KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Sidney Richardson admitted she never would have applied to Yale University without encouragement from Kansas City, Missouri, Public Schools’ College Access Coordinator Joyce Nguyen Hernandez.
“She was like, ‘No, no, Sidney, you gotta apply,’” Richardson recalled.
In the end, the senior at Lincoln College Preparatory Academy, who graduates as salutatorian Tuesday, was accepted to Yale and plans to study mathematics there in the fall.
Fellow Lincoln senior Jonathan Haileselassie was able to connect with Nguyen Hernandez in a different way. Both Haileselassie and Nguyen moved to the United States as children. Haileselassie from Eritrea and Nguyen Hernandez from Vietnam. Nguyen Hernandez used education as a passport to success, navigating the application process and becoming a teacher before taking over as college access coordinator in 2020.
“I would not be here without Ms. Nguyen,” said Haileselassie, who will attend Harvard University in the fall.
The success of Haileselassie and Richardson going on to attend Ivy League schools are one of many reasons why KCPS plans to expand the college access team in the 2022-2023 school year. The public school district plans to hire four to five full-time, year-round college access specialists; one for each high school in the district. This year the positions were part-time, and funded on a temporary basis.
“The more people we have to assist our students, the better,” Nguyen Hernandez said.
The KCPS College Access Team’s goal is to reduce barriers keeping high school graduates from attending college. The team takes seniors to visit universities, covers costs associated with ACT testing and college applications, coordinates practice ACT exams, finds scholarships, reviews essays necessary for scholarship applications, helps students fill out the FAFSA and much more.
“Our work ensures there are no obstacle for our students, especially when they need that support to achieve their college and career goals,” Nguyen Hernandez pointed out.
The team is a division of the district’s Equity, Innovation, and Inclusion Department which has a goal of exceeding national rates for college acceptance.
Haileselassie said the college access team helped him achieve a better ACT score and reduced the stress of applying and choosing a university.
“It [reading my acceptance letter] was very emotionally fulfilling, I’ll say. It was seeing your hard work and sacrifices pay off,” he said.
Richardson said having a college access team member in-house at her school made a world of difference in the college and scholarship application process.
“Having something built-in for me, someone to look over my essays [was important]. Ms. Nguyen read every single essay I sent her,” Richardson said.
Both Ivy League-bound students also gave their mothers lots of credit for inspiring them and empowering them to make decisions on their own.
