Black and White Together

977 Words

Black and White Together

St. Josephis a rare sight in the Delta – an integrated school that seems to work. But it’s not for everyone.

By CHELSEACAVENY

The intercom screeches in Michelle Sabotier’s senior English class. A high-pitched voice invites students to the gymnasium for a special presentation from a traveling planetarium. The last group called: Sabotier’s senior honors English class.

Doors open outside in the hallway, and the chatter of excited students getting out of class leaks in through the door. Inside Sabotier’s class, not a single senior moves. The entire class of 13 decides to stay.

Sabotier’s students are focused, determined. They are about to graduate fromSt. JosephCatholicSchool,and nothing is going to stand in their way.

St. Joe, as it's called, has been a part ofGreenvillesince 1888. Its history links with the early families that helped build a proud city that, according to former Delta Democrat-Times Editor Hodding Carter III, “strutted sitting down.” The city saw itself as a more welcoming, progressive place than anywhere else inMississippi. The Percy family was responsible for much of the early leadership of the city, and William Alexander Percy’s personal tutor, the Rev. P.J. Korstenbroek, led the creation of the Catholic Church and parochial education here.

That history still seems present when students walk the halls ofSt. Josephtoday. At thisCatholicschool, only half of the students are Catholic. Beyond religion, St. Joe’s student body is integrated, a very rare thing for a Delta school. Sabotier’s senior honors English class has five white students and eight African-Americans. The school is 40 percent African-American.

"In this building, people of all races, cultures, creeds work together every day for a common goal," says Paul Artman, who served 16 years as mayor before becoming St. Joe's principal. "They like each other. They succeed together.”

It would be easy to see St. Joe, a popular school with discipline and a good academic record, as a model for how to make integrated education work in the Delta. But St. Joe has distinct advantages over public schools.

For one thing, all of St. Joe's students and their families have something in common: They have agreed to the guidelines of a parochial education, what Artman calls "a faith-based, morals-based, value-added education."

And parochial education, unlike public school, comes with a significant cost. The average cost of educating a student at St. Joe is $6,500 a year. The students are paying closer to an average of $4,500 in tuition a year plus $800 to $900 in fees. The Catholic Church pumps additional money into the school to cover the costs not met by tuition. In very few cases, students who can't afford tuition get financial aid from the church.

The school makes its expectations clear from the beginning.

"This is the school," Artman tells prospective students and their parents. "If this is what you want in a school, we are glad to have you.”

To qualify, students must undergo a vigorous application and interview process. They must complete a standardized math and communicative arts test, along with an essay and interview.

Artman says that during the interview, "we try to explain that this is a different kind of school. Especially if one is coming trying to escape public school. Then we try to make it very clear that we are not going to accept any of the problems, any of the distractions that they’ve been experiencing at public school or that a student may have been a part of that.”

Michelle Sabotier knows what he's talking about. In the public schools, she saw fights every day and witnessed a fellow teacher's nervous breakdown during the middle of the year. The students in the neighboring teacher's class would then be ushered into the room every day for what turned out to be an unsupervised free period. Sabotier describes the experience as “soul sucking.”

Sabotier, who used to run a nonprofit in Washington, D.C., came to St. Joe after teaching in public schools in Rolling Fork and Greenville through the Ole Miss-based Mississippi Teacher Corps. In fact, she took a pay cut to teach there.

She liked the discipline. She liked the students. She liked the academic environment. And she especially liked the fact that it was the only "truly integrated" school she had seen in the Delta. She was impressed with genuine friendships forged between black and white students. When girls had sleepovers, for example, they would sometimes invite friends of both races.

The stress and exhaustion that went with her previous jobs seems a distant thing on this Tuesday morning in early spring. Today, Sabotier is invigorated. Her students are active and engaged. They eagerly tackle an exercise called “13 Minutes of Rock.”

All 13 seniors quietly sit and listen to a RAM song. As the song ends, the class dives into a discussion about how the song mirrors a romantic ballad. At one point, the discussion becomes lively and for the first time the entire period, it looks like Sabotier might have to raise her voice and harshly demand silence. But the moment quickly passes. As soon as the chatter rises, the class disciplines itself with a few “shushes” from different parts of the room.

“I’ve been involved in a lot of the studies ofGreenville,WashingtonCounty, the Delta. How do you save it? How do you revamp it? Things like that. And I proudly tell everybody that I think we have the formula here,” Artman says.

“Now whether you can replicate this formula of a Catholic school in the middle ofGreenvilleor in the middle of the Delta for everyone else that lives around here, I don’t know.”

Produced by the Meek School of Journalism and New Media at the University of Mississippi.

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