DETROIT (AP) – The W.K. Kellogg Foundation announced Friday that it’s giving $51 million over five years to the public schools in its hometown of Battle Creek, Michigan, in the hopes of tackling low academic performance that has been linked to longstanding racial inequality and segregation.
The grant ranks among the largest to a single, public K-12 school system. It will be put toward hiring early literacy support staff, offering a free pre-kindergarten summer program, and creating a plan to improve student behavior that includes alternatives to suspensions. It also will be used to launch academies aligned with students’ fields of interest, invest in the arts and athletics, and offer recruitment and retention incentives for teachers, among other things.
The gift comes after a year of planning by school officials and the January release of a study by a New York University-affiliated center that highlights decades of racial disparities in a city of about 50,000 people that’s roughly 70 percent white, 18 percent black and 7 percent Hispanic or Latino, according to the 2010 U.S. Census.
The Kellogg-funded study found that of the more than one-third of Battle Creek Public Schools students who leave the district, most are white and richer than the black, Latino and poorer white students who remain. The remaining students have the lowest access to opportunities to prepare for college and careers. It also found the majority of residents in the Battle Creek area have no college experience, while two-thirds of residents in a neighboring district possess some level of college education.
Battle Creek schools’ Superintendent Kim Carter said she’s determined to solve rather than dwell on the problem of racial inequality.