East Grand prep going full STEAM ahead

By Zahra Coburn-Perez

Leonard Brannon turned his frustrations with the lack of opportunities for low income families into a community project dedicated to education.

He is the co-founder and superintendent of East Grand Preparatory, A Cityscape School, founded in 2006 and formerly known as Reconciliation Academy.

Brannon started his work in inner city ministries 30 years ago and founded Care Center Ministries for adults struggling with drug addiction.

In 2004, Brannon went to work for Reconciliation Outreach as the executive director and, after working for many years with families, he started seeing the children of the families he worked with grow up to be addicts.

Frustrated that he wasn’t making a difference with the children, he decided to start a charter school where he felt he could make a difference through education.

Brannon is passionate about helping children of poverty and breaking the cycles of drugs and illiteracy.

He feels that by getting the students when they are in Pre-K and helping the families through education that he can save our youth. Brannon has applied for the school to be an International Baccalaureate school and EGP is now a “candidate school.” EGP focuses on STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math) for its curriculum. Brannon is also looking at opening another location in the Pleasant Grove area. For information, visit cityscapeschools.org/.