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Voucher schools attempt to regroup after shakeup
By WAVENEY ANN MOORE, Times Staff Writer ST. PETERSBURG -- The pink flier tacked to the wall across from a shampoo bowl in the 34th Street S beauty salon promised to fulfill a poor parent's dream. "Free private school education for your child/children," it said. "Scholarships available K-12. Good schools for all. Call Marva Dennard." Behind those simple words lie a complex tale of moderate- and lower-income black families who are seeking options outside the public school system. Increasingly, one of those alternatives is church-affiliated schools that draw on taxpayer-funded scholarships. The school promoted on the pink flier is offering two kinds of financial aid: McKay scholarships, available to children with disabilities ranging from dyslexia to severe retardation; and Florida PRIDE scholarships, for mainstream students who are poor enough to qualify for the federal lunch program. Like many private schools that opened recently, this school's beginnings were directly tied to the state's voucher program. The idea for the school was born about two years ago, when the new pastor of Bethel Metropolitan Baptist Church invited a couple, Art and Angel Rocker, who ran a private school in the pastor's hometown of Pensacola, to talk about their growing enterprise that involved using government money to run private schools for children with disabilities. Church leaders were enthused, and Bethel Metropolitan Christian Academy opened last fall. It didn't take long for the relationship to disintegrate. The church refused to renew the academy's lease, and the school was forced to scout for another location for the upcoming school year. Meanwhile, church leaders decided to persevere with their own tiny Bethel Metropolitan Christian School, which had existed before the Rockers arrived on the scene. In the newest development, a nearby congregation, Bethel Community Baptist Church, has welcomed the Rocker-inspired academy. Bethel Community has announced plans to merge its own 40-member student body with the recently homeless academy. Classes at the new school, to be known as Bethel Community/Bishop Academy II Christian Schools, start Wednesday. "They came to us and they were looking for space," the Rev. Manuel Sykes said. "We thought, why have two schools, one looking for space and one looking for students, when you can solve both problems by coming together?" Confusion and controversy notwithstanding, those involved with the two schools -- the older Bethel Metropolitan Christian School, at 3455 26th Ave. S, and the new Bethel Community/Bishop Academy II Christian Schools, 2901 54th Ave. S -- speak fervently of what they see as their mission to educate African-American children. Such efforts, they acknowledge, can be fraught with challenge. Parents sometimes are disillusioned. Last year some at the Rocker school complained about teacher turnover and the lack of books and services. Others were satisfied with the academy and have followed it and its director, former City Council candidate Marva Dennard, to Bethel Community Baptist Church. Sykes, pastor of Bethel Community Baptist Church, said finances are a major problem for those who run private schools in the African-American community. "You are dealing with a demographic that really can't pay the kind of money that is required to have the top teachers," Sykes said. Lack of a track record is another issue. "Those who can afford it usually don't trust you. They go to more established schools. Even in your own church, they prefer to go to a known commodity," Sykes said. The decision to start a school, he added, is not one that should be made lightly. "It's a tough thing and ultimately, God has to be on your side. It's not something you do on a notion. We feel that we had a legitimate need, because so many of our kids are not progressing in the regular schools. We felt that they needed an alternative, smaller classes and a Christian environment," he said. Retired educator Sidney P. Campbell heads Pathways to Progress, the nonprofit arm of Bethel Metropolitan Church. Pathways to Progress runs the church's summer camp, before- and after-care program and Bethel Metropolitan Christian School. "From the standpoint of a community, you'll find Christian schools trying to serve kids that are locked into (certain) socioeconomic conditions and parents that are experiencing the same types of handicaps," Campbell said. Ms. Dennard, who cooked family-style lunches for her students last school year, said that schools like hers offer something that has been lost in the black community. "We are almost going back to where we were, the nurturing and caring that I had in the school system," said Ms. Dennard, who attended segregated Pinellas County schools. Single parent Connie Davis believes she has found what her children need. She has followed Ms. Dennard to the Bethel Community location and has pulled her daughter out of Shore Acres Elementary School to join her sons at Bethel Community/Bishop Academy II Christian Schools. Her sons will attend the school on McKay scholarships, Miss Davis said. She hopes her daughter will qualify for the corporation-funded scholarship, known locally as Florida PRIDE (Parents' Rights in Deciding Education). There were problems during the early months of the Rocker school, acknowledged Miss Davis, who headed the parent association last year and will do so again this year. It had "its ups and downs," she said, but has since accomplished a great deal. "I see the change in the children, and not just my children. So I have to keep the school open. (The children) respond to Miss Dennard and they respect her. She provides them with a positive role model, that nothing can hold them back from achieving any goals that they have," she said. "I have a son who has attention-deficit disorder and he didn't get the attention he needed (in public school). I moved him to Bethel and he got straight A's across the board. He's enthusiastic about learning. He was never interested in learning before. I have to keep him there and I want my daughter to receive the same attention," Miss Davis said. Another mother, Trinette Cole, had a different experience. Her son will attend Central Christian School this year. "I stuck it out as long as I could. For me, personally, my son, he seemed to do pretty well," but the school was not well run, she said. "I thought that maybe it would level off the last part of the year." At Central Christian, she knows that students "are going to have books," Ms. Cole said. "They have a curriculum set up for our children. That, for me, was wonderful." Campbell is pained that Bethel Metropolitan's name has been besmirched by the problems of the voucher school. "We did not protect the name of the church and it had already had enough blows to knock it over," he said, referring to the notoriety that resulted from the crimes and imprisonment of Bethel Metropolitan's former pastor, the Rev. Henry J. Lyons. "I voted for (the school). Yeah, let's bring them in," Campbell said. "That led to the fall of Rome." In the months that followed, parents complained that their children lacked books and classroom materials. Some said their children had been abused verbally and physically. Many pulled their children of out the school. Amid the controversy, the Rockers had a falling-out with the Rev. Joaquin Marvin, the pastor who allowed them to establish the school, and removed him and his wife, Kimberly, as heads of the school. In their place, the Rockers hired Ms. Dennard, a longtime member of Bethel Metropolitan. In a conversation last week, Campbell sought to distance Bethel Metropolitan from the Rocker-founded school. He said the school, financed by the state of Florida's McKay Scholarship program for students with disabilities, was separate from the tuition-paying, seven-student Bethel Metropolitan Christian School. This was so, Campbell said, though students from the two groups sometimes shared classrooms and other activities. Classes at Bethel Metropolitan Christian School, which plans to offer both McKay and Florida PRIDE scholarships, are expected to begin a week later than public schools. The latter scholarships are funded by corporations in Florida that have been allowed to reduce their state income tax payments by making donations to private school voucher programs. Ms. Dennard says her school also hopes to take advantage of the two scholarship programs. Response to her publicity efforts has been good, she said, adding that more than 100 students are expected to attend the school this year.
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From the Times South Pinellas desks Letters |
