Students in Memphis’ Klondike and Smokey City neighborhoods are more likely to live in poverty than the Memphis metropolitan area overall. Students are chronically absent at a higher rate than the Shelby County Schools average, according to the non-profit’s data. The graduation rates are lower too.
Whole Child Strategies is trying to change those statistics and the conditions that cause them. The independent non-profit, once is an offshoot of the Memphis Education Fund, could spend years trying to return a once-thriving community to its former luster.
To fix those educational outcomes, Whole Child Strategies realized it needs to change not just what happens in the schools but what happens in the neighborhoods around them. To do that, it needed to hear from the people.
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