Private School Comes to Inner-City Atlanta

ATLANTA – A teacher whose work with inner-city children inspired a movie is opening a private school for low-income students this fall.

Ron Clark, who was portrayed last year by Matthew Perry in TNT’s The Ron Clark Story, has worked for 2 1/2 years to build the Ron Clark Academy near Turner Field in southeast Atlanta. The school will weave art, dance, music and business leadership classes into its curriculum, in addition to international trips.

“It’s all about empowering these kids,” Mr. Clark said during a tour of the school Thursday. “Whatever they want to do, whatever they want to become, they can do it, and we want to give them the skills to do so.”

Pupils attending the school will pay heavily discounted tuition – an average of $30 per month – on a sliding scale based on their parents’ income, and parents must volunteer 40 hours a year at the school. Donations will pay the rest of the $14,000 annual tuition.

Nearly all the equipment for the school was donated, much of it from large corporations and some science equipment from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The school, housed in a renovated warehouse in a low-income neighborhood, features graffiti murals, an indoor slide and a student-run cafe for neighborhood seniors.

Pupils will grow the food served in the cafeteria. In a recording studio – donated by music producer Jermaine Dupri’s mother, Judy Mauldin – they will learn how to record, design and market their own compact discs.

Pupils will travel to several international cities each year, visiting six of the seven continents by the time they finish eighth grade.

Kimberly McKoy of Hampton, Ga., applied for her 11-year-old son, Travis, to go the academy after seeing mention of the school in the credits of Mr. Clark’s movie last year.

“I wanted him to go there because public school right now is not very challenging,” she said. “When I saw the movie, I said, ‘That sounds like something my son could thrive in.’”

Travis will begin sixth grade there in the fall.

The school eventually will serve fifth- through eighth-graders chosen from a variety of applicants. Sixty pupils will attend thisyear, and the school will add 30 pupils a year over the next few years. Mr. Clark founded the school with Kim Bearden, a Cobb County teacher. He said he hopes to reach educators across the globe by bringing in teachers to observe his techniques.

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