When Callaway Elementary School opened its doors this fall, the students had many new teachers, a new principal and a new curriculum -- all chosen by Vashti McKenzie, the minister of a well-known African-American church.

Callaway is not a new parochial school in Baltimore but a neighborhood public school, perhaps the only one in the nation managed by the nonprofit arm of a church. In a city in the midst of school reform, few criticized the school board's decision to let a church try to improve teaching at a school where only 6 percent of third-graders passed the state's reading test last year.

The web of connections between Baltimore's African-American churches and its schools has been an intricate one woven by parents, teachers and ministers who believe the church should be a force for social change. Churches organize after-school tutoring programs, raise money for schools, lobby in Annapolis to increase state funding and hold regular Sunday services in public schools.

But some of these alliances could stretch constitutional limits, legal experts say, and could open Baltimore's school board to legal challenges. Educational associations and constitutional law experts say they have not heard of a church-affiliated, nonprofit organization running a public school anywhere else in the nation.

They say it is unclear how the Supreme Court would rule on the issue.

"Ultimately, these decisions rest with the school board," said Del. Howard P. Rawlings, a Baltimore Democrat. "But I think the school board, in moving down this path, will ignite an important debate over the separation of church and state."

Church leaders say they plan to get more involved in education, not less. They find Robert Booker, the new school chief executive officer, far more welcoming than his two predecessors. "What we sense with this new chief executive officer is an openness for a real partnership," said the Rev. Douglas Miles, pastor of Koinonia Baptist Church.

Miles and Booker began a campaign, "Doing Our Part," last summer to get parents more involved in education, with churches holding back-to-school rallies and ministers preaching from the pulpit.

Churches, through Baltimoreans United In Leadership

Development, have sponsored Child First, a group that tries to get parents to work in the schools and to lobby on the most important issues, such as crowding. BUILD churches also want to create partnerships between churches and all 120 elementary schools by the end of the year.

Those partnerships have produced results -- a total of $11,000 for four city schools this school year, an amount the fund-raisers say is only a start -- but are the relationships too close? Legal scholars said churches cannot proselytize in schools or create an atmosphere that is uncomfortable for children who have different beliefs than teachers and principals.

Symbolic union

Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church and John Eager Howard Elementary School celebrated a symbolic marriage of the principal and pastor on May 31. The Rev. Karen Brown, the

associate pastor, performed the ceremony in which the principal and pastor danced down the aisles in African garb and promised to "love, honor and respect" their institutions. The service was a way for the church and school "to make a commitment to uplift the neighborhood and empower the parents," said Sandra Ashe, the school's principal.

To assuage concerns raised by the community, Ashe said she called it a unity service and made sure that Jews and Muslims felt comfortable and took part.

This school year, Madison Avenue Presbyterian has taken on a significant role in the life of the school. It operates after-school and Saturday academic programs for about 150 of the school's 390 pupils.

The union between the two has helped the church recruit members. When Ashe goes out on behalf of the school, she said, she doesn't do any "hard-core proselytizing" but tells parents that she works work on behalf of the school as a disciple of God.

About 10 families from the school have become members of the church in two years, Brown said, and many more aren't formal members but refer to Madison as their church.

"We are unapologetic about being Christian," she said.

Bible studies

The Rev. Douglas Wilson, minister of Mount Pleasant Church Ministries, is also unapologetic about wanting prayer back in school and Bible studies as part of after-school activities in high school.

Wilson, executive secretary of the 10-year-old Clergy United for Renewal in East Baltimore (CURE), has been involved in starting Bible study clubs in several city high schools, an activity that has been sanctioned by the Supreme Court.

"We are spirit, mind and body," Wilson said. "We were educating the mind but excluding the spirit."

The Bible study clubs have led some teachers to reveal their religious approaches. Several told CURE ministers that they had been reciting Scripture in their classrooms and praying before a test with students, Wilson said. Those teachers said they have always felt they could not "successfully educate and help and strengthen our young people if God wasn't included," he said.

