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Hello. Hello, this is Dan Kerr, and I'm with your name. Vivian Robledo, and I'm the executive director of the Next Step Public charter school here in Columbia Heights. Fantastic.

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And so we are. This is June 15th. We're at Columbia Heights Festival.

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Yes. And I'm wondering if you could tell me about, um, what some of your favorite things about Columbia Heights as a neighborhood.

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Great. So I call my school at least the hidden gem of Columbia Heights. The community is amazing. The students that come to us from

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here and from around DC are just, um, so relationship oriented, community focused, and it's just like a family in Columbia Heights. Wow. And where did you you come from

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prior to being, heading this school? So I am from Pennsylvania and I'm from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and I was with the Bethlehem Area School District for 24 years and saw a posting about the school needing an executive director, and

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immediately was sold on what the community stands for, supporting students who have not had the support in traditional schools and had extraordinary situations that kept them from finishing school. So they come back to the next step.

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So we serve 16 to 30 year olds. Fantastic. Okay. And so you said you talked about

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their community connections or their networks. Or do you want to talk a little more about that? Sure. So, the students come to Columbia

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Heights either immigrating or from D.C., and look for work here in the Columbia Heights area, and we help support them in that workforce development, GED support and, um, obtaining language acquisition.

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So most are needing ESL support. That's fascinating. And so many of them are also fairly new to the area.

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Ah, yes. So many are brand new to the Columbia Heights area or DC in general, but some are also have grown up here and just did not feel connection in their school and found it here in Columbia

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Heights. And do you know a little bit about the history of your school or? Yes. Um, actually I've only been with the school since March of 2022.

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So I did look at some of the background in history, um, the Latin American Youth Center actually founded, um, TNS is what we call it. They started with this small group

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of students who were, um, teenagers, newly parents or young children that needed support so that they can be in school, take care of their kids. And from there, they knew this was

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a great program and they needed to provide it for more people and a charter application was written about 96 when the charter law came into existence in DC. And we opened our doors in 98.

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That's terrific. Yeah. And are there some, uh, I guess, things students, people that that really stand out for you that since you've been at the school.

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Um, other than, like, deep community roots, um, students are really connected to the staff there. We have teachers that have been there since. It's pretty much open, like we have one teacher who's been there,

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um, 16 years, 20 years, a case manager who's really known in the Columbia Heights area. Um, she's been there 21 years. So it is a place that you really get grounded and connected to and

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choose to stay. That's terrific. That's terrific. Um, any other, uh, sites that you

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feel your school's particularly connected to in the neighborhood uh groups, organizations? You talked about the Latin American Youth Center. Yeah, definitely the Latin

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American youth center, DC diaper bank. There are some, um, food groups that were connected to Mary House. Um, we just had a gala, and we honored actually, those two groups.

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Oh, fantastic. Okay. And anything you would like to say about your hopes for the future for the community.

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So my hope is that we're able to help students really grow in their workforce and be able to stay connected to Columbia Heights in particular and DC so that they are fully functioning, getting a livable wage and returning to DC and giving back.

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And would you say as far as the big challenges to kind of keeping that connection to Columbia Heights are are livable wages or? Yeah. Um, it's not it's pretty expensive

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to live well anywhere nowadays. But Columbia Heights is expensive to live in, and a lot of our students double up, live with family.

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So we're hoping that they can leave us with the language skills that they need, the work skills, and that they can produce enough so that they can give back to their family and be able to stay here.

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And what would you, um, what would be a livable wage, do you think? So when you look online, it says about $2,390 for a single person. We know it's more than that. Um, so anything if you can get

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them up into the higher 20s into the 30s, dollars would be perfect to start with. And they also give back to their families in their home countries.

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So to be able to sustain themselves here and still provide. Terrific. Yeah.

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Thank you so much. Thank you I really appreciate it. This was a surprise but it's nice. I'm so glad.

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Yeah. Thank you.