The Bridge and Puente programs at Berkeley High School are four-year voluntary college preparatory pathways designed to help low-income, first-generation students of color succeed academically and enter a four-year college. The Bridge program offers daily after-school meetings, regular tutoring, and serves 120-125 students at BHS.
Puente, which aims at supporting Latinx students, also offers specialized English-language classes. Bridge and Puente have significant value at BHS and should aim to expand the population of students and receive more funding.
According to data presented at 2025 Parent Advisory Committee, “Students in the Bridge program have higher attendance and lower rates of chronic absenteeism compared to the general BHS population.” The program has helped over 300 low-income and first-generation students graduate and attend 4-year institutions.
The Bridge program, piloted in the summer of 2010, and the Puente program, which was introduced to BHS in 2012, serve as vital resources for under-resourced students.
Jessie Luxford, one of the founders of Bridge, explained that the program started as a three-and-a-half-week-long summer program, but evolved into a year-round program. “I really wanted to support them and see them through to college, and close the opportunity gap,” Luxford said.
The programs have workshops for students based around college applications, and offer various activities like college campus visits, community service events, and pairing students with mentors. Sofia Lopez Caro, a junior at BHS, described Bridge as a program that “gets you ahead when getting into college, gives you extra help, tutoring, check-ins.” She referred to Bridge as a “second family.”
According to Luxford, Bridge has had a large waitlist for years, filled with students and families trying to access the tutoring, community, and application support that is provided by the program. “(Bridge has) helped me to get my grades back on track and just learn things that are a little harder with the tutors,” Lopez Caro said.
The funding for Bridge and Puente comes from a combination of school district funding, state university scholarships, and private fundraising. For expansion of the program, additional funding is a must.
“Every year the question is where we are going to find the money,” Luxford said, “The district pays for the Bridge teacher’s position, the Bridge counselor, and part of my position. They used to fund the summer sessions, but they didn’t this year, and I had to write a grant.”
However, expanding the programs isn’t as easy as just adding more students. Because the programs are designed to provide students with mentors and one-on-one tutoring, additional funding is required to ensure that students in the program receive all available resources.
Berkeley Unified School District must prioritize more funding to increase the number of students that the programs could support in education.