Word: baraka
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...Seeing themselves in this new context seems to help many of the Baraka kids redirect their lives. Kevin Prem, now 15, joined a gang when he was only 10. By the time he was 12, his two older brothers and nine of his friends had dropped out of school. At Baraka, though, Kevin got his temper under control and won five awards for academic excellence. Now he plans to be a prosecuting attorney, so he can put in jail "people who sell drugs to kids." Daryl Stewart, now 16, had been kicked out of six schools before going to Baraka...
...Embry blames the uprising on uneven rule enforcement and poor management, and insists that better leadership and faculty selection will prevent a recurrence. He also believes that the school needs a mix of kids, not just ones who have been disruptive, and that Baraka needs to screen out students with serious psychological problems...
...There's another challenge to the success of Baraka or any similar boarding school: What happens when the kids come back to the city? The Abell Foundation steers the boys away from their neighborhood schools, placing the top students into City College High School and most of the others into parochial St. Frances Academy, tuition free. But the boys still must renegotiate their lives outside school, where many of their friends have dropped out and become involved with drugs and crime...
...some, this may be impossible, says Sister John Francis Schilling, who as principal of St. Frances has watched 18 Baraka boys try to readjust to life in Baltimore. Her school is located in one of the city's most crime-ridden neighborhoods. Yet a remarkable 90% of its students go on to college. Most of them are the first in their families to apply. Schilling agrees that Baltimore needs a boarding school, but wants it located in the city. "You can't take them away for the rest of their lives," she says. "The boys have to learn...
...doubts about Baraka are shared by some members of the Baltimore board of education, which is sending two of its members to Kenya in November to evaluate the school and recommend whether to partly fund it in the future. Annual expenses now run about $14,000 per student. Embry is asking the city to pay half that amount - a sum slightly higher than what it costs the city and state combined to educate a child in the local schools. If the board declines, Embry says, his foundation will close Baraka. If the city does make a long-term commitment, Embry...