Logistics businessman Randy Bowman is building urban boarding for students in south Oak Cliff with hopes of improving the educational performance of a historically underserved neighborhood.
In February, the city council approved a $400,000 grant to assist Bowman in building AT LAST! (The name is an acronym for accessing transformative life and scholastic tools.) The “boarding experience” program is now taking applications for an inaugural group of elementary-age students expected to comprise 16 children.
Not to be mistaken for a school, “AT LAST!” does not offer classes but rather the resources that students depend on when they go home.
Complete with housing, laundry, food and workspace, the campus strives to offer the stability and attention that impoverished parents may not be able to provide. Students go to the center after school and spend the night, then return to school in the morning.
Bowman hopes AT LAST! will empower parents and lessen the burden of poverty on a student’s success in school.
“I don’t anticipate the parent’s role changing,” said Bowman. “What changes is the parent is now able to access the kinds of educational resources and tools that more prosperous families take for granted.”
Bowman said he grew up poor in Pleasant Grove, where his mother had a clear vision for the way she wanted to raise her family.
“But her life did not turn out the way that she thought it would and she wound up being a woman who lived in poverty,” said Bowman. “I knew she was not a bad mom, she was simply an impoverished mom. And as an impoverished mom, she found herself without the ability to give her kids the types of resources that they would need to prepare them to live a good life.”
Bowman believes that parents living in poverty need empathy and understanding from society, and he hopes AT LAST! will create a more even playing field for poor and wealthy students.
“Sometimes an impoverished mom is unable to provide what she wants to her children,” he said. “And society mistakes that as a bad mom. That’s not a bad mom — that’s a mom who needs society’s help, not society’s judgment.”
AT LAST! is being built at 405 E. Overton Road, across the street from South Oak Cliff High School. Bowman expects construction to be done by the end of October but the facility won’t open until health experts deem it safe in light of the coronavirus pandemic.
“I am more convinced that I’m going to do this right than to do it fast, so the epidemiologists will be having a really heavy imprint on the decision that we make about it is that we will start,” he said.
There are still open spots for the inaugural group, and Bowman said they are not asking for money. More information can be found on the AT LAST! website.
