“Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox. Inside the Capitol in Albany, Shaila Colon sat with four of her classmates, preparing to present legislation they wrote. Seventh grader Shaila and her classmates at South Bronx Academy for Applied Media, also known as SBAAM, proposed a ban on unsolicited photography or videography without consent at the 2025 YMCA Middle School Youth Assembly . The proposal won the Outstanding Delegate award for best bill, and Shaila made such an impression that she was invited to return next year as Speaker of the Youth Assembly . “I want to be a lawyer when I grow up,” Shaila said.“I’m very into the whole idea of defending people in positions where they’re vulnerable and can’t really defend themselves in matters of the law.” Her goal is to one day attend Harvard for law school. In a room full of student delegates from middle schools across New York state, SBAAM’s seventh and eighth graders were among the few Black and brown students and the only group representing the South Bronx. Deja Senghor, their English teacher and director of the school’s “Classroom-to-Career Pipeline” program, said the trip was a milestone for the initiative she developed at the middle school just six months ago. Seventh grade students from South Bronx Academy for Applied Media pictured at the Albany legislative house in November 2025. Students, from left: Noah Hayes, Moses De Leon, Ainara Rodriguez, Jah'niyah Westbrooks, and Shaila Colon, with teacher Deja Senghor (back row). As the school’s first official internship adviser, Senghor wanted to transform the way her students think about secondary education, future careers, and the relevance of school. Fifteen middle schoolers elected to participate and receive career exposure through internships, mentorship, and real-world learning opportunities typically reserved for older students. The South Bronx Academy for Applied Media is located in the South Bronx’s District 7, a school district that has long struggled with student enrollment and attendance. Senghor hopes her program will also improve school attendance and test scores by engaging students both inside and outside of the classroom. Senghor said she has already seen her students grow in leadership and academic skills since the program began last fall. Senghor anticipates increasing the number of participants, driven both by the program’s success as well as a planned merger with the Academy of Public Relations, a middle school in the same building. Both schools have faced declining low enrollment over the past several years, each serving under 200 students since 2022, according to Education Department data. The city’s Panel for Educational Policy is expected to approve the merger on Wednesday. Citywide push for earlier career education The school’s career programs and partnerships are almost all local to the South Bronx. One of the program’s broader goals is to engage students with local organizations and communities in the Bronx, which has the highest unemployment rate in the city. Since the program started, Senghor’s students have also visited and contributed work to the nearby Bronx Museum, tutored fourth graders at nearby P.S. 1x (also known as The Courtlandt School), and are planning upcoming trips to Boston and Washington, D.C. SBAAM’s seventh and eighth grade students also receive mentorship and tutoring from 11th graders at Claremont International High School who are interested in education careers. Teacher photos hang on a wall at the South Bronx Academy for Applied Media in District 7. Giving middle schoolers more exposure to the workplace is the next phase in New York City’s increasing focus on career readiness — and Senghor’s work offers a glimpse into what career programs could look like for tweens. The Education Department has mainly focused career education on older students, with 179 high schools in its FutureReadyNYC program, which offers students job training. The city also has 105 career and technical education programs providing high schoolers with workplace-specific certifications for post-graduation careers. But career education programs for middle school students are limited. In January, the city launched a pilot program at 15 middle schools for career exploration,giving schools flexibility on their offerings. SBAAM’s own program is separate from the city’s pilot. “There’s a huge demand from teachers and superintendents. It doesn’t tell kids what to do, it gives them options: ‘What does high school look like, what am I good at, and what am I interested in,’” said Jane Martinez Dowling, the Department of Education’s chief of student pathways. Dowling said the city plans to include more schools in the program next year. Senghor, who grew up in the South Bronx, said she knows how meaningful teacher support and mentorship was to her own career development, and she wanted to share that with her students. “Why wait? Middle school students are already thinking about their futures, they have more time to explore different avenues without feeling pressure to commit,” Senghor said. Students walk through the doors at the South Bronx Academy for Applied Media. ‘The future is still open’: Measuring success in and out of the classroom A key part of Senghor’s objectives involve providing targeted engagement to help students meet academic goals. She also monitors attendance and chronic absenteeism, while keeping a close eye on in-class student engagement. “When I look at attendance rates during school meetings, for example, I think: ‘What initiatives can we develop to increase attendance in sixth graders?’” said Senghor. One important success metric is chronic absenteeism — defined as the percentage of students who miss 10% or more of the school year — which can help identify students more likely to fall behind in academic achievement. Chronic absenteeism has been linked to poor educational outcomes and has been a nationwide problem since the pandemic. In New York City, 33.3% of students were chronically absent in the 2024-25 school year, compared to the 22% national average, according to New York City Public School data and research from nonprofit think tank RAND . These trends are even more pronounced in Bronx school districts, including SBAAM’s District 7. In the 2024-25 school year, 41.5% of the district’s students were chronically absent — in line with SBAAM’s reported 40%. Over the last seven years, however, SBAAM’s chronic absenteeism rates have hovered around 43%, while the district has averaged 35%. Senghor cited the Manhattan Institute’s chronic absenteeism research in her program’s objectives, which also shows that students who are more engaged have better attendance rates than their peers. District 7 has historically struggled with below-average attendance rates and has about half the number of enrolled students than the average district. City data shows that the South Bronx neighborhood’s attendance rate has ranked in the bottom five of all 33 city school districts for the past five years. (Citywide attendance has averaged 90% over the last seven years.) While the program is small and in its fledgling stages, Senghor is optimistic about early signs of improvement from her students. Seventh-grade student Shaila, for example, has improved her attendance and increased her engagement in class, her teacher said. Five students from the South Bronx Academy for Applied Media prepare to present their bill at the Middle School Youth Assembly in Albany on November 24. Senghor will continue to track student outcomes as the program expands. She hopes to grow the program to 25 students by next fall after the anticipated merger with the Academy of Public Relations . The merger proposal said the low enrollment has prevented both schools from adding programs to attract new applicants, and that the two middle schools have been “unable to provide a robust learning environment to current students.” In the meantime, Senghor is working with her students to plan future trips and additions to the program. She is currently exploring a potential partnership that would allow her students to work as teacher aides at a nearby elementary school, building on existing peer mentorship programs with The Courtlandt School and Claremont High School. As for upcoming field trips to Boston and Washington, D.C., Senghor’s students have written their own proposals for the trips, building on the government policy and civic engagement experience of the Albany workshop. Students will visit national institutions and learn how the government functions on Capitol Hill and envision their educational futures through tours of Howard University and Harvard, she said. “A lot of kids my age don’t usually get these kinds of opportunities. This internship is helping me see that there are a lot of opportunities out there, you just have to seize them,” said Jah’niya Westbrooks, a seventh grader who is part of the SBAAM internship program. Not all of Senghor’s students have their future planned. But they’re exploring the possibilities. “I don’t really know what I want to be yet, but, like, that’s OK, because the future is still open,” said seventh grader Moses De Leon. Lizzie Walsh is a Data Fellow at Chalkbeat New York. She reports on New York City education and produces data-driven stories across Chalkbeat’s national network. Contact her at ewalsh@chalkbeat.org.
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