Share The Wealth
Akamai Helps Fire Up Students About Tech With Grant to the MATCH School
Mass High Tech
November 4, 2002
By Patricia Resende
Akamai Technologies has found its match. The Cambridge-based business, through the Akamai Foundation, has donated $100,000 to fund the Media And Technology Charter High School (MATCH), a small public charter school in Boston that prepares Boston students for college.
The Akamai Foundation is funded by the company's management and employees, and is designed to foster math education at public schools in the United States.
Representatives from Akamai, along with other contributors, last week gave the funds to MATCH to support the Akamai Math Classroom, a place where some ninth- and 10th-grade students will receive their math instruction.
Other contributors — including CVS Corp., which donated $150,000, and the Lloyd G. Balfour Foundation, which donated $60,000 — will help support the school’s science classrooms and operating expenses.
Michael Goldstein, a Harvard Kennedy School grad, founded MATCH, which is now in its second year. Goldstein started the program to serve students from families living in urban, underserved communities, specifically those students living in "some of the most acute poverty in the state."
The tuition-free school receives about 65 percent of its operating support from public funds, with the remainder coming from corporations and foundations.
Alan Safran, executive director at MATCH, said the school receives $1.6 million, or $10,000 per student, each year from the state. But the funds don’t cover all of the school’s financial needs, such as its mortgage and tutoring programs.
Each year, according to Safran, the school needs to raise an additional $800,000 to operate the school.
"That's a big nut to crack, but that is our need," Safran said.
MATCH organizers say that it has been challenging to get financial support, but that hasn't halted their efforts.
"Michael Goldstein, if he is not sleeping, he is out soliciting support for our kids," Safran said.
In the past, MATCH received funds from foundations including the Nellie Mae Education Foundation, the Fidelity Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation.
Akamai is a good example of companies that can benefit by supporting the school, Safran said.
"It services not only their social interest in being good neighbors but also their bottom-line interest in cultivating (students) as potential employees."
Akamai agrees.
Within its message to the students, which is posted in the classroom, Akamai says: "Right here, in this room, might sit one of the great future mathematical innovators. Maybe it's the person on your left or right. Maybe it's you..."
It is messages like Akamai's that MATCH is trying to instill in its students to enhance their education in math and sciences.
Students at MATCH "take twice as many math classes" compared to their peers at other Boston schools, according to faculty members at MATCH.
All of the hard work has paid off.
MATCH scored number one on the grade 10 math MCAS of the 22 similar public schools in Boston, serving grades 9 through 12.
And of all of the majority African-American high schools in the Bay State, MATCH had the highest pass rate on both the math and English MCAS.
The 50 MATCH students who took the 10th-grade exam in the spring increased their performance since the eighth-grade exam. Nearly 82 percent of the group had failed the eighth-grade math or English test.
As of last spring, 94 percent of that group passed the English exam and 80 percent passed the math — double the statewide rate for minority teenagers, according to Safran.
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