Patrick Ervin
patrickervin@ddtonline.com
With its inaugural registration set for 6:15 p.m. on Monday, July 10, Excel Community Schools Visionary Prep Academy provides another school choice for parents and their children. Cofounders, Reginald Whitley Jr., and Ja’Karius Cork began with a vision for the school five years ago and August 14 will mark the first day of instruction. “Excel Community Schools was established in 2018 and we focus on healthcare, education, housing and workforce,” Whitley explained. “We’ve participated in more than 150 healthcare-related events in Washington County and the surrounding area, fed more than 100 families and served more than ten thousand citizens over a six or seven county area.”
Visionary Prep Academy’s establishment appears to have begun well before its founders started formalizing the concept of the school. “Over the years, I’ve heard literally since I was in elementary school complaints about the educational system,” Whitely recalled. “Even when I was a kid, everybody was complaining but doing nothing about it and I never thought one of the people doing something about it would be me.”
Visionary Prep Academy will be housed Vessels of Mercy Church, 712 McAllister Street. The school's instructional mode is a result of studying successful classroom practices in neighboring states like Tennessee and implementing them into a delivery system that caters to the children and the world they currently experience. “We will be based on individual and independent enrichment with online learning,” Whitley explained. “If you give a baby a phone, they don’t know how to read, but they can recognize sounds and repeat patterns. Our instruction will h=be heavily based in both technology and the arts-not just art as an art class but the arts as a way of unlocking the children’s creative minds.”
At the time of the interview (July 19) Visionary Prep had 10 students enrolled. The school will have two instructors beginning its first year and the classes will be multi-grade with children in grades one through three in the same classroom as a method of peer-to-peer quasi multigenerational learning. Another advantage that Visionary Prep appears to have garnered from its lengthy planning process before establishment is the development of a sustainable financial model. Whitley said that the school is a Christian instruction provider that charges affordable tuition. He said that the school confidently looks beyond year one and year two through a firm financial foundation. “I actually wanted to start a free school,” he said. “I think we will eventually be able to get there because we actually have teamed up with a grant writer and we plan for our tuition to decrease in years two and three.We are structured in a way where we will end each year with an excess.”
With day one of instruction right around the corner, one would think that excitement would be the apt emotion to describe this co-founder's feelings. “This is so not the typical response to a question like this,but I don’t know what I feel,” Whitley said. “Now, on the first day of school, I may be emotional and balling my eyes out. But I have high faith and anticipation because I knew it was coming and our children deserve it. For more information visit www.excelschools.org.
