STARKVILLE — Shanice Davis used to go to the J.L. King Center in Starkville every day, starting three years ago.
She would participate in classes for yoga, cooking and parenting, and her three children — now 4, 5 and 14 — would go along and play in the childcare program. If it was summertime, the kids would go to a reading and tutoring camp at the center.
Last year, Davis, who didn’t complete high school, started taking classes to earn a high-school level diploma through an adult education program offered at J.L. King.
“It’s something I felt like I needed to accomplish in my life,” Davis, 31, said.
She earned her remaining credits, in world and U.S. history, chemistry, algebra and English, between March and May 2018, and then graduated in June last year.
Now, she’s pursuing an associate’s degree in child psychology from East Mississippi Community College and considering a career in social work.
Without the “crucial” center close to her apartment in north Starkville, Davis doesn’t know how she would’ve gotten this far in her education.
The J.L. King Center has offered a range of services for the community since 1994 and affects between 200 and 300 Starkville families a year. After losing its main source of funding in January, its doors will close if it can’t come up with $30,000 by Aug. 1.
Alison Buehler, director of the Homestead Education Center which partners with J.L. King Center, and Paul Luckett, chairman of the Greater Starkville Development Partnership, presented plans for fundraising before a group of area educators, church staff and interested residents at the center on North Long Street Friday.
They want to relaunch J.L. King as “a true community center” that runs primarily on support from area residents, not government grants. If the center had just 1,000 members who paid $10 a month, “this entire facility would be funded for the cost of Netflix,” Luckett said.
“Rather than having to really weigh heavy on a few people to carry this thing, we as a community can come together and do it,” he said.
Without a shift in funding, the center may land in financial detriment once again.
“(Government funding) dries up, and then we have to close the doors,” Luckett said.
Beyond ‘bare bones’
The 35-day partial federal shutdown, that spanned from the end of 2018 to beginning of 2019, led to the elimination of a crucial $150,000 grant the center had received annually from Families First, administered by the Mississippi Department of Human Services through the Family Resource Center in Tupelo.
In late January, the center received a notice from Family Resource Center that subgrant funds were being terminated immediately and instructing the program to cease all activities and expenditures.
The J.L. King Center remained open and continued to offer full programs with around $20,000 of additional funding redirected by Emerson Family School, a family-centered extension of Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated School District.
However, after four months of operating on the reassigned funds, the well ran dry. Emerson had to withdraw from the center after attempts to secure further grant funding were unsuccessful.
The total pledge goal for J.L. King’s capital campaign is $150,000 to sustain operations for the next five years, but fundraisers need $60,000, the approximate cost of running for a year, to stay open through the end of 2020. By Friday, half of the short-term target — around $30,000 — had been raised.
The center also hopes to secure funds by forming partnerships with other organizations in the community that can help access resources and raise awareness of the center. One such partnership with EMCC will bring the college’s Gateway Program, which teaches essential job skills such as communication and teamwork, to J.L. King’s classrooms in August, said EMCC President Scott Alsobrooks.
The program will focus on job skills local employers want in their workforce. A job in the community is guaranteed upon completion of the program.
“We want to come here and meet the people where they’re at … (and) get them started on an adult ed degree,” Alsobrooks said. “There are so many possibilities.”
Another way to secure funds could be to ask program participants to pay $5-10 monthly to help support the J.L. King Center, Buehler said.
Luckett and Buehler asked meeting attendees to create memberships through the program’s website, www.jlkingcenter.com, and encourage others to do the same.
One attendee asked Luckett if the center would offer a GED preparatory course to teach students test-taking strategies, as well as provide volunteers working in adult education programs training specific to the exam.
Buehler said the idea is definitely something they could consider, but Luckett was more frank in his response.
“The funding that we currently have is bare bones,” he said. “The more that we can raise beyond $60,000, the more possible those types of programs are.”
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 32 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.