Brianna Mcmullen is 14 years old. Brianna has 1 brother named Michael who is 12 years old. Brianna went to Mattawan Elementary School. Brianna’s parents Rosemary and Brian quickly discovered in the summer of 2012 that if your child went to Kalamazoo Public Schools they would receive money to help pay for college. So they decided to move to Kalamazoo Schools to help pay for college. In the fall of 2012 Brianna attended Maple Street Middle School in Kalamazoo as a 6th grader. Now as a 9th grader at Loy Norrix High school and will receive 80 percent to help with college funds.
The Kalamazoo Promise has now been in action since November of 2005. In those 10 years, more colleges and universities have been added to the list that qualifies for the promise. For example, Western Michigan University, Michigan State University, University of Michigan, Kalamazoo Valley Community College, and Kellogg Community College, Hope College and Kalamazoo College. Both universities and community colleges accept the Kalamazoo Promise toward paying tuition. The only colleges/universities that don’t allow the promise are any out of state colleges. The people to help put this together are the promise team, Bob Jorth: Executive Director and Von Washington Jr.: Executive Director of Community Relations. The Promise team also determine what percentage of the promise each Kalamazoo Public student receives based on how many years a student attended Kalamazoo Public Schools.
After the move Brianna realized, “Changing schools is not a bad thing and may be better,” said Brianna.
As the first day at her new school approached Brianna grew more nervous and it hit her the first day of school. Brianna was very scared, but also excited for a fresh start. She didn’t expect such a big change from Mattawan to Maple Street, but sure enough it was, just because there are more kids.
“Moving to Kalamazoo, I knew that I would fit in because of the diversity,” said Brianna.
Having diversity sort of fits in with Brianna’s philosophies in life which are “treat people the way you want to be treated,” said Brianna.
The transition from middle school into high school wasn’t too overwhelming because “I was used to it from middle school,” said Brianna
But Brianna was also still worried about getting to class on time because of how big the school is compared to middle school.
Currently Brianna’s favorite class is biology or Astronomy. When it is time to graduate Brianna would like to have a 3.8 or higher GPA. To either attend Western Michigan University or Kalamazoo Valley Community College to receive a career as either a Novelist or a Therapist. The Kalamazoo Promise will help Brianna pursue her career