DESTINATION GRADUATION: JaPerry Gilbert! When you work with people, in the next office or in the next cubicle, you get to know them in a unique way. You hear them on the phone from one day to the next and you begin to pick up the varying tones their voices make when they’re down, when they’re up; when they’re worried, when they’re just doing business. When Lily Gilbert, my dear friend,

who happens to be the accountant for the Diocese answered the phone that day, I knew something wonderful  had happened because she squealed!. I jumped up and ran around the end of her cubicle and saw the tears of joy coming down her cheeks. “What! I was practically squealing myself. By the time, Lilly put down the phone we were both jumping up and down. Then the words were tumbling out of her mouth.

JaPerry Gilbert, her 15 year old son had just been chosen to serve on the State Superintendent’s Student Advisory Board.  The Board’s seventeen student members work with the Superintendent primarily on the project, DESTINATION GRADUATION, whose objective is to reduce school dropout rates by 50% over the next five to seven years. 

In January 2008, the Student Board oversaw the DESTINATION GRADUATION: Mississippi Teen Summit that brought over 1,100 high school students and school leaders representing a majority of Mississippi’s 247 high schools.  The Summit, held in Jackson, provided a venue in which students, teachers, and community leaders, deliberated on effective strategies to reduce the dropout rate.  In February 2008, the DESTINATION GRADUATION: Mississippi Adult Summit met in Jackson and was attended by over 2,500 adults including The Rt. Rev. Duncan M. Gray, and hundreds of Mississippi Episcopalians.  Special guests included Governor Haley Barbour, and keynote speaker, Alma J. Powell, Chair of America’s Promise Alliance.  JaPerry was an honorary designee and helped introduce several of the adult guest speakers.

No one who knows JaPerry is surprised that he would be selected to serve on such an important Board.  We congratulate JaPerry and his mother, Liley.