrell Roberts hopes to reconnect students with their education and combat learning loss that occurs in the summer. He hopes using books with the perspective of people of color will engage students more.
“Mrs. Roberts and I have made a commitment to ensure that our students not only have a literacy component, but also have a historical perspective of our communities in general,” he said.
The program runs Wednesday, June 11, through Friday, July 25, and is free for students, who also will have options to go on field trips during the program.
In addition, the center will have programs for parents to participate in discussing financial literacy and educational support.
“We try to make sure that Freedom School is designed for every child to participate, if they choose to, regardless of their economic situation,” Roberts said.
About 90 college students from universities such as Xavier, Howard, Morehouse, UC Davis, Sacramento State, and many more will teach the students this summer.
The Freedom School program originated from the work of Dr. Marian Wright Edelman, who created the modern Children’s Defense Fund Freedom School in 1991. Inspired by the Freedom Riders, known for their work in the 1960s on voter registration and sit-in campaigns, they often provide educational programs at churches.
Dr. Edelman’s specific goal was to prevent learning loss students experience in the summer, create smaller learning environments with a 1-to-10 student-to-teacher ratio, help students catch up or maintain their academic progress during summer, and connect students to topics they might be missing from the regular school year.
Nationally, the Children’s Defense Fund served around 11,800 students in more than 100 cities.
Roberts is grateful to continue doing the work here in Sacramento and encourages anyone interested to enroll in the program at robertsfdc.org/freedom-schools.
“We’re living in an era where people are downplaying the importance of support programs, otherwise known as DEI programs, for those in our community who need them,” Roberts said. “Freedom School becomes an example of something that’s needed, and you can call it what you need to call it, but we’re intentional and unapologetic about what we do.”
Support for this Sacramento OBSERVER article was provided to Word In Black (WIB) by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. WIB is a collaborative of 10 Black-owned media that includes print and digital partners.