On prom night in his senior year of high school, Kenneth Perry was in a horrific traffic accident that required three brain surgeries over the next two years. He’s back to normal now, finishing college and plotting his path to a doctorate in theater and dance.
He credits much of his success to a highly regarded program of the Atlanta Public School System, called Project GRAD Atlanta, which provides $4,000 scholarships to deserving students as well as guidance and support throughout college.
And after the accident, says Perry, 22, he needed guidance.
“After the accident, Project GRAD was right there to support me with books and materials and made sure I could be self-sustaining at the College of Wooster,” he says. “They maintain a constant conversation while you are in college. I’ve been visited twice. They want to make sure you are maintaining the GPA that you have to maintain. It’s a wonderful thing.”
The Project GRAD scholarship program, run by Yolanda Watson Spiva, who has a Ph.D in philosophy of higher education, is part of a non-profit educational organization, with a mission to work with the Atlanta Public Schools to increase the number of students graduating from high schools and colleges.
Under her leadership, the number of Atlanta area students receiving the Dr. George W. Brumley Jr. Scholarship has increased 68 percent. It provides the funds for graduates of three Project GRAD high schools — Booker T. Washington, the New Schools at Carver and the South Atlanta Educational Complex.
This month, Project GRAD Atlanta expanded its college readiness and access programming, along with needs-based financial grants to qualifying students.
Scholarships are to be offered to seniors at Therrell, Douglass, Mays and Jackson High Schools, Spiva says.
“This is the first time in the 12 year history of Project GRAD that it has expanded its high school services to schools beyond the three core high schools,” she says.
Awarded the 2011 Turknett Leadership Council Character Award for outstanding leadership in the non-profit sector, she says Project GRAD serves 9,000 students in the APS district and provides “post-secondary persistence support for the nearly 300 college students who receive our scholarship each year, in addition to the over 800 Project GRAD scholarship recipients already enrolled in two and four year colleges and universities across the nation, for whom we provide academic, financial and social support.”
Currently the program “operates in three APS high schools and the middle schools that feed them, but is expanding to four additional high schools this school year,” she says.
Spiva says “in the core Project GRAD school we get students to sign a covenant in 9th grade. They have to engage every summer in academic enrichment programs, perform community service and earn a 2.8 GPA.”
Project GRAD staffers are embedded in schools, and middle school youngsters are helped to “craft a vision for what they want to become,” often filling a void that isn’t common in economically disadvantaged communities.
She says members of her group “knock on doors” to make sure students and their families are aware of the program. Graduation rates in participating high schools, she says, have increased dramatically.
“It is working,” she says.
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