By Gretchen Keiser

About 60 elementary school children from St. Anthony’s School in the West End of Atlanta are expected to begin attending daily remedial education classes in a largely vacant, unsecured public school building nearby.

The plan is the state’s response to a problem that arose last July when the U.S. Supreme Court said that public remedial education teachers could not work on religious school property, like Catholic schools, as they had in the past.

However, Catholic school students who qualify for help still are legally entitled to it. It is just not clear how and where they are supposed to receive the teaching.

Leaving resolutions of that impasse up to the states, the Supreme Court decision has led to a Georgia Education Department decision to bring St. Anthony’s students across a playground and large park to the Peeples Street Elementary School. The public school is a huge three-story building which is only partially occupied and obviously used in some areas by homeless street people.

A visit to the premises last Thursday with St. Anthony’s principal, Sister Patricia Clune, C.S.J., revealed a large broken window leading to a street-level bathroom which could be entered at will. Clothes could be seen hanging over the lavatory stalls.

On the first-floor a classroom had been freshly repainted for the remedial education classes. However, across the hall, a swinging door revealed a large vacant room with a working stove. The strong odor of leaking gas filled the room and, when the door was opened, the odor quickly began to leak into the hall.

While the classroom for remedial education has been cleaned and the windows repaired a hall window directly outside the classroom was broken. Several windows in the classroom next door, which was locked, were obviously broken and the classroom was filled with debris.

A portion of the three-story school building is occupied by an Economic Opportunity Atlanta neighborhood center. Two other occupants are the Community Design Center and the Gate City Heritage House, according to Lewis Dinkins, center supervisor of the E.O.A.

E.O.A. is waiting to vacate the building and move into quarters elsewhere which are not ready, Dinkins said. The C.D.C. and Gate City sublease their spaces from the E.O.A. He said the C.D.C. also has plans to move elsewhere.

E.O.A.’s move will come as soon as possible, he said. “It may be in a week. It may be in two weeks. It may be in two or three months. I hope it is not that long,” he said.

According to Ethel Blayton, who is Atlanta school system consultant for the remedial education program known as Chapter 1, there are other tenants the school system is considering for the time when E.O.A. moves out. She said the school system, which owns the building, cannot lease property from itself, so that in order for the Chapter 1 classroom to be leased, there must be another occupant of the building from whom Chapter 1 can sublease space.

She said that she was not aware that the building was accessible to street people.

“I understand there’s a burglar alarm,” she said, expressing surprise that the building is not secure.

According to the records division of the Atlanta Police Department, there were five burglary reports and one vandalism report filed for the school’s address during 1985.

Betti Knott, who is executive director of the St. Vincent de Paul Society’s central office, which is one block from the Peeples Street school, said that because of its size and relative vacancy the school building presented security problems.

“We have to keep our doors locked during the day,” she said of the St. Vincent de Paul Society office. “That’s not to say that this is a bad neighborhood. It’s that we’re isolated,” a fact that will be shared by the Chapter 1 teachers and students.

Dr. Alonzo Crim, superintendent of the Atlanta public schools, said that the Peeples Street school was not the first choice of the public school staff, but that other working school sites had been rejected by Sister Clune because they would involve busing the children.

As for the safety and security questions raised about the building, he said, “We certainly want to take every step to see that the building is secure.” With the E.O.A. leaving and control reverting to the school system, he said, “it seems as if the building is reverting back to us and we have to take the necessary steps to assure that the building is restored.”

Contrary to Mrs. Blayton’s statement about a third party necessarily being involved in the site, Dr. Crim said only that several agencies had requested to manage the building and that their financial ability to do so was being investigated. If no financially viable third party is found, “then we would have to take over the facility,” he said. That appeared to leave open the possibility that the Chapter 1 class could end up being the only users of the building at least temporarily.

The security of the Peeples Street school is the most recent obstacle to the much-needed Chapter 1 program to confront St. Anthony’s principal since the fall.

The school year began with the news that because of the Supreme Court’s July 1 decision, St. Anthony’s Chapter 1 teacher and aide, Gary Jarvens and Elwanda Gatlin, had been assigned to public schools.

“We definitely wanted those two people back,” said Sister Clune. “They were wonderful.”

And, she said, the school did not want the disadvantage of having to familiarize a new teacher and aide with the school and its students. Javens and Miss Gatlin had worked in a special classroom at St. Anthony’s alongside a computer education area that had been developed by another former Chapter 1 teacher.

Students working in remedial areas of reading and math could quickly turn to one of several computer terminals to practice skills and work on exercises. The computers made the program very attractive and turned it into a class kids were eager to attend, Sister Clune said.

“Five years ago, nobody wanted to go to Chapter 1,” she recalled. “Then a guy I hired, Mike Chalmers, developed a computer system. Kids really wanted to go to Chapter 1. It was no longer a stigma to go to Chapter 1. We received computers as part of our (Chapter 1) funding.”

Under the present plan the computers cannot be an integral part of the Chapter 1 program thus, if and when the program starts, because the principal will not move them to the Peeples Street school where she believes they will not be safe. She fears the loss will boomerang against the kids who need the program the most. “It’s going to be hard to keep the same enthusiasm,” she observed, “the same ‘I want to go to Chapter 1.’”

In order to qualify for the special instruction, students must score lower than the 50^th percentile in either reading or math. This means they are below the level that children at their grade level are scoring.

At St. Anthony’s, where approximately 60 children out of a student body of 215 are in need of the special help in some area of reading or math, Sister Clune said, “I cannot praise the program enough for what it had done at St. Anthony’s in the last two or three years.”

