How a Valley high school supports teens during adversity

As a young girl, Rebeka Simpson always knew she wanted to go to college.

The odds were against her, since she would be the first in her family to pursue higher education. Simpson and her younger brother were being raised by a single mother, who struggled to make ends meet. 

Simpson’s mother also faced another uphill battle: cancer. 

Her father was incarcerated, which meant Simpson needed all the resources she could find to enroll herself in a university.

As a junior high student, Simpson learned about Girls Leadership Academy of Arizona (GLAAZ), a charter high school that’s part of Chicanos Por La Causa (CPLC), a nonprofit organization focused on helping the Latino community.

One of CPLC’s major goals is helping community members access education.

Simpson and her mother toured GLAAZ and Carl Hayden Community High School together, and they decided on GLAAZ. 

“I wanted help because I knew that they would be able to (prepare) me to get to where I wanted to go, compared to a bigger school, where I would have to fight to try to meet someone who is seeing thousands of students because of the ratio,” Simpson said. “Instead, I was in a smaller classroom that had an academic counselor and everything that helped me get there.”

GLAAZ serves teen girls in grades 9 to 12 and prepares them for college by providing smaller class sizes and making sure students receive individualized attention. 

Students gain leadership skills, participate in community service and have the opportunity to explore careers. The campus is located in Phoenix near Central Avenue and Camelback Road. 

Photo courtesy: Rebeka Simpson

How GLAAZ made a difference for Simpson

And for someone in Simpson’s position, every bit of support mattered. Simpson worked at a pizza shop while going to high school in order to help support her family.  

High school staff knew about Simpson’s circumstances and worked to make her schedule flexible.

“The high school was very gracious and let me use some of my days as half days to be able to go work and help my mom afford for us to live somewhere,” Simpson said. “That was something I don’t think another high school would have let me do.”

During Simpson’s senior year of high school, her mother was hospitalized in an intensive care unit for several weeks. 

At the time, Simpson and her classmates were scheduled to complete student-led conference presentations to their parents. While her mom was at the hospital, Simpson spent her time working and at home alone preparing for her presentation. 

Simpson recalled through tears one of the most memorable times her GLAAZ teachers stepped in to be there for her.

“I thought I was going to present to myself. My teachers came, and they sat there, even though they weren’t scheduled to be there (and) do my conference with me,” she said.

Her teachers often drove her to the hospital to visit her mother, since the family didn’t own a car at the time, and her classmates would also go with her to visit her mom.

If it wasn’t for GLAAZ and its supportive environment, Simpson said she would never have made it to college. 

Where is Simpson today?

Simpson graduated from GLAAZ in 2019 and went on to attend Northern Arizona University (NAU) to study to become a teacher but later switched her major to psychology. 

Her mother fell ill during her senior year at NAU, and Simpson moved back to the Valley to help care for her. In December 2022, Simpson’s mother lost her battle with cancer.  

Simpson took a semester off from school to get her mother’s estate in order, but despite all of life’s obstacles, Simpson kept pushing forward.

She went on to graduate with her bachelors in 2024 and is now pursuing her masters degree at Arizona State University. She plans to work with and help at-risk children. 

Simpson wanted to give back to GLAAZ, since the school had done so much for her. Today she serves on their school board. 

She credits her mother as her biggest inspiration for completing college and feels she would have been proud of her accomplishments.

“When I went to college, she was super excited that I didn’t give it up,” Simpson recalled.

“She was like, ‘I would have been really mad at you if you gave up going to college because of me.’”

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Reporting by “Arizona Horizon” Education Solutions Reporter Roxanne De La Rosa. Her role is made possible through grant funding from the Arizona Local News Foundation’s Arizona Community Collaborative Fund and Report for America.

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