Atlanta International School’s love letter to the city where it was founded 40 years ago received some emphatic punctuation at its annual spring benefit Saturday.
Less than an hour before hip-hop icon Jermaine Dupri entered to his own “Welcome to Atlanta” to kick the party into a new gear with a specially curated DJ set, Mayor Andre Dickens dropped in to congratulate the school for its sustained role in helping keep the city globally competitive.
The benefit for the first time broke the $1 million mark raised for need-based scholarships, enabling more Atlantans of varied backgrounds to take part in the school’s International Baccalaureate curriculum, which also features K-12 dual immersion in four languages.
“When I talk about my north star of making Atlanta the best city to raise a child, I’m talking about access to opportunities like this, opportunities that open doors, that expand your thinking and prepare our youth to lead in a global economy. AIS does exactly that,” Mr. Dickens said in his brief remarks near the close of the dinner at Flourish event center, just a few streets away from the main Buckhead campus of AIS.
Mr. Dickens pointed to 100 languages spoken within the city, the 70 daily international destinations reachable by nonstop flight from Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, and the prevalence of global sporting events like the upcoming FIFA World Cup as evidence of the city’s rising global reputation.
The school usually highlights a country important to the AIS community at the benefit — the last three years have focused on India, France and Colombia — but this year kept the focus on its own backyard, promising an epic evening “From Atlanta With Love.”
The mayor who “draws circles, not lines” and presents Atlanta as a “group project” didn’t miss the chance to make his mark on an evening celebrating an institution that he said strengthens the city’s image abroad and its readiness for an integrated world.
“The work that you do every day prepares our young people to move between languages, between cultures and between perspectives and to do it all with confidence, while also helping Atlanta strengthen its identity as a global and connected city,” Mr. Dickens said.
AIS has been both a beneficiary of and contributor to the city’s cosmopolitanism in the 40 years since Roy and Olga Plaut, some of the evening’s honorees, banded with other local parents to get it off the ground.
At the time, the immigrant community was less than 100,000 in the metro area, but the post-1996 Olympic era saw breakneck growth in the foreign-born population, skyrocketing to more than 800,000 and making up about 13 percent of all residents. Many of those came here as expats and diplomats, with some staying to build new lives and seize opportunities for their children. The first graduating class had 10 seniors; now the school boasts 1,350 students as educators remain committed to the goal of centering language learning and celebrating difference.
Local spoken word poet Adán Bean encapsulated the interlinked principles of innovation and inclusivity in a kickoff performance chock full of encoded Atlanta cultural references. The audience cheered loudest, however, when he
“This is Atlanta, where the flames are blue, where the city is full of magic and the wings are too, where students take flight like eagles. They swoop, reaching never before seen new heights and universal truths, where we emerge like a phoenix, resurrected from the ashes with a robust student body, reflecting this city’s broad demographics, over 90 nationalities, 60 languages in sum, this is where education and learning take place in more than one tongue …
He continued with references to the intermingling of perspectives and lives from all backgrounds, the explicit goal of the fundraising taking place through both live and silent auctions throughout the course of the evening:
No accent, no passports, no hemisphere too far, because the richness and the complexities of our differences is what make us who we are. You can hear it.
Former University of Georgia quarterback Aaron Murray, an AIS dad, emceed the event.
China was selected as the country of focus for next year’s benefit, while leaders including Head of School Kevin Glass expressed gratitude for both donor and community support.
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