DECATUR, Ga. (AP) - DeKalb County officials are announcing a new initiative aimed at the county's refugee and immigrant students.

DeKalb is home to one of the state's most diverse school districts, and has nearly 17,000 students whose primary home language is not English. The county's PHLOTES to the Top project will increase accessibility to educational, social and workforce services for K-12 students and their families to increase literacy, graduation, job readiness and homeownership rates.

The program will be implemented in the fall in the Clarkston school cluster and will be expanded in the future to include additional high school clusters. PHLOTES is an initiative of the DeKalb County Higher Education Advisory Council, a consortium of institutions of higher learning.