At California State University, Long Beach (CSULB), Dr. Amber Johnson often returns to a simple but transformative question: What would it look like if students experienced college as a place where they inherently belong, years before they ever apply? As an associate professor of Health Science and director of the Center for Health Equity Research, Dr. Johnson helped launch the Sankofa Summer Academy in partnership with CSULB’s College of Health and Human Services, the Sankofa Parent Village, and the Long Beach Unified School District’s (LBUSD) Black Student Excellence Center. As part of the L.A. Region K-16 Collaborative, convened by UNITE-LA, these partners came together to intentionally design an early pathway rooted in culture, belonging and opportunity. What began as a pilot effort has become a living example of how aligned systems can expand access and reimagine student futures.
For LBUSD, Sankofa is rooted in a movement that began five years ago with the district’s Black Student Achievement Initiative, which sought to support Black students beginning in kindergarten and continuing through high school graduation. As Dr. Elyssa Taylor-Stewart, Community Engagement Administrator for the Center of Black Student Excellence and leader of the Sankofa Parent Village, explained, the West African word Sankofa, to reach back and bring forward the best of what came before, guides their work. Through listening sessions led by Dr. Pam Levitt, families voiced a clear desire for earlier guidance, more exposure to college settings and opportunities for their children to see themselves reflected in academic spaces. This feedback helped shape the Saturday enrichment academies, the Sankofa Parent Village, and, ultimately, Sankofa at the Beach: a four-day summer academy designed to build identity, belonging and connection.
A major reason Sankofa was able to grow so quickly and collaboratively, Dr. Johnson noted, is the foundation created by the L.A. Region K-16 Collaborative. Prior to joining the Collaborative, partnerships among LBUSD, CSULB and community organizations existed, but not at the level of intentional planning, mutual accountability or shared vision that now defines their work. “There’s a different type of coordination now,” she said. “People aren’t just participating, they’re co-owning the work and thinking about what comes next for our students.” Dr. Taylor-Stewart echoed this, explaining that engagement with CSULB not only strengthens the pathway externally, but also creates meaningful opportunities for co-learning, allowing university partners to understand K-12 needs and trends while helping K-12 teams better understand higher education systems.
LBUSD students select their educational pathways as early as eighth grade, making middle school a crucial moment for exploration and encouragement. Without early and intentional interventions, many Black students may not envision themselves entering high-wage, high-demand fields like health care, engineering, human services or criminal justice. “If we wait until high school, we’ve waited too long,” Dr. Johnson noted. Middle schoolers, Dr. Taylor-Stewart added, are “standing with one foot in childhood and one in adolescence,” forming a sense of self while also trying to understand where they fit within the broader world. Programs like Sankofa help them make real-life connections to their future educational pathways and the opportunities those pathways unlock.
During the academy, students rotated through immersive sessions led by CSULB faculty across multiple departments, exploring criminal justice and criminology, public health and community health education, human movement and biomechanics, recreation and leisure studies, and social work practice. These hands-on sessions allowed students to step into college majors and the professions they can lead to – tracing clear lines to LBUSD degree pathway programs already available in their schools. Students engaged with forensic tools, biomechanics labs, public health activities and recreation therapy concepts, experiencing academic spaces many of their parents had never accessed. Parents were also included through college-readiness and admissions workshops, helping build a family-centered support system around A-G requirements, CSU and UC admissions and financial aid applications.
Both leaders emphasized how transformative it was for students to experience these environments alongside peers who shared their identities. “Students loved being surrounded by other Black scholars,” Dr. Taylor-Stewart shared. “These opportunities allow them to be models of excellence in higher education.” Many students returned home excited to share brand-new experiences, a powerful sign that Sankofa is helping shape what they believe is possible.
Building on that momentum, the leaders also stressed the importance of strengthening Sankofa’s cultural foundation. While the pilot year was successful, Dr. Johnson noted that Sankofa’s deep cultural values of identity, history and affirmation should be further embedded into the program design. Dr. Taylor-Stewart hopes future academies will more directly integrate Black history, the African diaspora and the contributions of Black scholars to fields like forensics, engineering and health care. LBUSD is already building this cultural continuity across its 42 Sankofa Villages, which use liberatory design to elevate community voice and challenge deficit narratives about Black students. These structures offer a blueprint for continuing to deepen Sankofa’s cultural roots in partnership with CSULB.
The K-16 Collaborative has also catalyzed discussions about expanding teacher involvement, creating internship and workforce opportunities, strengthening co-designed curriculum, and building long-term data systems to track student outcomes. Dr. Johnson hopes eventually to follow Sankofa participants into high school and beyond to understand how early exposure shapes their decisions. Although large-scale tracking requires funding that is not currently available, she believes relationships and small-scale evaluation are still powerful indicators of impact: “We had 76 students on campus every day-engaged, curious, asking questions. That tells us something. But we can learn even more by seeing where they go next.”
As both leaders noted, everything begins with relationships. “Years ago, there weren’t many,” Dr. Taylor-Stewart said. “But now we have teachers, counselors, families, faculty and community partners all in conversation. That’s the foundation for sustainability.” Looking ahead five years, she hopes to see stronger A-G completion rates, more Black students qualifying for scholarships, deeper cross-institutional data sharing and broader structures for family voice and student inclusion. Above all, she wants Sankofa and its connected village, enrichment programs and university partnerships to continue giving students spaces where they feel seen, celebrated and surrounded by excellence.
As the L.A. Region K-16 Collaborative continues its work across Los Angeles County, the Sankofa Summer Academy stands as a meaningful example of what becomes possible when institutions align around equity not just in theory, but in daily practice. It is the story of educators who listened to families, faculty who opened their doors, students who stepped onto a campus and recognized themselves in its possibilities, and a region working together to build pathways that endure long beyond a single summer. At its core, Sankofa is a story of belonging, a reminder that when systems reach back to bring forward the best of what came before, futures begin to shift.
The Sankofa Summer Academy at the Beach is an extension of LBUSD’s Black Student Achievement Initiative, launched five years ago to strengthen identity, belonging, and academic opportunity for Black students across the district. Guided by the Sankofa principle, to reach back and bring forward the best of what came before, the academy is co-designed by LBUSD’s Black Student Excellence Center, the Sankofa Parent Village, and faculty partners at California State University, Long Beach. Through culturally grounded programming, family engagement, and early exposure to high-demand fields, Sankofa supports middle school scholars in understanding who they are, where they come from, and what futures they can shape. The academy builds on year-round efforts across LBUSD’s 42 Sankofa Villages, which center community voice, liberatory design, and the celebration of Black excellence. Together, these initiatives create an ecosystem of support that prepares students for high school, college, and career pathways, while honoring their lived experiences, histories, and aspirations.
ABOUT THE L.A. REGION K-16 COLLABORATIVE
The L.A. Region K-16 Collaborative is closing racial and gender gaps in postsecondary attainment and employment by building equitable pathways to careers in healthcare, engineering and computer science. The collaborative is leveraging existing initiatives and relationships across L.A. County, uniting higher education segments and institutions, K-12 districts and schools, employers and business organizations, local government and community partners to amplify our collective impact on equitable degree attainment.