City Year, volunteers to revitalize Highlands Middle School campus

Volunteers from Jacksonville-area corporations and nonprofits will descend on Highlands Middle School on Martin Luther King Jr. Day for a "day of service" revitalizing the North Jacksonville campus.

Coordinating the three-hour effort Monday will be City Year Jacksonville, the local affiliate of a national organization that places young adult AmeriCorps members in high-need urban schools to serve as tutors, mentors and role models.

About 125 City Year staff and AmeriCorps members and about 140 volunteers from CSX, Wells Fargo, EverBank, Sea Best, Jaguars Foundation, Acosta and Teach For America will repaint chipped and fading paint on football bleachers and stairwells, remove graffiti and refinish gymnasium bleachers, organize storage rooms and complete panel murals for Highlands and nearby elementary schools, said Allison Cook, a local City Year impact manager.

"The MLK Day of Service shines a spotlight on service as a powerful force to bridge economic and social divides - today and throughout the year - and improve educational opportunities for our students and communities," Cook said. "Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is one of the many leaders who inspires the work City Year does in communities each day, and we want to honor him … by spending his day promoting his idea of the 'Beloved Community.' "

Highlands was selected as the site because it is one of the newest members of the City Year program in Duval County, which now has 92 AmeriCorps members in 10 schools. The work will show Highlands families that the school district, City Year and their community "are willing to put hard work into their neighborhood school," Cook said.

The projects were purposefully selected as well.

"We know that our students need to feel a connection to each other, to their neighborhood school and to the people working to move our city forward," she said. "We choose physical service projects like painting murals, refinishing bleachers, landscaping and organizing because we know that when a school looks great, it gives students a sense of pride.

"Helping to improve the way the school looks - alongside members of the community - helps demonstrate to them that the community is invested in them and their educational success," she said.

The United Way of Northeast Florida is coordinating a similar day of service Monday, sending as many as 800 volunteers into low-income Jacksonville neighborhoods to clean parks, landscape, repaint a mural and distribute financial services information, among other things.

Beth Reese Cravey: (904) 359-4109