Milwaukee City Wire

The Schuler Scholar Program has launched in Wisconsin, with organizers intent on changing life for as many students as possible. 

Choosing Milwaukee as its pilot city, the nonprofit group is helping underserved students make the jump from high school to college. 

Golda Meir School junior Jeremiah Hawthorne is one of those benefitting from the new direction. 

“Honestly, I was like, pretty lazy,” Hawthorne told TMJ4. “I didn’t really focus or give too much effort to school.”

Hawthorne said if he could go back in time and give himself some advice, it would be “get out of your comfort zone.” He said the difference between then and now is like night and day, adding, “two years ago, I don’t think I would have accepted to do an interview.”

Hawthorne said that in addition to now being at ease speaking before TV cameras, he will soon begin applying to colleges. He is pondering an out-of-state option, something he might not have considered without the Schuler Scholar Program, TMJ4 reported.

Meanwhile, organizers of the program are already thinking of ways to make it available to more students; they recently announced the program is expanding to a second Milwaukee school, Riverside University High School.

Riverside principal Jeff Lasky said he’s willing to do whatever it may take to give his students the added opportunity.

“It is a long application process, but we were excited to get through it,” Lasky said, according to TMJ4. He said the Schuler Scholar Program will enhance programs designed to help students think about the next steps in their education.

“I think when you're in high school, there is a wide world of colleges out there,” he said. “Sorting through which one is going to be a great fit can be challenging.”

Since its inception, the Schuler Scholar Program has provided more than 1,600 first-generation students, students of color, and low-income students with ACT and SAT test prep, college visits, and tutoring — all free of charge, TMJ4 reported.

“Jack Schuler, one of our founders, actually went to [high] school in Whitefish Bay and found a teacher that took him under his wing,” Mandy Balek-Stephens, the Schuler Scholar Program director at Golda Meir School, said.

Balek-Stephens said that particular teacher steered Schuler toward academic success, and now the Schuler Scholar Program partners with prestigious liberal arts colleges and universities around the country. Its mission is to help students get into college and graduate with as little debt as possible, TMJ4 reported.

“We really see a growth in the students both academically, but also really just coming out of their shells,” Balek-Stephens said. “Jeremiah is one of them.”

Hawthorne said he feels satisfied with the way the program is preparing him for a college course load. He is convinced that all the people around him at the program truly have his best interests at heart.

“I like how it's kind of a family, in a sense,” he said.

Officials at the Schuler Scholar Program are now in talks with several other Milwaukee public schools, and they hope to launch programs at new schools during the next two years, TMJ4 reported.