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Next year, Jacob Fix will enroll at High Point University in High Point, N.C. It's a first step in the William Byrd High School senior's budding political career.

"I want to be president one day. That's my goal," he said.

Fix is going to college thanks partly to Project Discovery, a program for high school students operated through Total Action Against Poverty. On Saturday, the program will host a fundraiser at the Wasena Park brick shelter from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Fix, the youth representative on the Project Discovery board, helped organize the event. Expect basketball shootouts, volleyball games, a dunking booth, hot dogs and a fish fry.

The money, he said, will be used for students "to have a chance at an education."

Gloria Charlton, who runs Project Discovery, said the program targets students who are the first in their family to contemplate college or who meet certain income guidelines. Her goal is to get all her students enrolled in college. Since 2004, when she took over, she's posted a 100 percent success rate.

There are 52 seniors in Project Discovery this year. About 33 of them have already been accepted to colleges including Virginia Tech, Radford University, Hollins University, High Point University and Spellman College in Atlanta.

The program also sends students to James Madison University and Virginia Western Community College.

"Not everyone is going to go to a four-year college," she said.

During the year, Charlton works with students to figure out their post-high school goals, helps them fill out college applications and scholarship forms, and leads college tours.

But Fix said the program offers more intangible benefits.

"It helps you become more cultured, to see things more than just from a high schooler perspective," he said. "It allows us to get a better look into what life is really like.

"It helps you get scholarships and that's always nice," he added, noting, "sometimes you find out about yourself a bit."

Here's what Fix said he has found out about himself:

"I want to go to Harvard for grad school. Get my law degree there and start a law firm in Boston because that's the greatest city in the world."

From there he wants to launch a political career that, he hopes, will lead to the White House.

High Point got Fix's attention after the school sent him a card in the mail, one of the untold millions of cards colleges send to high school seniors every year.

It looked "neat," he recalled and decided to visit.

"I just fell in love with the campus. It's beautiful," said Fix, the first in his family to go to college. Part of the appeal is the school's rapid expansion.

"I think that's what attracted him more than anything," said his father, Mark Fix, who also credited Project Discovery for his son's successful college application.

"I think it's given him a little more focus on looking at colleges and concentrating on the things he needs to do to get into schools."

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Roanoke's Highland Park Elementary School is celebrating its centennial this year. The school, which opened during the 1907-08 school year, is thought to be one of the oldest continuously operating schools in the Roanoke Valley.

The school is planning a parade, a mayoral proclamation, a time capsule, songs and a look back over a century of history, said Principal Debra Doss.

Those 100 years have not been without adversity.

Originally named Park Street School, there were no paved roads near the school until 1913. In 1920 it burned down and was rebuilt. In 1974 its named changed to Highland Park.

But perhaps its closest brush with fate came in 1986, when a school board committee proposed replacing the antiquated Highland Park building with a new school.

Neighborhood preservationists objected and city council members took up their cause. Instead of closing, Highland Park was renovated. Today, it's poised to adopt children from Forest Park, another city elementary school targeted for closure.