Neblett Center to Launch Saturday Academy

H.L. Neblett Center Executive Director Olga McKissic said the building on West Fifth Street is filled with memorabilia from Owensboro’s long-closed Western High School.

So when center officials were deciding what to name the Saturday academy they are planning for elementary school-age black males, they chose Western Academy at the Neblett.

“The Neblett Center houses of the legacy of that school,” McKissic said of Western High, the city’s last black high school that closed in 1962. The new academy will take Western’s name and its mascot, the bulldog.

The Western Academy at the Neblett is planned as an effort to help black male elementary students currently in the third, fourth and fifth grades improve their school grades and test scores. The program is modeled after Lexington’s BMW Academy.