Crossing the line

Those activities are not constitutional, according to legal experts, because staff-led praying at school has been ruled illegal.

The business card of a special education case manager might also cross the line, said Douglas Laycock, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin. The case manager, on the staff at Fallstaff Middle School, felt comfortable enough about expressing her religious beliefs that she put these words on her business card: "I can do all things through Christ that strengthen me."

But what of the New Song Academy and Callaway Elementary School? New Song Academy, a tiny magnet school run by an affiliated organization of New Song Community Church in Sandtown, joined the city's public school system a year ago. Its students have test scores comparable to those of the best city schools.

Two constitutional law professors said it is difficult to say how the Supreme Court might rule if the arrangement between the schools and churches was challenged. On the one hand, the arrangement seems to be dangerously close to unconstitutional. You have a church running a governmental function," said Laycock.

On the other hand, if the school system asks for proposals from nonprofit groups around the city to run schools, as it has for the past two years, is the system discriminating against a religion if it doesn't allow a church to run a school?

"It is like a hard law-school exam," said Michael Meyerson, who teaches constitutional law at the University of Baltimore. But, he said, if a parent challenged a church-school arrangement on constitutional grounds, judges might look at how carefully the school board has ensured that Callaway isn't teaching religion or that children of different faiths aren't made to feel uncomfortable.

Separate charters

McKenzie, chairwoman of Payne Memorial Outreach, the organization that manages Callaway Elementary, said Payne Memorial AME Church has not crossed the church-state line. Churches should not teach religion in the public schools, she said. But there is no reason a religious organization should be excluded from taking on the same role as other nonprofits.

McKenzie points out that Payne Memorial Outreach and the church have separate charters and separate bank accounts.

For years, she said, the churches in Baltimore have given millions of dollars to support soup kitchens and homeless shelters -- helping people who have fallen by the wayside or "fallen off the hill and are at the bottom," as McKenzie puts it.

She wants to take Payne Memorial Outreach in a new direction and attack one of the most fundamental problems in the city: illiteracy.

A subtle but important distinction exists between New Song and Callaway. Parents choose to send their children to New Song, a magnet school, rather than Gilmor Elementary School, the neighborhood public school down the street.

Parents at Callaway don't have the same choice. If they object to Callaway, they must request placement at a school out of their neighborhood, and the request doesn't have to be granted.

Churches and choices

Churches have taken a role in running charter schools around the nation, similar to New Song, but those are schools that parents choose for their children, not neighborhood schools that have been taken over by a church-affiliated organization.

"Churches exist to spread religious messages. They don't exist to run public schools. It shouldn't surprise anyone that if they DTC take on that role, they will eventually instill religious content," said Robert Boston, assistant director of communications for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, an association that advocates church and state separation in the courts and in Congress.

However, Jim Henderson, the senior counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, a public interest law firm that advocates stands against abortion and for family and religious liberty, points out that churches administer some public housing programs.

Legal questions

For the issue to move out of the theoretical arena, a parent or legal organization would have to challenge the school board in court.

While Susan Goering, executive director of the Maryland American Civil Liberties Union, says legal questions might be raised about a church running a school, this is not a simple issue. "As a practical matter, these schools need all the help they can get, and the ACLU doesn't want to discourage the churches from getting involved in helping the schools," she said.

No parent is threatening to sue. In fact, New Song's brief legacy of success is welcomed. School director Susan Tibbels uses small classes, teachers who come from the community and a private school curriculum. New Song's first-graders scored as well on standardized tests as their peers at the city's best elementary schools last year. Sandtown's neighborhood public school had some of the worst test scores of any city elementary.

Breaking up some of the close partnerships between churches and schools might not be the right thing to do, said Meyerson, the law professor. The partnerships "might be unconstitutional, but good for the children," he said.

Pub Date: 11/22/98