One local education center received some extra funding Monday that will help propel the center’s mission.

All American Check Cashing, Inc. donated a check for $2,500 to the Read by Third Grade program in the hopes of having students learn to read. This is the second donation the company has made to the center.

Tillman Whitley and his wife Dorothy started the tutoring program for at-risk students called Read by Third Grade in 2013. Their mission is to teach students the fundamentals of reading through phonics. Whitley would like to see the phonics method return to the classroom.

“Those memory first classrooms where they’re just giving the kids 20 words to memorize and spell is not working because they are not able to look inside the word,” Whitley said.

He said for students to really learn how to read they have to break down, or decode, each word to learn consonant sounds and if the vowel sound is short or long. Some classrooms, he said, discourage the decoding of words because it is a slower process, but he called decoding a basic building block that students need to be able to read. He said as children start to read for retention and to learn concepts, they need to know how to pronounce and understand more words than the ones they memorized.

“They may have memorized quite a few words from first through third grade, but once they get into those higher order thinking skill courses they have to know how to decode,” Whitley said. “I think decoding is everything.”

Whitley is a retired special education teacher from the Vicksburg Warren School District. He chose to use his own social security and pension money to start the Read by Third Grade program.

“He decided on his own to venture out to help the young underprivileged kids in the city of Vicksburg to learn how to read, and I’m telling you from the voices of the community it is phenomenal,” Mayor George Flaggs Jr. said.

Whitley said the going rate for tutoring is $25 an hour, but he only charges $5 an hour to his 20 students. On Monday and Wednesday Whitley works with 10 first through third graders, and on Tuesday and Thursday he works with 10 fourth through sixth graders.

“I don’t take any more than 10 because I think it’s got to stay small,” Whitley said.

President and CEO of AACC Financial Michael Gray and his wife Stephanie have seen the importance of students learning to read because they regularly spend time reading to students at Johnson Elementary in Jackson.

“Teaching a child to read is the basic fundamentals, and if they don’t have the basic principles to build on they’ll be left behind,” Gray said.

Gray believes in what Whitley is doing and through his relationship with Flaggs chose to support the program.

“It’s an honor and a privilege to support what you do in giving back to the kids,” Gray said to Whitley.

AACC Financial is based in Madison and has 52 locations in three states with one in Vicksburg.

“We the support the communities that we do business in,” Gray said.