25 Dec COPE Honors Parents and Community Leaders with Holiday Dinner and Award Ceremony
On Saturday, December 20th, Congregation Organized for Prophetic Engagement culminated its year with a special Holiday Dinner and Award Ceremony to honor parent and community leaders for their extraordinary contributions to advocacy efforts in 2014. Special honors were given to Fannie Nieto, Gwen Rodgers, Taiharah El Sharif, and Sonya Gray-Hunn for the work in being a strong and dedicated advocate for parents in San Bernardino City Unified School District. School Board Members, Abigail Medina and Margaret Hill were in attendance.
COPE also saluted and celebrated the passionate, powerful, and progressive work of Dr. Lori Caruthers Collins who transitioned from COPE to California State University, San Bernardino as the New Assistant Director of Diversity Initiatives. Dr. Collins anchored COPE’s education advocacy work over the past four years, helping to increase parent engagement through the District African American Advisory Committee, initiating an early graduation notification initiative to ensure that students were on track for graduation, leading the Algebra Initiatives that resulted in the creation of two readiness courses to increase Algebra success, and co-leading the Task Force for African American Student Achievement and contributing writing of the final Task Force report. Dr. Collins has shared her expertise in parent engagement by serving on a number of district committee ensuring that parent/community voices would have a meaningful role in district reform efforts.
COPE is delighted to celebrate all the parent and community champions who work to improve conditions in San Bernardino City.