The core members of the Reclamation Project began training men Saturday in West St. Louis to nurture troublesome boys at Sumner, Roosevelt, Beaumont and Vashon High Schools.
Escalating violence at the four public high schools that has ranged from fist and weapons fights to shootings recently at Beaumont and Roosevelt compelled organizers to target all four.
Since a corporate turnaround firm last year closed and merged city public schools, some residents feared that intermixing students from various neighborhoods would increase school violence.
Whatever the reason for the violence, the steering committee of the Reclamation Project is moving forward with their plan to address it.
“I’m gratified to see a plan,” said Reclamation Project participant Charles Brown, an architect for Christner, Inc. “A lot of times people have a plan, but they don’t have any idea how to implement it. They’re very organized and have a diverse group of black men.”
The men who met with Reclamation Project leaders Saturday at West End Mt. Carmel Education Center (formerly Cook School) had expressed interested in being leaders of the effort.
The organization has been structured into four implementation teams, with one chairman for each school who reports directly to project coordinator and founder George Cotton.
“We wanted to make the teams school-specific, because each school is different,” said Cotton, who is also executive director of REACH St. Louis.
Each implementation team has security, community and mentoring components.
The security team, headed by community activist and longtime gang abatement specialist Anthony Shahid, will be present inside and outside of schools. Its duties will be designated by the school’s principal.
“We’re not going to do anything before we sit down and talk with the principal,” Cotton said.
“We are there to be supportive, not punitive n we don’t want to be like the police. We want to help with any security needs the school identifies.”
The community component, headed by Cotton, will engage area residents in their responsibility to the school and train families to understand their role.
“Many problems manifesting in schools happen first in the community,” Cotton said, “So we will be working directly with community to connect with the school and parents. Far too many of them have abdicated their responsibility.”
Mentors, who will work closely with the community, will be on the “frontline.” They are expected to develop intimate and personal relationships with students and their parents.
Cotton said mentors are critical to the success of the project, since they shoulder the bulk of the personal responsibilities.
Since mentors will work inside the schools in close contact with students, they will have to submit to a police background check.
All men are required to:
* Wear sport coats.
* Attend all sessions for which they are assigned or find an approved replacement.
* Commit to two years of involvement.
* Complete the eight-hour training session.
For the training on Saturday, Cotton brought in Carrie Cunningham, principal of Kennard Classical Academy, to help participants get an understanding of what they can and can’t do in the schools.
Participants were told they must not touch students in an offensive way, remain alone in a room with a female student or use foul language.
“When males get aggressive, you have to keep it civil,” said Reclamation Project core member Phillip Berry, program coordinator for the MIND (Multicultural Initiative for New Doctors) Project at Saint Louis University for the St. Louis Public Schools.
“If you say, ‘Damn,’ they can use that against you,” Cunningham said. “We must begin to use a higher level of language with our children.”
Cunningham, however, approved the use of slang, explaining that, for students, “it could be a safeguard for getting them from school to home.”
Cunningham noted that some students who don’t write in English class write rap lyrics, and said that mentors need to connect with students around a shared interest, like rap.
Redditt Hudson, a former police officer and Project Peace director who is a core member of the Reclamation Project, interjected, “Thinking, articulating and using good language is associated with being weak. A lot of them are intelligent, but don’t feel safe demonstrating it. We’re talking about re-socializing a generation to values and conditions we need to survive.”
Hudson said when he and his Project Peace partner Sultan Muhammad present lectures at schools, they discuss the criminal justice system and its disparities among blacks and whites, stressing prisons as a business with their commodities being black males.
“We talk very frank with them,” Hudson said. “And it’s our responsibility to let them know we’re devoted to undoing all that’s doing them in.”