LAUNCHING PLA UNIVERSITY
Phalen Leadership Academies has proudly established itself as a transformative leader in K-12 education. However, in the wake of tragic current events in 2020, our leadership felt that in addition to the positive work we were doing to educate our scholars, we needed to intensify our support to our families. PLA University was born out of the recognition that our families and community needed to be empowered to improve their quality of life.
We believed that workforce development was a critical need to advance racial equity by addressing systemic, structural, and institutional barriers for communities of color. Our goal was to help our families achieve greater financial security and provide greater stability to our scholars by transforming the futures of their parents, older siblings, and relatives. What sets PLA University apart from similar programs is our innovative approach to program location and delivery, authentic relationships, small program ratios, measurable outcomes, intensive wrap-around services, and free tuition.
By working closely with our adult learners, we identified additional barriers such English language classes, technology access, scheduling, and case management. Based on feedback from our first cohort of adult learners, we also launched a virtual option in order to further remove location as a barrier to program completion.