NOT “Waiting for Superman”

Dec. 16, 2010 - PRLog -- Chester, PA – December 16, 2010 – The Chester Fund for Education and the Arts, Inc. (“TCF”), a non-profit organization that supports the Chester Upland School of the Arts (“CUSA”), is pleased to announce that Salome Thomas-EL, a nationally acclaimed school principal and Dr. Oz Show team member, will serve as a consultant to TCF. TCF was created to fund the Chester Upland School of the Arts, a magnet school serving the impoverished city of Chester.

“We are thrilled to have Salome Thomas-EL join our efforts to provide an outstanding education for Chester’s children,” said TCF founder John Alston. “Thomas-EL’s experience as an inspirational educator and his work with children who face the most serious barriers to success—poverty, violence, neglect and low expectations—will be an invaluable asset.”  

“I bring to TCF and CUSA strategies I have used successfully in other schools to help hundreds of underserved children,” says Thomas-EL, who has received the University of Pennsylvania’s distinguished Martin Luther King Award and was recognized by Reader’s Digest as an inspiring American icon.  

Thomas-EL was instrumental in bringing a new leadership team to CUSA. Principal Anna Hadgis and Assistant Principal Akosua Watts, both formerly of Philadelphia’s Russell Byers Charter School, are encouraging academic excellence with programs like the “CUSA Scholars Hall of Fame,” a monthly awards assembly where students are recognized for their accomplishments.

Thomas-EL is the author of The Immortality of Influence and I Choose to Stay, which chronicles his commitment to inner-city students and his creation of a national-championship chess team at Philadelphia’s Vaux Middle School. The Walt Disney Company optioned the movie rights to Thomas-EL’s extraordinary life story, and he has appeared on CNN, C-SPAN and National Public Radio. For more information about CUSA and TCF, please contact Wendy C. Leslie, TCF Vice President of Development at 610-361-4463 or wcleslie@thechesterfund.org and visit http://www.TheChesterFund.org

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About CUSA and The Chester Fund for Education and the Arts
CUSA is the brainchild of TCF founder Dr. John Alston, a Swarthmore College music professor. With Chester’s high-school dropout rate at more than 40%, Dr. Alston and The Chester Fund took action and entered into a partnership with the Chester Upland School District to found CUSA, a non-charter, public school. CUSA delivers a rigorous academic curriculum combined with arts programming, computer instruction, and an extended school-day program. Today, CUSA educates 280 children from pre-K through fourth grade and will continue to grow by one grade each year.