Principal Delia McLerran remembers dropping everything when she turned to see Evelyn Ibarra tapping quietly at her office door one morning. “I don’t think I’m going to make it,” she stammered, bursting into tears.
The young woman was then a sophomore, living miles from the school, with two siblings and a single mother, who held down two jobs. Evelyn started at 4:30 each morning, leaving home on her bicycle, riding a mile in the dark to the first of three buses she took to get to school. It was the same two to three hours traveling home in the evening, which meant no time for after-school activities, or friends, and unreliable Internet service at home compromised her homework effort.
Delia knew immediately there was only one solution. Starting the next day, Evelyn would come to live at her own home. Evelyn’s mother also saw the value of the idea: her daughter would stay with the McLerrans during the week, and come home at weekends.
And so it was for the two and a half years to the end of her senior year. Against the odds, Evelyn graduated with top grades and a scholarship to a four-year university. Graduating in the class of 2015, she is clearly set on a path for success.