By Jill Cavaliere
Jack Bell was undecided about his career plans, like many University of Richmond seniors, during the months before his graduation in May 2007. He was certain he wanted to teach in the Richmond area for a year or two, but none of the private schools he looked into seemed right.
"My heart wasn't really in any of those places," Bell said.
One February day Bell was talking about the situation with Percy Strickland, the CEO of Church Hill Activities and Tutoring in Richmond. CHAT, according to its website, is a Christian organization seeking to transform the Church Hill area by opening homes, and providing programs such as life-skills training and after school tutoring.
Bell volunteered as a CHAT tutor since freshman year, and lived in the area one summer.
"My heart was really here," he said, and so when Strickland suggested Bell start a school for CHAT, he did.
On Sept. 4, 2007, almost seven months after Bell's conversation with Strickland, the Church Hill Academy's first school year began.
The academy, a provisional private school in the process of accreditation, provides free education to nine Church Hill residents – six girls and three boys – all in the 10th grade. The students heard about the school through CHAT, and chose to enroll in the academy for this year.
Although Bell and Strickland formed the idea for the academy, many other people soon joined the cause, including Dan Fisher and Taylor Winters, both UR seniors at the time.
Fisher and Winters had volunteered with CHAT since their junior years, and individually sought different ways to work with inner-city children after graduation.
Fisher said he originally applied to Teach for America, but started looking into Richmond public schools when he was not accepted. One day he was telling Bell, his apartment-mate at the time, how his job search was going when Bell excitedly told him about the academy. The idea interested Fisher, and after praying about it, he agreed to help.
For Winters the decision to join the academy was a bit different. She had worked as a CHAT intern the past summer, and during that time met her husband, who lived in Church Hill.
The two were engaged while Winters was finishing her senior year, she said, so she knew she would be moving to the neighborhood after graduation. Winters said that through the relationships she built during her internship she developed a passion to help the neighborhood.
Winters said she wanted to help in whatever area CHAT had a need, so when Bell approached her with his idea, she agreed to help.
The three then worked during the summer to develop the details of the school. Because the academy is nonprofit, much of the time was spent fundraising from private donors.
So far they have raised about $81,000, but Winters said they were still collecting donations because they are $10,000 short for the year.
About $72,000 of the money goes toward salaries for the three founders, while the rest goes toward things such as supplies and mortgage for the building, which is rented from CHAT.
Bell said the money came from churches, friends and family, members of the Richmond and Church Hill communities, and others. He described how overall support for the academy has been overwhelming, and singled out Third Presbyterian Church, on Forest Avenue, as one of the major contributors.
"It really has become sort of a community project," Bell said. "So many people are behind the scenes helping us."
Over the summer Fisher handled most of the planning, Winters said, because Bell was in Mississippi raising support for the school and she was planning their wedding.
Fisher said the planning process was not what he had expected, since he had heard about bureaucracy in school but had never actually dealt with it. He contacted Brian Brown, a lawyer involved with CHAT, and they worked on the details of the school together.
One of the issues the two worked on was acquiring a nonprofit, 501c3 status for the school. According to Fisher, the 501c3 status helps the academy because it makes donations tax deductible and exempts it from paying taxes at certain stores.
The academy also began looking into accreditation agencies, narrowing it down to a few options. It is leaning toward the National Association of Street Schools, which would provide structure, direction, funding and approval for the school.
Since accreditation typically takes from one to five years, Winters said the academy leaders wanted to make sure the school fit well with the organization it chose. The decision will be made by the academy's board of directors before the end of the year.
Board member Corey Widmer, associate minister at Third Presbyterian Church, in an email interview, said the board's purpose was "to bring structure, strength and accountability to the vision, support and operations of the school."
Fisher assembled the board of directors this summer, taking three principles into consideration while he searched: people in positions of influence and social networking, people with educational experience, and people who have a heart for the Church Hill area.
"[We wanted] people who know what's going on and could provide guides for us as we go down this process," Fisher said.
Seven people are on the Board of Directors, including three doctors, a teacher, a judge, a pastor and a director of admissions at the Medical College of Virginia.
Widmer explained the Board seeks "to draw from the knowledge of many others who have done similar things around the county and glean from their experience solutions to some of the challenges we are facing."
During the early stages of planning for the school, Fisher said he often felt overwhelmed.
"I felt like, €˜I don't know what I'm doing.' I felt totally incompetent," Fisher said, and often had moments when he doubted if the academy was going to work.
Fisher said he handled doubts by praying and discerning from God that the school was something that was needed in the neighborhood. Bell and Winters also see the students' needs as the driving force behind the academy.
"A lot of them are just in awful, awful situations academically," Bell said. "In tutoring them we've made an implicit promise to them€¦that we would see them through."
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, about 60 percent of people in the Church Hill area graduate from high school, and only 10 percent complete college. Bell also pointed out that 37 percent of people live below the poverty line, and the unemployment rate ranges from 38-40 percent.
Bell said as he tutored and built relationships, he saw a need for drastic intervention.
Winters views the issues in the area as small pieces of a larger systemic problem. "Poverty, malnutrition, the lack of resources around here – those are generational issues," she said. "They did not happen in one day and they aren't going to end in one day. So while we continue to fight for them, in the meantime, we want to save our kids."
She said they chose education because "if you try to think of everything that would solve poverty, you'll be so overwhelmed that you'll quit and you'll move to the West End."
Understanding the disadvantages caused by the students' backgrounds guided how the founders planned and designed the academy.
According to the school's mission statement, the academy seeks to provide the students with the skills needed "for becoming responsible, virtuous and articulate men and women." Explaining a diploma is not an "end-in-and-of-itself," but a means for students to develop character.
