"Worth Fighting For"

On Chicago's poor West Side stands a building with no graffiti marring its walls, no windows boarded up. Inside, expensive audiovisual equipment sits in unlocked offices, while near by, students pursue a discussion of a Chekhov story and Richard Wright's Native Son. It is Providence-St. Mel High School, the West Side's remaining Roman Catholic secondary school and a fortress of civility --and hope--for black teenagers.

The man who made it so is soft-spoken Paul Adams, 37, a black Protestant who took a pay cut from his job as manager at a fast-food outlet to become the school's $15,000-a-year principal in 1972. "He's mean," says a student, using a ghetto compliment. Also tough. Adams inherited the usual urban school woes. Says he: "There were kids on dope, gangs in the hallways. I was appalled." He instituted a shape-up-or-ship-out policy that public schools cannot follow. Students are fined or assigned mandatory chores if they are tardy or cut class; vandalism, drug use and academic failure are grounds for expulsion. Students may come with low reading skills, but they must read at twelfth-grade level to graduate. Adams himself sometimes accosts students as they go home: "If you're not on the honor roll, you can't afford to walk out of school without any books."

Usually, 70 youths out of an entering class of 120 drop out. But the survivors are rewarded well. Senior Ronald Price won scholarships to seven universities; he chose Princeton. Says he: "Ninety-five percent of my public school friends are on drugs and unemployed. Some were more intelligent than I am." Fully 85% of the graduates go on to college. All students must take college boards, apply to at least three colleges, fill out financial-aid forms and write papers on their career goals--besides learning Adams' law: "If you don't internalize discipline in high school, you're going to flunk out of college in the first two weeks."

Despite its remarkable achievements, the school is in a fight for survival, and this week's commencement could be the last. The Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago plans to withdraw its subsidy this month. The archdiocese kept Providence-St. Mel going during a period of wrenching change in the late '60s and early '70s, when the school went from 50% white to all black, and enrollment (now 340) fell by two-thirds. More students are applying now, but the church says it cannot continue its $150,000 annual subsidy, which covers a third of the school's budget (the rest comes from tuition and assorted fund-raising ventures). The cost per pupil runs $1,300 a year, compared with a $900 average in the archdiocese (and $1,700 in Chicago public schools). The cruel story is repeated in many urban ghettos. The church is unable or unwilling to subsidize education for non-Catholics (60% of the Providence-St. Mel enrollment), but the law does not permit tax money to help out because the schools are under religious sponsorship.

But the school refuses to die. Students are petitioning John Cardinal Cody for a reprieve; parents, who raised $100,000 for the current budget, are trying to scrape up more funds while appearing at the archdiocese's Holy Name Cathedral with SAVE OUR SCHOOL placards. Two supermarket chains are pitching in with contributions; a public service ad in the Wall Street Journal last week sought corporate grants for the school.

Caught in the middle are parents like Construction Worker Bennie Powell. At public school his eldest daughter was once absent for 49 days before anyone bothered to notify him; eventually, he says, "she gave up." His other two children went to Providence-St. Mel: one will enter the University of Illinois in the fall; the other is an honor-roll sophomore. Says another parent, Factory Employee Kenneth Campbell, "This school is a barrier against juvenile delinquency. It's something worth fighting for."

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