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[Back to index of September 2007 articles] Walker School Plans Are Picking Up Pace By Lucy Chumbley
It’s a daunting task, starting a school. The to-do list stretches out into the blue – raise funds, find a suitable location, develop a curriculum, a corporate logo, an ethos, court the local community, obtain the necessary permits and licenses, hire teachers and staff and so on. But plans for the Bishop John T. Walker School for Boys, an Episcopal elementary school named for the diocese’s first African American bishop and destined for the District’s Ward 8, are sailing briskly forward. And at the helm, supported by a large, enthusiastic committee, is project director James Woody. A native Washingtonian, Woody is the former executive director of the District’s Communities in Schools, a nonprofit that connects schools with community resources. He was the committee’s “hands down” choice for the job, said the Rev. Preston Hannibal, the diocese’s canon for academic ministries. “He has the community ties, he has the city government ties,” Hannibal said. “Specifically, he has work experience in the public and the nonprofit sector in Southeast and with other underserved communities in the Washington, D.C., area. He was the full package. He had the best credentials for what we were looking for.” Plus, Woody was intimately familiar with the proposal, having served on the committee since it began to meet in June 2005 to discuss the possibility of opening a school. “He was part of the initial exploratory conversations before we decided to go full throttle with a school,” Hannibal said. Hired in February as the school’s sole full-time staff member, Woody is working to create an institution that will rival the finest Episcopal schools. “The job is a dream come true for me because it is such a special thing, to create an institution from the ground up that will affect the lives of people for hopefully generations,” Woody said. “I’ve never been part of something where so many people have been so willing to give of themselves and their time to make things happen.” The Bishop John T. Walker School for Boys plans to open its doors in September 2008 with a pre-K class and add a grade a year through eighth grade, Woody said. “It’s not going to happen overnight,” he said. “But we’re in it for the long haul, and we want to make sure we do it right and get some deep roots.” The diocese is close to securing a location in Ward 8, Woody said, and he is working to foster relationships with the local community, so the school will be able to bloom where it is planted. “Communities east of the Anacostia River have historically been places where people go and experiment,” he said. “The perception is: The need is so great, and people there can benefit from pretty much anything. So there’s a lot of suspicion. ‘Here’s another do-good project that’s going to come and save us and then vanish in a puff of smoke.’ “We want to be able to say, we’re not going to do that. We want to say we do this well, and we’d like to do this well in another part of the city.” The Diocese of Washington has many well-regarded schools, Woody notes. And representatives from these institutions, among them the heads of Washington Episcopal School, Holy Trinity, Christ Episcopal School and St. Patrick’s Episcopal Day School are serving on the Walker School Committee. For now, these educators are lending their expertise to the project, Woody said. But in the future, he envisions “a real cooperative partnership” with the diocese’s existing schools. “An established school could really help our school through teacher training, cross-cultural mentoring,” he said. “We have one of the finest boys’ schools in the country here on the Cathedral close,” he said, referring to St. Albans School, “and I’d love to learn from that.” Likewise, Woody hopes that parishes in the diocese will adopt the Bishop John T. Walker School for Boys as their own, and contribute their time, talent and funds to the project. In addition to money – which the new school will need in abundant supply – Woody is looking for help from teachers, public relations professionals, politicians and the like. “We’re really looking to reach out to any and everybody who has a skill set we can reference,” he said. “We want to make sure that everybody interested in supporting this effort will have an opportunity to do that.” One of the school’s early supporters is St. Dunstan’s, Bethesda, which recently pledged $50,000 to the project. “We had a hope that we could really get a ball rolling early for the school to encourage other parishes to make gifts,” said the Rev. Jeff MacKnight, rector of St. Dunstan’s. The church will celebrate its 50th anniversary this year, MacKnight said, and the pledged funds come from its anniversary capital campaign. The amount was chosen “to celebrate 50 years by giving $50,000 to a project of the diocese,” he said. “Everybody liked the idea of supporting a school in a part of the city that doesn’t have anything like it. We had an easy consensus around that and it’s a project we hope to be involved in in various ways.” So far, $400,000 has been raised for the school with no formal fundraising effort, Woody said, announcing that the school’s first fundraising campaign will be launched this fall. Money raised to date has come from grants – from Good Samaritan, Inc., the Hagans Family Fund, B. Kenneth Simon Family Charitable Foundation, the Dillard H. Brown and Frederick E. White Foundation and The Bishop John T. Walker Foundation – and from donations from local schools, churches and church groups, including St. Patrick’s School, Christ Episcopal School, Washington Episcopal School, Holy Trinity School, Holy Communion, St. Alban’s, St. Dunstan’s, St. George’s, D.C., St. Timothy’s, D.C., Trinity, Upper Marlboro, the Washington Chapter of the Union of Black Episcopalians and Washington National Cathedral. Because the school is intended to serve low income children, fundraising will be an ongoing process, Woody said. But he believes money should not be an obstacle for the new school. “We live in one of the wealthiest areas on earth,” he said. “I really hope we are not going to allow finance to get in the way of anything we want to do. I am convinced that the money is out there and it’s my job and it’s our job to tell a compelling story and allow God to open people’s hearts to support this.” The school’s commitment, Woody emphasized, is to serve low income and underserved children. Keeping that at the front of his mind is helping him envision the school, as is its namesake, Bishop John T. Walker. “It’s so helpful for me to have the school named after him,” Woody said. “It reminds me always that that’s why we’re going through this exercise. Not just to create another fine Episcopal school, but to create and serve, from the ground up, kids that would not have another opportunity like this.” “[Walker’s] commitment was to the kids of the city, so the school is meant to be a school that really honors that commitment to the kids of the city as opposed to kids who have a lot of options in life,” said Hannibal, who is a longtime friend of the Walker family. Walker’s widow, Maria, serves on the committee, and “probably half the people on the committee knew him on some level or another,” Hannibal added. “Maybe three-quarters. It’s really a personal connection to the person the school is named after and a deep love and respect for the man and his ministry.” Now, in the hands of Woody and the various subcommittees – development, school design, governance and real estate – Walker’s legacy is taking shape. “We want the Walker School to be a place that’s full of life and vitality and joy,” Woody said; a place that helps its pupils become “confident, competent and capable” citizens. In addition to high quality teaching, “there will be a very serious spiritual component – that will be part of our identity – and a strong service component so kids understand that this is somewhere where you come not just to receive something.” “My husband would have wanted to see it be the best, the No. 1 school compared with any other private school in the country,” Maria Walker said. “He would be very pleased that this was happening, and he would definitely be working to make it happen.” [Back to index of September 2007 articles]
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