Dwight White was a smart kid who didn't apply himself.

He'll be the first to tell you. He tells anyone who reminds him of himself — and he walks the halls of Galesburg High School specifically looking for them.

"I've always been looking for a Dwight White," he says.

He dropped out of Galesburg High. Joined the Navy. Spent five years, eleven months, and twenty-one days in service, earned his GED, came home, built a life — and eventually found his way back to the same school he once left.

Not as a student. Not as staff.

As part of something that has quietly become one of the most important layers of support in the building.

They're known as the Streak Dads — and Moms.

The program began in the 2013-14 school year, and it started with a question Candy Webb couldn't stop asking: Who is there for the kids no one is looking at?

At the time, Webb was serving as president of the Galesburg NAACP. She and a small group of other women identified a gap — students, particularly African American and Latino students, who didn't have a consistent, positive adult presence at the high school. They set out to fill it. Working alongside the Public Schools Foundation, district administration, and an organizing committee called GHS Project Excellence, they built a structure designed so that volunteers could focus entirely on students while others handled logistics.

Among the early dads who stepped up was John Sibley Sr. — instrumental in shaping the program's day-to-day presence, on the floor of the school nearly every day until he stepped back. When he did, DeVone Eurales took the lead, carrying that presence forward into the program's next chapter.

"We don't work for anybody," Dwight says. "We're not paid. We're all volunteers."

They move through the building during lunch, in the hallways, sometimes into classrooms. They show up at games. They run into students at the store, on porches, a block from home.

"I was just sitting on my front porch," Dwight says, "and a young man walked by the house. 'How you doing, Mr. White?' He lives in my neighborhood. I did not know."

Now he does. And now that young man knows where to find him.

That's not incidental. That's the work.

"Just another layer," he says.

Pastor James Haley came to Galesburg in 2018. Candy Webb — then a member of his congregation — invited him into the program with a simple message: the kids need people in that building who will show up for them.

He listened.

"I believe this is a ministry of encouraging," he says.

He doesn't preach in the cafeteria. He doesn't impose. He walks the floors of the building, offering kind words and presence. When students ask for a prayer, he gives one. He lets them come to him.

"Your presence makes a difference," he says.

Rodney Bunch brings forty years of education — Chicago classrooms, career exploration programs, eight years teaching pre-GED at a correctional facility. He's seen what happens when students fall through the cracks. He's also seen the other outcome.

Each person brings something different. None of them tries to be anyone else.

Dwight carries his own story into every conversation. He's a dropout who went on to serve five years in the Navy, earn his GED, work at Western Illinois University — "I tell everybody I was colonel of the urinal" — take college classes, and eventually become a 4th Ward Alderman on the Galesburg City Council. He tells students all of that.

He also has a challenge he runs at the local coffee shop. Repeat his phrase back to him, and he'll buy you whatever you want:

Reading is knowledge. Knowledge is education. And without it, I have nothing.

"It's planting a seed," he says.

Candy Webb has watched those seeds take root since the beginning — both as a founder and, periodically, as a Streak Mom herself. Her favorite place in the building isn't where you might expect.

"My favorite place to be is in the ISS room," she says. In-School Suspension. She goes in and sits down with whoever is there. "What are you doing in here? It's such a beautiful day outside." And then they talk — about attendance, about the future, about what they want their life to look like.

Over the years, the program has accumulated stories that can't be quantified. Cards in the mail from students who were helped. A young woman years later, reconnected with her family, stopping to say hello. A young man named Chase, now in the Navy, who used to come talk every single day. And at least one student who, on the day they had decided not to go on, encountered a Streak Dad who didn't know any of that — and talked with them anyway.

"You can't measure that," Webb says.

When kids see the shirts, she says, something registers — I am in a safe place. I can go to this person.

The program is evolving. It's being integrated now into a broader volunteer network being developed within the district — a structure that opens the door wider than before. The focus has always been on students who need it most, Webb says. But going forward: "We're not just focused on brown and black community kids. We're focused on all of them."

Every fall, before the first football game, the group is introduced on the field. No titles. No credentials.

Just presence.

"The greatest thing we can do," Dwight says, "is help a child. Because someday, that child helps another."

That's how it grows.

Not through policy. Not through programs.

Through the layer that stays.