Partner with Pathways event features student successes

As a Cape High student, Tysun Hicks said he was facing homelessness and didn’t take his education seriously.

“But Miss Fay [Blake, Pathways to Success executive director] and her team at Cape Henlopen High School saw another road I could take,” Hicks said at a Pathways for Success fundraising breakfast April 7 at Crossroad Community Church in Georgetown. 

Now a 22-year-old Delaware State University senior majoring in human resources management with a minor in accounting, Hicks also manages Crust & Craft restaurant. 

“Pathways was the driving force behind a lot of what I came to be, and I'm just thankful,” he said. “It takes a village, and I'm grateful for the village Pathways provided for me.”

Pathways students are identified as being at risk of not graduating high school. Students from participating schools Cape Henlopen, Sussex Tech, Seaford and Milford high schools enroll in the program and remain under Pathways supervision and guidance until one year after graduation. 

Sussex Tech grad Jawon Sivels is now dean of students at Milford Central Academy. Sivels said he was supposed to graduate in 2014, but had trouble with his grades. As a junior, he said, he was kicked out of his house and didn’t attend school for two months; going back was tough. 

“Pathways was such a driving force for me,” Sivels said. “Because I did not graduate, they were instilling in me the drive to finish. They always were there for me when I needed money for little situations, rides, everything like that. If it wasn't for them, I don't think I would have finished high school.”

Blake said she was grateful and thankful for community support in helping local children. Quoting educational reformer and abolitionist Horace Mann, Blake said education is a great equalizer; everyone gets to go to public school in Delaware. 

“But what about equity?” she asked. “Do we meet all of those students where they need to be met? Do we give them the support that they need? Do we wrap around them? Are we their village?”

Pathways reaches about 400 students a year, Blake said, but financial support will help the organization support more students.

Citing numbers, Blake said it costs about $12 a day, or $4,700 a year, to serve a Pathways student, and about $30 a day, or $17,000 a year, to serve students in the education system. To incarcerate children in a juvenile facility costs close to $50 a day, or $33,000 a year, to help kids who have gone astray, she said.

Pathways Treasurer Dan Acker said the organization is trying to expand into other schools in Sussex and New Castle counties to help more underserved students, and asked guests for financial support. Learn more and donate at pathways-2-success.org.