The Whitely Neighborhood Association, at its core, is an “Education First” organization. The neighborhood association serves the neighborhood surrounding Longfellow Elementary School to aid in achieving improved academic development outcomes, school readiness, and access to a community-based continuum of high-quality services.
The Whitely Neighborhood Association has, for years, advocated for an improved quality of life, including education, in the Whitely neighborhood and beyond. Those efforts include:
- Establishing an Education Committee whose mission is to capitalize on the celebrated educational resources and collaborations that exist within the neighborhood, to spread a collective conviction that learning is top priority and can be built into the lives of each individual family.
- Creating summer programs to decrease the summer loss of knowledge gained over the prior school year, increase learning potential, and influence the habit of reading.
- Partnering with local organizations and groups to promote learning throughout the city through an education alliance of organizations.
- Creating the “Citizens for Central” program (before covid-19) that encouraged good behavior, staying in school through graduation, job attainment after graduation, and post-secondary education after high school graduation.
- Partnering with local leaders to improve the “Cradle to Career” path of success.
- In addition, the neighborhood association works, through our neighborhood food pantry, to reduce food insecurities in the area which can also negatively influence a student’s academic success.
