Lanier High School is the oldest African American high school in Jackson, MS. The rich traditions and history of Lanier High School are still evident where over 550 plus students are enrolled and learning daily. Since 1998, the mission of the Lanier High School National Alumni Association has been to support the academic, social, and economic needs of students at Lanier High School in order to increase academic success and to support the development of the skills sets that will contribute to the participatory citizenship of all students. LHSNAA was created by a group of LHS graduates who were committed to actively working to ensure that students who came after them would have the additional support they needed to be successful. The ultimate goal of our association is to support all aspects of Lanier High School and serve as a resource for school leadership, families, and students.

The year 2020 was a year that changed the course of our world. The impacts of the pandemic affected so many people around the world, but especially the population of school-aged children. When COVID-19 began to impact our neighborhoods, schools, and families, we knew as an organization that we must act fast.

That’s why we created a plan to target the immediate needs of our students and communities to stand in the gap and provide resources to address their top priorities. We dedicated this year as The LHSNAA Response to the COVID 19 Pandemic, “Meeting the Need of our Community”.

Our vision for this year was to bridge the gap and push beyond our normal activities as an organization. We wanted to ensure that nothing would stand in the way of our scholars receiving a quality education even though it would look entirely different from what the students and families were accustomed to. Our partnership project focused on three priority levels: Virtual Learning, Food Insecurity, and Community Service.

The timeline for this specific project began as soon as the news broke that the pandemic would close down our schools. We knew how the closure of our schools could be challenging for our students and families. Resources such as Feeding America studies show that throughout the pandemic, Mississippi ranked the highest for food insecurity out of all the states with 22.6% of the population lacking proper nutrition during the pandemic. Our students would face many challenges to receive access to nutritious meals each day.

This was just one of the barriers that would stand in the way of students receiving an education. Our next priority was to address the technology needs for students to access their virtual classes. Lastly, we knew that our communities needed access to the proper resources in order to successfully navigate through a global pandemic. We used our network to create a plan to provide what our community needed.

We are an organization that is familiar to providing services to our community and acting as advocates for our students. The pandemic allowed us to utilize our skills more creatively, but we knew that we must be ready to serve when our students and families needed us the most. Together our organization planned and implemented our call to action “Meeting the Needs of our Community”.

Community Partners:
Jackson Medical Mall Foundation, University of Mississippi Medical Center (School of Nursing), Lanier High Teen Wellness Clinic, Weakley & Associates Accounting Firm(Houston, TX), Farish Street Community of SHALOM Religious Organization