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West Side High School celebrated the launch of the school’s new L.E.O. (Leadership, Entrepreneurship, and Opportunity) Program in partnership with the Leonidas Foundation on Monday with a ribbon-cutting ceremony. West Side received a $15,000 endowment from the foundation for the development and launch of the program, and the grant will support it for at least five years.
West Side Principal Akbar Cook, West Ward Councilman Dupré Kelly, Leonidas Foundation Vice President James Ebert, and hip-hop legend Anthony “Treach” Criss of Naughty By Nature attended. The ceremony took place at the school’s newly redesigned business center, the centerpiece of which is a stock ticker.
The L.E.O program, which began this week and will extend into next fall, is teaching 19 juniors business skills such as public speaking and networking.
Students had to fill out both an online application and questionnaire. Dale Omowa, one of the students selected, never envisioned himself in a program like this.
“I would never be doing this if not for this class. I would be at home sleeping,” Omowa, 17, said. “But now, there’s so many people, so many things to do, so many opportunities, and I want to take advantage of this.”
Jamal Smith, the program’s teaching advisor initially was hesitant to take on the extra work. “But [Principal Cook], he always talks about being extraordinary and not ordinary,” Smith said. “And he asked me, ‘So, you want to be ordinary?’ and I’m like, ‘Nah, I don’t want to be ordinary.’”
Smith is glad he took the chance and is able to show students a path to entrepreneurship.
“I think starting a business is very important for students to understand, especially at this age, so that if they don’t go to college, or if they don’t do something else they’ll have entrepreneurship to lean on,” he said.
Cook described the program as “a happy marriage, because we are the school of business and finance, and the Leonidas Foundation talks a lot about entrepreneurship, and kids finding a way to a living wage. But how do we get them to a living wage? And I think this is one of the out-of-the-box ways of thinking to get them towards that.”
The Leonidas Foundation, founded in 2017, honors Leonidas Vagias, who passed away in 2016 in a car accident while in college at the University of Rhode Island studying business. Vagias was one of the top kickers in the country. His father, Ted Vagias, who’s on the board of trustees, said that “families, friends all got together and said, ‘We have to honor Leo’s name,’ because he loved his school, loved business, the camaraderie. So that’s when we said, ‘Let’s start a program that is just like Leo.’”
The program began at Leonidas’ high school alma mater, Don Bosco Preparatory High School, an all-boys private school in Ramsey, then expanded to Mount St. Dominic Academy, an all-girls academy in Caldwell. West Side is now the first coed and public school to host this program.
Matthew Frankel, a spokesperson for the Leonidas Foundation, said West Side was chosen as the first Newark public school because of its emphasis on work-study opportunities for students.
“Our first two programs were at private schools, so it was a more involved process of getting into the public school system,” Leonidas Foundation Vice President James Ebert said. “So that’s what makes today a big, big milestone for us.”
“When you’re fighting for Newark students and ensuring every child is provided equity, this is what it looks like,” Kelly said. “And it starts with creating innovative and valuable programs like this for our children and rightfully provides opportunities that they deserve.”
Darius McClain is a Rutgers University-Newark reporting intern for Chalkbeat Newark covering public education in the city. Get in touch with Darius at dmcclain@chalkbeat.org or reach the bureau newsroom at newark.tips@chalkbeat.org.
