GAINESVILLE – The two school systems overseeing the educational experience of Hall County’s 35,000 students agree: REACH Georgia is a worthy investment in the future of Georgia, the local economy and, most-significantly, the lives of young people.
Such were the sentiments of Hall County School Superintendent Will Schofield and Gainesville City School Superintendent Dr. Jeremy Williams Thursday morning at the inaugural “Realizing Educational Achievement Can Happen (REACH) Foundation Fellows” breakfast.
REACH Georgia is the result of an initiative announced by Governor Nathan Deal in 2012, and is a needs-based mentorship and college scholarship program whose mission is to ensure that Georgia’s low-income, academically-promising students have the support needed to graduate high school and have access to college, ultimately leading to post-secondary success.
Essentially it’s a five year program that targets 8th grade candidates. This spring marked the first class of 17-graduating high schoolers statewide under the egis of REACH.
Jennifer Herring of the Georgia Student Finance Commission told those at the breakfast, “Their accumulative HOPE GPA was 3.51, and for you educators in the room you know how tremendously exciting that is…to think about students that five years ago were B and C students that might have fallen through the cracks.”
Hall County and Gainesville teamed up a little over a year ago to enter the program and recently have completed the process of identifying their second group of students.
The number of students considered for the program in a given area is determined by a school district’s student population. The combined Hall County and Gainesville systems fall into the category of 13-students being eligible. Currently 103 school districts in Georgia participate in the outreach.
At present there are 26 student-scholars in the Gainesville/Hall County program with a $10,000 scholarship reserved in their name upon completion of the REACH criteria.
Individual students are provided with a mentor and academic coach, as well as additional college-related support. The participating school systems are responsible for raising a portion of the scholarship monies through local support.
Gainesville/Hall County’s financial obligation is to generate $3500 for each student, with the remaining $6500 provided by state appropriations and the Georgia REACH Foundation. Thursday’s breakfast event was purposed to share that need with the community.
The fund-raising target for the newest group of 13 REACH Georgia students is $45,500.
“It’s not just about writing the check,” Herring said. “It is not about, ‘Oh, I have to go to a breakfast and I know they’re going to ask me for money’, REACH is so much more than that because you are investing in your future. You’re investing in your future leaders.”
“I suspect if you all look back at your own lives,” Schofield said, challenging the audience, “whether it was in your own family or a neighbor or a teacher or a coach or a pastor, somebody stepped into your life and gave you…a little extra that helped you along your way.”
“Where do we want them (today’s students) to be ten, thirty, fifty years from now?” Dr. Williams asked moments later.
“Every opportunity these kids have to be able to see other people who are strangers invest in their lives, guess what that does? Guess what they’re going to do in the future? They’re going to invest in somebody else’s life as well,” Williams said.
For more information on how to participate in the local REACH Georgia program contact the North Georgia Community Foundation.
(The breakfast was held at the Brenau Downtown Center and sponsored by Full Media of Gainesville. Two members of the first REACH Georgia class for Gainesville/Hall County attended the event: Christian Charles of Chestatee High School and Paloma Barron-Galva of Gainesville High School.)
