By Taylor Smith, Jr., ACSI, Vice President of Executive Support
Before joining ACSI as a staff member, I was superintendent of a large suburban Christian school that attracted students from 23 school districts and 6 counties in our state. Our school had very little diversity in the area of race and ethnicity; both student population and faculty were almost 100 percent white.
One of my goals during my 21-year tenure in the school was to introduce our students and staff members to minority families who had an interest in Christian schooling. The absence of diversity in our school was obvious. The mind-set of many of my colleagues was that anyone with a passion for Christian schooling could get it. They felt that diversity would be achieved in our school naturally. Not so! The realization of this goal for diversity began with me, an African American administrator with two children at the time in an all-white suburban Christian school. When my wife and I enrolled our sons in the school, they were the only minority students in their respective classes, and I was the only minority staff member.
Hurdles can be conquered with a little help from our friends.
The task of recruiting minority children was easier said than done. There were significant hurdles to conquer, many that I could not achieve alone. I needed a little help from my friends. With assistance from a Japanese missionary, our school recruited students of Asian descent. One of the hurdles we had to overcome was the language barrier. Many of the students who came primarily from Japan and China had very little, if any, exposure to English. The other hurdle was the willingness of the faculty to work with students who were different. For the teachers, it wasn’t as much an issue of prejudice as it was an unwillingness to move out of their comfort zone. We had to start both an intervention program to help these students with language barriers become successful in our school and an in-service program to help teachers adjust to a new paradigm.
To recruit African American students, I engaged the help of an urban social worker who oversaw a local recreation center. He identified a number of students who he felt would benefit from Christian schooling. Many of these students were from established church backgrounds but had never been exposed to Christian schooling. But a major hurdle for these families was a busing campaign our city had just completed. The program, which was designed to achieve racial equality in the local schools, gave these families the opportunity for a better education. And now I was suggesting Christian schooling at a cost of several thousand dollars per student. Both the economic element which comprised tuition and related costs—and recruitment—convincing the parents of these children that Christian schooling was a need for their family—were major hurdles to cross. Still other hurdles were helping undereducated students adjust to the rigors of a more difficult curriculum, and helping teachers and parents view this movement as an opportunity and not a threat.
An aggressive financial assistance program solved many of the tuition problems for the African American students who could not afford the full cost of tuition. Only about 50 percent of the families needed financial help. The acceptance of children of Asian descent was an easier hurdle to accomplish, a lower hurdle, if I could use that term. For African American diversity, teacher inservice was necessary to overcome the threat syndrome (fear of polluting the school with undereducated students and cultural differences). Parent in-services were needed to educate the few parents with the same fears. When both the need to create more diversity in our school and the opportunity to help minority children with Christian schooling were explained, families in our churches and school were very generous. They came through with many resources. We called our financial assistance program Adopt-A-Student, and many families were willing to invest in the lives of these children. Special interviews that focused on the benefits of Christian schooling were scheduled to help parents see the need. Many of our local pastors reinforced the need for Christian schooling and endorsed our school. This endorsement was a major step in encouraging our minority families. Finally, to help students academically, we put into place special resource classrooms and intervention programs in tutoring.
These programs began small and gradually grew until our school reached maximum enrollment. Educational freedom that includes Christian schooling is limited to those who can afford the cost. But the hurdles can be conquered with a little help from our friends.
The Meantime Volume 4 Number 1