Bell, Fisher and Winters realized many of the students came from large classrooms where they tended to be overlooked. They set enrollment at 12 students, Bell said, to avoid this situation and enable the students to receive more attention.
The three also started brainstorming about what they could feed the students, Fisher said, since most do not eat at home, and good nutrition helps school performance.
The academy provides breakfast and lunch for the students, and a snack when possible. The goal, Winters said, is to provide the students with 75 percent of the nutrients needed per day.
"It's pretty exciting to be able to do that compared to what they are eating," she said. The academy aims to keep the cost equal to a food stamp budget, which is close to the economic situation of the students' home life.
Winters said they have not reached that goal. Food stamps allot $1.66 per meal per person, and they often exceed that amount because of donated food or food bought at a discount.
The students also take a weekly, hour-long class on healthy living, which Winters teaches. The academy's other classes were planned out in April, Fisher said, when the three decided on English, math, science, history and foreign language as the school's major subjects. They then apportioned the subjects according to what each felt most comfortable teaching. Bell was chosen to teach English and Latin because he specialized in them while at UR, and Fisher selected math, although he majored in sociology major.
History and science were a bit more difficult to figure out, Fisher said, because none of the three felt entirely comfortable with the idea of teaching them. They sought to bring in more experienced people in those subjects, and eventually found Kathy White and Terrill Wade, who volunteer one day a week to teach U.S. history and biology.
For White, a middle-school history teacher for the past 10 years, the academy was a perfect opportunity to become involved in the neighborhood. White said she had always wanted to be a CHAT tutor, but was unavailable during the tutoring hours. She heard about the academy through church and figured out a way to work it into her schedule. White teaches once a week.
Both biology and history are afternoon classes, held every Monday and Thursday. The other afternoons are typically spent learning Latin, although sometimes special field trips occur on Fridays. All afternoon classes last an hour and 10 minutes, and are followed by an hour-long study period, which lasts until school ends at 2:30.
While the afternoons vary from day to day, the morning routine remains constant. Every school day begins with breakfast at 8 o'clock, and at 8:30 classes start.
At the beginning of the year, the students were divided between the weaker and stronger. The weaker group starts with math after breakfast, while the stronger group learns English. After an hour and a half the two groups switch, and remain in that class until lunch.
The students must participate in the after-school CHAT tutoring sessions twice a week, and although it is not a nominally Christian school, all of the students attend a weekly Bible study and attend church each Sunday.
"We don't have a Bible time," Winters said, "but all of us are Christians and we started this because we want to be examples to [the students] in our lives."
All three of the founders hope to see the academy grow, and according to Bell, they plan to add on an 11th and 12th grade as this year's class moves up. Although adding ninth grade is not something they have discussed yet, Bell said they have not ruled it out.
"I think the ultimate vision is to have a middle school at some point," Bell said. He does not know how long he will remain with the academy, but he is committed to seeing this group of students through, he said.
Fisher had a similar goal for the academy. "I would love to see this place take off," he said. "I would love to see this be a school that would provide hope for our kids."
Fisher said he saw himself at the academy for at least the next few years, and hoped it not only takes root in the community, but acquired people who would continue it in the future.
Fisher also said he would like to establish more specialized roles, such as a principal, since currently the three founders wear so many different hats.
Although Winters does not know how long she will work with the academy, she is committed to serving the Church Hill community.
"If the school is a place that there is still a need," she said, "then I want to be here to serve that. If we end up incurring multiple teachers, finance people and someone to do all the food stuff, there will be something else here in the neighborhood."
Although none of the founders took an education class while at UR, they still found aspects of their education valuable during this process.
Bell said his English major had helped him with his ability to communicate, while Fisher and Winters, both sociology majors, said the issues they discussed in classes helped them gain a deeper understanding of the inner city.
Winters said that with the understanding came more determination. "Sometimes we see these kids with a lack of motivation, or they're disorganized, or their family life sucks€¦but there are reasons that it's that way. So that tends to make me a little more patient."
All three of the founders said the process of starting a school had been a learning experience, and Bell described it as both terrifying and exciting.
For Winters, the experience has been a lesson in culture. Because she went to a school similar to those the students attended, she said, she understands the students' culture a bit more.
"But we are coming as an outsider," Winters said. "So it's learning how to be a part of the culture€¦but also trying to bring them out of the situation that they are in."
Because of their social situation, Winters said, many of the students, who are black, have not come in contact with many other white people besides the ones who come to help them.
Often times the students' perception of the teachers can pose difficulties, Fisher said. He described many of the differences as cultural, rather than racial.
Winters said acting superior is the easiest way to widen the cultural gap. "They already see you as white, so you're automatically classified as rich as and better than them."
"You have to be very cautious and be very relational€¦be very real with people so that you do continue that relationship," she said.
Fisher said his frustrations came from seeing a lack of desire in the students, and asked: "How do you create motivation in someone who doesn't believe in themselves? Who doesn't see their full potential? Doesn't see what they're capable of?"
Winters also gets frustrated, and tries to reevaluate the situation by reminding herself, "All day I get to spend with these kids that I have an incredible relationship with."
Fisher also appreciates his situation, saying, "This is such a privilege to be able to work with these kids because they are so wonderful. €¦They all have just wonderful gifts to offer the world, and it's great to be able to be put in a position to bring that out of them."
Bell said one student could not read a word when she started at the academy. The three noticed she worked well one-on-one, and redesigned the curriculum for her.
"A couple of weeks ago," Bell said, "I was talking to her grandmother, and she was saying how wonderful it was because now she could send the student to the store with a list of things to buy, and she could do it."
Bell described how encouraged he was when the girl came up to him one morning and said, "Jack, this is awesome! I can read anything I want now! It's great!"
"That's definitely the most encouraging experience thus far," Bell said, "just to know that what we are doing is actually having some effect."