Welcome to School is a documentary produced in 2023 by the Maya Angelou Schools and See Forever Foundation in conjunction with Unchained Stories, a social impact production company. The film traces the 25-year legacy of the Washington, DC based Maya Angelou Schools’ storied history of grassroots organizing, resource activism, and creating a specialized safe space for carceral and alternative education students. Welcome to School is told through first-person narratives from current students, alumni, staff, faculty, and the organization’s founders. The intersection between poverty, public education, and the juvenile justice system from the 1990s to present day are examined alongside the retelling of the Maya Angelou Schools’ origins.

The cycles of collective trauma, inappropriate reprimand of students, and the presence of police and police-adjacent agencies against the backdrop of undersourced ward neighborhoods all affect the educational environment. The Maya Angelou Schools began as the student-by-student counter to these institutional barriers. Throughout the decades, the Maya Angelou Schools’ founders, board, parents, faculty, and staff have questioned the bureaucracy of the traditional education system’s teaching and learning expectations against the reality of DC’s students. Welcome to School highlights the fact that Maya Angelou Schools grown from an initially experimental approach to educating students to a nationally recognized expert in serving opportunity and justice-involved youth. Their unique approach helped to solidify the Maya Schools as the premiere leader of alternative education and a school network providing second chances!