Black ministers start schools to fill in gaps

Mr. Daniels, a Marine lieutenant colonel with an MBA, says conditions in St. Louis public schools are mirrored in urban school districts around the country, and so are the solutions that are taking shape here. Prior to going back on active military duty in late October, Daniels was receiving more than a dozen calls per day from clergymen, parents, educators, and others who had heard about the academies and wanted to duplicate the effort in their communities.

Similar church-inspired schools already are taking shape in states from Georgia to California. In some other locales, church leaders who share the frustration of St. Louis's clergy are opting to fight the reform battle within the public schools arena rather than creating separate schools.

The issue presents a paradox for many in the black community. African-Americans in inner cities, unable to afford private schools, have long been strong supporters of public schools, believing them to represent the only real hope for their children.

In Memphis, a politically powerful 200-member bloc of clergy known as Ministers Aligned and Committed to Excellence (MACE) is speeding the pace of change in a district where 64 of the 215 schools are officially "failing." Each ministerial member has adopted a school with which he or she shares church resources.

"Black churches have been the cutting edge of all change in this country for African-Americans," says L. LaSimba Gray Jr., pastor of New Sardis Baptist Church in Memphis and president of MACE. "We realize that, and we are now more and more willing to exercise this in the educational arena. Heretofore, we have elected officials and trusted them to do the right thing. That's not how we're operating anymore."

Indeed, Lee Brown, a member of MACE and a prominent Baptist minister, is the first clergyman ever elected to the Memphis school board. The issues MACE is addressing range from busing and school buildings to uniform curriculum standards and increased parental involvement in schools.

As churches step up their involvement in education, concerns do surface about the separation of church and state.

But Mr. Gray insists there is no attempt to cross that boundary and impose a religious curriculum in the schools.

"There's no dichotomy between secular and sacred. Civic involvement is an integral part of our ministry," he says.

In St. Louis, the church-state issue may arise if the St. Louis Academies succeed in becoming charter schools, which fall within the public system.

Both Wooten and Daniels, however, say there's no entanglement of religion and what the academies are offering.

"This is about education," Daniels says. "Just because you are a member of a church doesn't mean you're not a concerned member of the community. Our churches are also part of the community and also concerned. But there is absolutely no attempt to teach church doctrine.... There is no real connection to the church other than sponsorship and the fact that we can see in Sunday school that these kids can't read."

For Daughrity, the debate is a distant concern.

"I don't really know about the issue of church and state," she says. "All I know is that my daughters have finally found a school where they are happy and productive."

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