Reading, Writing, Roulette (cont.)
............................................................................................................................
viewing page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11
A Struggling Choice School
At the North Central YMCA, there's no indication that a school shares this building except for this small sign posted outside a second-floor office: Medgar Evers Baptist Academy. And the 48 children in the private kindergarten-through-fourth-grade school do indeed share the space with members of the Y--the gym, the bathrooms, the conference rooms that double as classrooms. Children's feet dangle from adult-size chairs as they stretch to work at adult-height tables. Their books are stored in a closet, but there's a public library across the street.
By necessity, Medgar Evers is a make-do school. While established parochial schools were bolstered by the infusion of students and their voucher cash, many new choice schools have struggled for lack of basic infrastructure, like a building and support staff. All the children at Medgar Evers's Y site are voucher students; as are those in a sister site, which serves 41 middle-school students in the lower level of a church a few miles away. The two student bodies are the sole source of funding for the school, which pays rent and salaries, along with books, supplies and operating expenses. "We're working toward getting our own building so we can expand," says Avis Wright, the school's CEO and founder, as the children at the Y assemble to hear a visiting public-health nurse discuss conflict resolution. But to expand, she'll need more space and more teachers, and that costs more money.
It's clear that vouchers have created a market for entrepreneurial educators, as well as disillusioned public-school teachers. Avis Wright, who has seminary and business-administration training, is on her third school. In 1987 she set up the now-defunct Wright Track, for students who had been kicked out of other public schools. "But the kids had too many problems; some of them were on marijuana and they had bad attitudes," she says. "There's not too much you can do with some children." Then she had another idea: Medgar Evers Academy (minus the Baptist), which nearly closed its doors because of a shortfall under a state-mandated 65 percent cap on voucher students in the early days of choice. The school stayed afloat once the cap was raised to 100 percent, and Wright transformed it into the Christian-infused Medgar Evers Baptist Academy.
Avis Wright's school is not alone in its struggles. Two choice schools that mainly serve Black students have closed because of financial problems. Another was forced to move last year after building inspectors declared its site unsuitable.
Two of six Medgar Evers teachers have certification, but one teacher's aide has only a high-school diploma. Gary Smith, a brother who left the public schools and now teaches