Columbus area churches uniting to improve graduation rates

This is from the St. Stephen's Episcopal Church (Columbus) newsletter, and the numbers George cites are specific to our church, but I posted it as an example of how some area churches have united to work for social justice. Also, I wrote something a while back in response to an article in The Other Paper about "The Dwindling Religious Middle", an article which, among other things described the plight of an area minister who believes that churches have become too political. What Rev.George Glazier describes here is the sort of political action in which many of our areas take part. It is not candidate or party-oriented, but issue-oriented...addressing concerns such as low-cost housing and access to health care. The next meeting will take place on May 8 at Congregation Tifereth Israel. It will focus on the Youth Committee is looking at truancy concerns, and the fact that Columbus has the 4th highest high school dropout rate in the nation.

In this month's newsletter, George says, in part:

...Yet if sitting in a seat for 2 hours, once a year, can bring justice to those who are crying for it (and the track record of B.R.E.A.D. is pretty good at accomplishing this), then I will sit in that seat. My butt can take it! I have sat longer and suffered more for lesser results. So I will be there, will you? We need 100 people from St. Stephen's to show up. The goal for turnout for the Action Assembly is 2000 from the 48 congregations. This would be the largest gathering ever for B.R.E.A.D.

This Issue is Education and Youth
The Date is Monday evening, May 8th
The Time is 6:30 p.m.
The Place is Congregation Tifereth Israel,
1354 East Broad Street

Yours in Christ,
George

I would just like to go on record at this moment and say how proud I am to have George as my pastor, rather than, say, this chucklehead. You can read the rest of what he had to say here.

I was not aware, until I started hearing announcements about the upcoming B.R.E.A.D. meeting, that the graduation rate in Columbus was so low. Today in the Columbus Dispatch, there was a front-page story about this.

In the Columbus district, boys - especially black boys - graduate at much lower rates than their female classmates. Forty-eight percent of black males graduated from high school in Columbus, the study said, compared with 61 percent of black females. Among white students, 61 percent of girls graduated and 54 percent of boys did.

Those are pretty grim statistics. I had no idea.

By the way, when I was checking the Dispatch's web site to find the link for that article, I saw another article about Subodh Chandra.

Candidate assails officials' inaction on school funding

I'm really liking the idea of having this guy as "the people's lawyer".


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