Miracle on High Street: The Rise, Fall and Resurrection of St. Benedict's Prep in Newark, N.J.

10. The Headmaster and the Street, 1977–1986

10 The Headmaster and the Street, 1977–1986 For the last three decades ‘‘the hand’’ has gone up at St. Benedict’s Preparatory School. Like clockwork, at eight in the morning a young man strides to the center of Shanley Gymnasium and raises his right hand straight in the air. Other students follow suit and hundreds of hands instinctively shoot up. The gesture signals silence, and previously animated conversations are muted. Peace seems to blanket the gathering, and while sirens and horns may wail outside, inside the school community pauses to ready itself for the day ahead. Communal prayer is followed by school-related announcements, but the daily meeting—known as ‘‘Convocation’’—does not end until Father Edwin Leahy has an opportunity to speak. For him, it is the most important thing the school does because each and every morning community is visible—it can be seen, heard, and experienced. Above all else, Father Edwin, the son of an operating engineer and a homemaker turned banker, has been a master builder. Since the mid1970s , he and his staff have been able to create a community for young men, many of whom come from broken families, fractured neighborhoods , and failing schools. It was built by honoring the Benedictine virtues of stability and adaptability and meshing them with core values of the African American experience, particularly faith and family. Many older alumni recognized the ‘‘old in the new,’’ but as one graduate suggested, ‘‘Edwin has created a school that alumni return to not because of what the school was, but for what it has become.’’1 Sustained alumni giving and continued support from various foundations have enabled the school to embark on a new phase of ‘‘brick and mortar Benedictinism.’’ In particular, a five-million-dollar gift from the headmaster and the street, 1977–1986 | 225 Father Edwin Leahy, OSB, headmaster, in front of the school with students, 1977. an alumnus in 1984 enabled the school to complete an aptly named development campaign, ‘‘A Bridge to the Future.’’ Fittingly, a massive sky bridge spanned Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard (formerly High Street) and connected the old school buildings, the first of which were constructed in the late nineteenth century, with a new complex that includes classrooms, a gymnasium, and an indoor swimming pool. The impressive facilities rivaled anything an urban Catholic prep school had ever built, and stood in stark contrast to the blighted plots of Newark’s Central Ward. Of the new construction and what the school was able to accomplish in the decade after it reopened, the longtime benefactor and adviser Bernard Shanley Jr. said, ‘‘Now, the skeptics can go away.’’2 226 | the headmaster and the street, 1977–1986 Benedict’s had its doubters, and that fact certainly motivated Father Edwin and the other monks. When the school reopened, they wanted to prove to people that a Catholic prep school for mostly African American males from the city could not only survive, but could thrive. In 1980, the Schumann Foundation sent Gil Sewall, a former education editor at Newsweek, to study St. Benedict’s Prep and find out why the school worked so well. Benedict’s was able to overcome so many obstacles and produce extraordinary student outcomes, concluded Sewall, because it had a strong principal, high expectations, a rigorous but basic curriculum, dedicated teachers, tradition, discipline, devoted alumni, and parental trust. ‘‘St. Benedict’s proves that school improvement in inner cities is possible, even in low-income and minority areas,’’ wrote Sewall.3 By the mid-1980s a handful of other studies confirmed what Sewall had observed at St. Benedict’s. Catholic secondary schools not only escaped many of the problems affecting public high schools, they proved especially effective when serving poor and disadvantaged minority students. Notably, Catholic high schools reduced racial and class achievement gaps whereas public high schools seemed to exacerbate them. Some researchers argued that the key to Catholic school success was the ‘‘common school effect,’’ the fact that all students, regardless of background or prior scholastic standing, were taught in basically the same way. In Newark, a study confirmed the Catholic school academic advantage—‘‘the quality of learning simply seems to be superior in the Catholic schools’’—and provided evidence of ‘‘a profound respect for authority and order. . . . They reflect the quiet discipline and graciousness of another era.’’ Another national survey highlighted the role of community, as Catholic...