An all-girls Brooklyn high school is celebrating after the entire class of 2021 was accepted to college.
Brooklyn Emerging Leaders Academy (BELA) Charter School on Stuyvesant Avenue marked the school’s first-ever graduating class with a “college shower,” Patch.com reports.
Ninety percent of the 2021 class identify as Black, and 75% are first-generation students.
BELA gifted the class with college gear to reward the hardworking students. The gifts included duffel bags, dorm supplies, and wireless headphones for each of the 50 young women leaving BELA for their respective colleges.
“Today, you are rewriting history and contributing to the legacy of District 16 of Bedford-Stuyvesant,” BELA co-founder and head of school Nicia Fullwood told graduating students. “We’ve always said that you all were destined for greatness; that you’d change the world in ways we could never imagine. Despite your non-traditional senior year, today, we celebrate all of you.”
According to the school, BELA’s class of 2021 applied to more than 150 different colleges and universities and received nearly $1 million in merit-based scholarships.
BELA senior Mariam Sikiru plans to major in urban studies at Barnard College in the fall.
“I would just go straight back to Nigeria and work at a nonprofit and then like basically work on their transportational systems and making sure it was good,” Sikiru, told the news outlet. “I want to make an infrastructure to help those who are in need like the disabled, [and in] foster care and orphanages.”
Class students applied to more than 150 colleges and universities and received nearly $1 million in merit-based scholarships.
