Federal funds marked for Project GRAD

LORAIN — Starting next year, the Lorain School District hope more seniors will be walking across a graduation stage and preparing to go to college in the fall.

U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown announced Monday an additional $100,000 in funding for the Project GRAD (Graduation Really Achieves Dreams) program in Ohio. Project GRAD serves 11 cities across the country and seeks to improve graduation and college attendance rates.

Ohio is a national leader in the program, according to Brown. It is the only state to have more than one Project GRAD site, with programs in Cincinnati, Akron and Lorain.

Lorain, in its fifth year of the program, currently has Project GRAD in six schools: Southview High School and its feeder schools, Helen Steiner Rice, Lowell, Larkmoor, Palm, and Whittier. In these schools every student has access to Campus Family Support, a social service program that addresses student concerns outside of the classroom.

“Social workers in the schools help with issues that creep into academia,” said Latoya Caver-Jackson, the new executive director of Project GRAD in Lorain.

Southview High School offers help to students in finding grants and scholarships to pay for college. Project GRAD also provides a $1,000 a year scholarship to students who graduate from high school in four years with a 2.5 GPA and who have attended two summer institutes through the program.

“We know Project GRAD has been successful,” Brown said.

With the federal money, Lorain will be able to add Project GRAD to Admiral King High School and its feeder schools.

“We definitely want to expand as soon as possible,” said Lorain Schools Superintendent Cheryl Atkinson.

The funding also will allow the schools to implement three other aspects of Project GRAD — a literacy program, a math program and classroom management and discipline.

“We can take our program from good to great like we’ve taken the school district from good to great,” Atkinson said.

Contact Alison Dietz at 329-7155 or metro@chroniclet.com.

 

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