Statistics gathered by Javens showed that 40 percent of the first grade students who took part last year improved their test scores to the point where they were not eligible anymore. Approximately 46 percent of the second graders who once qualified showed similar improvement and were no longer eligible, she said.

One first grade student’s chart showed he was in the 34^th percentile in math prior to Chapter 1 help and rose to the 64^th percentile after a year’s work. Incidentally, the child’s reading level which was at an acceptable 1.7 grade level in the first grade also rose significantly to a grade level of 3.5 the next year.

Eligible kids sometimes have a particular skill problem and the individual attention they receive from a Chapter 1 teacher and aide makes the critical difference. “The kids may have a gap in skills,” Sister Clune said. In Chapter 1 “you take them out, find out what the problem is, and help them out without missing any of their regular classes.”

The Chapter 1 teacher “needs to be a really creative person,” she said. “If one thing doesn’t work” they have to step back and try again, saying “let’s go after it this way.” They must discover how a child learns best and help them over rough or missed skills.

While there was no delay in implementing the Supreme Court decision and in reassigning experienced Chapter 1 teachers from Catholic to public schools, there have been ready delays in coming to an alternative means to serve children at St. Anthony’s.

An early fall meeting with state officials promised a quick answer to the difficulty, but none was forthcoming. A Nov. 5, 1985 letter to Sister Clune said the Peeples Street school would be used as the alternative site with an effective date of Nov. 18, 1985. However, a visit to the school by Sister Clune on Nov. 15, three days before it was to have been put to use, revealed that the classroom had broken windows, glass on the floor and a closet filled with debris.

After phone calls, and through the intervention of Tom Rudolph, an assistant superintendent in Area One, the room was cleaned and repainted and new locks installed on the classroom and closet. It was mid-January by then, Sister Clune said.

Her newly hired Chapter 1 teacher, Olivia Kappus, has been coming to St. Anthony’s for the last few weeks, but is not permitted to work with the children until the “neutral” classroom site is ready. Also, her work cannot begin until an aide is hired, since one of the aide’s duties will be to escort the children back and forth between the two buildings at one hour or 50-minute intervals. In the meantime, Mrs. Kappus is reviewing records, preparing materials and trying to upgrade the classroom. She bought window shades for the sunny first-floor room herself and with the help of a friend installed additional locks on the door and closet. She also has brought many of her own supplies and texts to start the class.

Chapter 1 federal funds are assigned to the public school system, which then allocates them throughout the program. The amount of money being allocated to the St. Anthony’s program for materials this year is $450, Sister Clune said. “It’s one thing to have $450 and an established program. It’s another to have $450 and a program that’s practically starting all over again,” she said.

Earlier in the fall, the possible use of mobile units to be shared by several schools has been raised. Mrs. Blayton said the use of mobile units was the recommendation of Dr. Crim and that she had investigated the cost to a certain point. However, she said, “we could not get state approval for mobile units unless it was something very, very inexpensive.”

The proposal was turned down by the state Education Department, she said. Dr. Crim said the proposal was turned down because it was too late to bring it about this year. Asked if that meant it would be possible for next year, he said, “Hopefully yes.”

Sister Clune said the mobile units would be preferable because they would provide a more controlled environment. Another proposal, the use of a room at the adjacent West End Library, was rejected by the library because it would utilize their one free room, Sister Clune said. The library option was also preferable because the building is occupied during the day.

Ample space is available at St. Anthony’s convent but is not permitted because it is church property.

It is unclear what is happening to federal Chapter 1 funds that would have been spent on teachers’ and aides’ salaries for the Catholic school for the first four months of the year.

However, Richard Duffy, who is the representative for federal assistance at the U.S. Catholic Conference, said that the local educational agency must keep the funds that would have been spent on Catholic school students this year in escrow and put them to that use in the future.

“Your state agency may not know it. Your local educational agency may not know it,” he said.

That portion (allocated for Catholic school students) must be kept in escrow because they received it to provide services for those kids and they are not doing it,” he said.

Sitting in her vacant Chapter 1 classroom at St. Anthony’s, Sister Clune was asked about the possibility of simply withdrawing from involvement with the public school system and paying for the teacher and aide directly, a move made by St. Thomas More school in Decatur last fall to save their remedial education program.

“We don’t have the funds,” she said simply. “I wish we could. The kids need the help. But we can’t afford to bring in that kind of personnel.”

Instead, she said, the responsibility has fallen on the regular classroom teachers and on parents. Several children, at the school’s recommendation, have transferred to public school because they could not progress without the remedial help immediately.

Nationally, Catholic schools and the U.S. bishops have launched strong protests against the Supreme Court decision. While she wishes that a large archdiocese would challenge the ruling in court, Sister Clune also questions whether all the blame for what is happening at St. Anthony’s rests at the doorstep of the Supreme Court.

“It is the Supreme Court decision,” she said, “but the desegregation process (ordered by the Court) is still being implemented.”

If, on the other hand, “the poor are being hurt,” the attitude seems to be, “let’s implement it tomorrow,” she said.

As for the separation of church and state the Court said was being threatened by the old Chapter 1 system, Sister Clune said, “None of my Chapter 1 teachers have ever been Catholic. They never taught religion. They never participated in any religious activities.”

From the perspective of needy students and their parents, “this business about church and state, it doesn’t make any sense,” she said.

In fact, she said, the teachers “were providing a service and we were providing a place to have those taxpayers’ children helped.”

Throughout the controversy, she said, she keeps hearing the remarks, “don’t blame us, it’s not our fault.”

While she would like very much to see the program begin, she looks across at the Peeples Street School and has to wonder if “what it’s going to take” for a better plan to emerge “will be a disaster.”