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Social progress is Oklahoma City school’s goal
EducationCharter founder plans student Africa trip

BY WENDY K. KLEINMAN Comments 8
Published: November 23, 2008

Kevin McPherson speaks to children during an assembly last month at the Marcus Garvey Leadership Charter School, which he started in northeast Oklahoma City. By Paul Hellstern

Kevin McPherson bears a lot of social responsibility. He initiated a drug treatment program called CARE for Change in northeast Oklahoma City with the help of a fellow graduate student. He started and became principal of the Marcus Garvey Leadership Charter School for kindergarten through sixth-grade students to reach kids before they become delinquents. Now he’s planning to take a group of 25 students to The Gambia in Africa for two weeks in June to inspire them to help others.

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Charter Founder Plans Student Africa Trip

Nov 22Marcus Garvey Leadership Charter School founder Kevin McPherson...

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HOW TO HELP
11/23/2008 Kevin McPherson is organizing school fundraisers and asking each student’s family to save $2.50 each week. You can also help ease the financial burden...

The Perry native is trying to turn around a northeast Oklahoma City neighborhood about a mile east of the Capitol with a school focusing on discipline, pride and respect.

"The problem with our community is not our children; it’s the values that we’ve let them inherit from the larger society,” said McPherson, 42. Not only does he believe change is occurring, but he also believes his model can work in other places.

Q: Why did you start the charter school?

A: Marcus Garvey actually is the outgrowth of 15 years ago (when) we started a drug treatment center in our community. I actually got a 12-year-old one time who had 12 felonies — at 12. The question became what happens to you when you first get in trouble in the system? They send you home. We realized that there was no form of prevention, and that’s how we came up with the concept of doing a charter school.

Q: Can the school have an impact beyond this neighborhood?

A: What I’m hoping that we’re doing, as a younger person, is that instead of focusing on all the bad things that are going on, why don’t we set together a specific plan in place that can be duplicated ... so they could do it in Tulsa or Ardmore or Chicago or D.C. Marcus Garvey is an attempt to build a model, and a model that can be copied.

Q: Why take students to Africa?

A: We took our teachers over there ... and what we did is we fell in love with that school, so we created a pen pal relationship. We’re going to go to Jufureh so our children can actually meet their pen pals, and we’re going to try to develop their resource center, if you can call it that. You see that although they (Gambians) may not have the money, they don’t have gangs, they’re not selling drugs. All the things that you see here based on, quote-unquote, not having money, you don’t see there. What you still see is family culture.

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Gary, if the parent's in Oklahoma did as you say they should do, then Oklahoma would not be as high in the bad lists, like, teen preg., teen suicide, fat kids, crazy kids, kids raised by grandparents, etc. Parents are not doing the job. That must be the failure of the education system, too. The churches in Oklahoma have done a great job, too. Oklahoma has the highest number of churches in the country per capita. That helps.

Jon, Edmond - Nov 26, 2008 at 7:30 pm

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There are a couple of things to remember. First, charter schools use public money. How much will be used to fund this trip? Second, after watching the video I worried that leader of this school was not modeling the pledge rather orchestrating a group of children. They need to see a model. Is he a do as I say kind of person?

cindy, edmond - Nov 26, 2008 at 9:45 am

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Actually, kids do learn values from school and home. Kids spend a majority of the day away from their parents and they will pick up on things taught to them at school, from their friends and their teachers.

jennifer, Edmond - Nov 25, 2008 at 5:13 pm

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Percy - how do we "rank" 47th in education? In per pupil spending, test scores, teacher salaries? Is because we don't spend as much on education as other states make us "worse"? Washington, D.C. spends more per pupil than any other school district in the nation and is a joke. Teacher salaries? Chicago pays teachers some of the highest in the nation and their system is a joke. How does spending more on education lower the incarceration rate? Children learn (or should learn) their values and priorities from the home not from six hours they spend at school. You don't know what you are talking about.

Gary, Oklahoma City - Nov 24, 2008 at 10:35 am

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Education does not consist of memorizing and spewing forth facts, but in internalizing lessons about the world around you. I think this trip to Africa will be life changing for every child who is able to attend, and I'm so thankful for administrators like Mr McPherson who realizes this truth about the world...

Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind. ~Seneca

Melissa, Norman - Nov 24, 2008 at 9:35 am

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I have to admire a person who puts their own money where their mouth is. Yes, we could do with a greater knowledge base about the three branches of government, and even Sarah Palin could use some additional time with a tutor on Constitutional Duties of the Vice-President, but realistically speaking, if these kids learn "social responsibility" we are all safer in whatever other ventures we attempt, including taking civics classes. It is bad to rank as low as 47th in education, but it is worse to rank 4th in incarceration. Maybe if we improve the former, through programs such as this, we will improve the latter, making obsolete such programs as this.

Percy F., Ardmore - Nov 24, 2008 at 7:20 am

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Let us most certainly not focus on education. There are other priorities...pppfffft.

Sallie, Del City - Nov 23, 2008 at 4:48 pm

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As long as we have hungry, poor, and homeless; I got no respect for people to go to foreign countries and thereby harm our own people. It's CALLED: NEGLECT. A crime punishable by law...

Nancy, Oklahoma City - Nov 23, 2008 at 3:14 pm

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