Iowa City program that stresses education with black teens to close its doors

An Iowa City-based program that serves mostly black teenagers and pushes them to excel in school and the community is closing at the end of this week because of a lack of funding.

FasTrac is being cut along with the rest of the youth-leadership program at Mayor's Youth Empowerment Program, the nonprofit organization that has been home to FasTrac since 2010.

Program director Henri Harper said FasTrac members and their families are confused and disappointed in the news. He noted that FasTrac began at Iowa City High School in 2007 following a large number of fights and racial tension.

“We started to change the perception of the community and the school district, that they (black youth) were looking for an opportunity to be involved,” he said.

Roger Lusala, executive director of Mayor's Youth Empowerment Program, said for three years the youth-leadership program has been supported by small grants and fundraising, but those don't cover the $60,000 to $100,000 in annual costs and his organization can no longer to absorb the loss.

MYEP, as it is often called, serves at-risk youth and the disabled. Lusala said its focus has shifted more toward the latter group in recent years, with most of those services paid through the federal Medicaid program.

He estimated youth leadership is about 10 percent of what MYEP does and said continuing to subsidize it would jeopardize the other services. He said the decision is not a reflection on Harper or what he called "great services."

“In an ideal world, if you had plenty of money to provide those (youth-leadership) services, those services would be continuing,” Lusala said.

FasTrac helps students with academics, encourages community involvement and prepares them for college. There is an annual Civil Rights tour of the South, college visits, job opportunities and a trip this year to President Barack Obama's inauguration.

It's open to all students, but its members have mostly been black, and many of them moved to the Iowa City area from elsewhere.

Harper said except for the 30 current members, all of the approximately 250 participants since 2007 have graduated high school and nearly all have gone on to college, trade school or gotten a job.

Staci Porter, 19, said she ended up at the University of Northern Iowa, where she is a sophomore, because of a campus visit with FasTrac. She joined FasTrac as a freshman at City High in 2008 and continued until graduating from Iowa City Regina High School.

“People may not think that it's a valuable group, but it is because I don't think that I would be where I am today without FasTrac and have the ambition that I have without FasTrac,” she said.

Harper said the community has struggled to understand the concept of the program. Fundraising has been difficult. FasTrac moved out of City High in 2010 after Harper's position as the school's Juvenile Court liaison was eliminated.

Harper and Porter said young black people in Iowa City are constantly lumped together and told about the negative things they do. Through FasTrac, the kids tried to change that image as well as be listened to, they said.

That point of view has been missing in the recent debates over disproportionate minority contact by law enforcement in Johnson County and a controversial diversity policy in the Iowa City school district, Harper said.

“(Black teenagers) told you want they wanted,” he said. “They wanted you to listen to us.”

City High Principal John Bacon, who took that position after FasTrac left the school, said the service has been a positive for students. He said City High has several programs that help students, including a young-women's club, a job-preparation course and working with the Dream Center, a local non-profit that focuses on youth leadership, education and strengthening families.

Lusala said over the past year MYEP has increasingly connected children to existing services in the community and that will continue with the loss of FasTrac.