Akron Promise

By promoting a community-involved culture of public education, Akron Promise strives to bolster the local living-learning landscape such that its stability and growth are ensured for generations to come. 

In accordance with America’s Promise Alliance’s goal of removing barriers to educational attainment for each and every student in a given community, Akron Promise founded its Student Success Team (SST) in 2018 to support Akron Public School’s most resource-lacking cluster, Kenmore-Garfield. To incrementally grow our promise to universally serve the City of Akron’s youth, Akron Promise must increase its presence throughout Akron Public Schools so as to support all students and families in navigating pathways to success.

To fulfil the promise of universally removing obstacles to educational attainment and ensuring that all students and families have equal access to opportunity, Akron Promise must extend its promise throughout the APS district. This project proposes expanding our established SST model into the East cluster.

Akron Promise began its work five years ago through philanthropic funding from its founders, Tom and Dee Ghinder. Having begun to secure small grants and donations from local stakeholders to initiate our work, we are now at a point at which we have developed a working model to support students and families. However, to expand our support to another APS cluster—and eventually district-wide—we will need more funding to provide support to our students, as well as more staff to deliver the promise.