Lobbying at age 8
She asks legislators for Metco funding
Third-grader Melissa Solomon bounds out of bed when her alarm rings at 5:30 a.m., ready for the hourlong ride on a big, yellow bus from her Dorchester home to her elementary school in Lexington.
Melissa, one of 3,285 students enrolled in the program run by the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity, visited the State House yesterday as part of an annual effort to lobby the Legislature for more money to run the 40-year-old voluntary school desegregation program.
The program buses black, Hispanic, and Asian students in Boston and Springfield to suburban schools.
Melissa, 8, has been a Metco student since the first grade at Lexington's Maria Hastings Elementary School.
She wrote a letter to Governor Deval Patrick as part of an essay contest.
Her Metco experience has taught her "lessons on being early for school, respect for others, tolerance, and how to be a hard worker," she wrote.
"I greet my Spanish, Korean, Chinese and Armenian friends," she wrote. "I am not afraid to approach anyone who looks different from me and start a conversation."
The middle daughter of three girls, Melissa was born in Antigua and moved to Boston at age 1.
Her parents wanted all of their daughters to have a better chance at attending a good college.
Melissa has her eye on a top school: She wants to go to Harvard and become a pediatrician.
Despite her tedious morning commute, Melissa arrives at school full of energy and ready to work hard, said her teacher, Tracy Dickinson.
When she returns home at 5 p.m., she's eager to dive into her homework, said her mother, Gloria Bailey-Solomon.
In the morning, she pours herself cereal for breakfast, and, said her mother, "sometimes she has to wake me."
TRACY JAN 