Three math teachers at Brighton High, Chloe, Sarah & Robin, will be running the next Boston Marathon! Even better, we are running for a charity that is very close to home at Brighton, the Boston Debate League! Our goal is to run 26.2 miles and raise over $10,000 for BDL!

The Boston Marathon is the primary fundraising opportunity for the BDL. The League needs funds to rent space for their 6 city-wide tournaments, to help students travel to and from tournaments, to hire judges for the debates and to support coaches and teams at all Boston high schools. The BDL also trains teachers on how to integrate Debate into the classroom to give more students the benefits of debate and they run a summer institute to help kids prepare for the upcoming year (they host it on a college campus and get the college's debate team to work with the students to improve their skills.)

The bottom line for us is the impressive stats on how the Debate League encourages kids to stay in school and graduate:

• debaters attend school more frequently, improve their GPAs by 10%, decrease risky behaviors and achieve a 25% increase in literacy scores compared to non-debaters
• African-American males who participate in Debate are 70% more likely to graduate high school than non-debaters with similar skills
• more than 75% of urban debate league participants eventually graduate from a 4-year college or university