Five years ago, a group of Birmingham leaders looked at their region and didn’t like the trajectory. The economy was growing too slowly, starting too few companies and leaving too many people behind. They made a bet that Birmingham did not have to choose between growing its economy and including everyone in it, because the two depend on each other. Out of that bet came Prosper, an organization created to advance a vision of building the most inclusive and thriving economy in the Southeast.
They made that bet with one year’s kindergartners in mind, picturing a Birmingham where a young person’s prospects no longer depended on which neighborhood they came from. Those kindergartners head into middle school this fall, and some of what the leaders pictured has quietly become real.
The bus rapid transit line that didn’t exist when they started school runs through Birmingham today. The scholarship that was only a promise then has put $11 million toward tuition for more than 1,600 graduates. And the schools are climbing too, with their highest-ever state report card grade and failing schools cut from 15 to one in three years.
Five years is long enough to ask whether the bet has held up…