If the Delta Health Alliance can replicate in Leflore County the successes it has had elsewhere, the community’s public schools should over the next few years see a significant improvement on many educational benchmarks.
That was the message delivered by a pair of Delta Health Alliance executives Wednesday to the annual meeting of the Greenwood-Leflore-Carroll Economic Development Foundation.
“The longer the exposure to our Promise Community programs, the better the results,” said Allison Poindexter, the vice president for education who oversees the nonprofit organization’s three Promise Community programs.
Marlin Womack
Poindexter and Marlin Womack, vice president of finance and administration, filled in for Karen Matthews, the head of Delta Health Alliance who is recovering from illness, as the main presenters at the meeting.
Delta Health Alliance received from the U.S. Department of Education a $30 million grant over five years to start a Promise Community in partnership with the Greenwood Leflore Consolidated School District.
The program is the third Promise Community that Delta Health Alliance has launched. Its first was started in 2013 in Indianola; the second program came four years later to Deer Creek and includes the Washington County communities of Hollandale and Leland.
The program provides services to school districts, their students and their parents that would not otherwise be available, such as intensive tutoring in reading or working with expectant mothers on parenting skills. Poindexter described the multi-faceted approach as “a complete pipeline of services from cradle to career.”
She provided numerous statistics to illustrate the impact of a Promise Community program in raising educational attainment and lowering juvenile delinquency.
One measurement that grabbed the attention of John Stewart, chairman of the Economic Development Foundation, documented the reading levels of public school students entering the third grade.
In Indianola, where the Promise Community program has been in place the longest, 43% of beginning third graders are reading at grade level and 6% are reading at only a kindergarten level. By comparison, in Leflore County, the numbers are almost reversed: just 13% are reading at grade level and 36% are reading at a kindergarten level.
“It looks like we didn’t get you here a minute too soon,” Stewart told the Delta Health alliance officials.
Wednesday’s annual meeting, which was held at the Museum of the Mississippi Delta, was also an opportunity for the foundation to conduct some business.
It reelected Stewart as chairman and Jean Cadney as vice chairman for the coming year.
It also elected Cadney and six others to new three-year terms on the board: Brian Finnegan, David Camp, Johnny Henson, Wade Litton, Dennis Sanders and Anthony Gammill.
Stewart, Cadney, Henson, Sanders, Dr. Jerryl Briggs, David O’Bryan and Toris Williams were selected to serve another year on the seven-member executive committee.
- Contact Tim Kalich at 662-581-7243 or tkalich@gwcommonwealth.com.
