Youngstown church creating young scholars through Summer Freedom School

June 3, 2015 at 10:55p.m.

YOUNGSTOWN

For children enrolled in Tabernacle Baptist Church’s Children Defense Fund Summer Freedom School, there will be no boredom, no whining about nothing to do and no endless, mindless playing of video games.

The free summer-literacy program engages the minds and imaginations of its scholars, as its enrolled students are called.

Pastor Christoper McKee Jr. of Tabernacle said the Summer Freedom School grew out of the Children’s Defense Fund founded by Marian Wright Edelman, a civil-rights lawyer and first black woman admitted to the Mississippi Bar Association.

The first year for Summer Freedom School at Tabernacle was 2014; nationwide, the school is in its 20th year.

Tabernacle’s affiliation with CDF involves training of six interns at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Three are students at Youngstown State University, which Pastor McKee said has partnered with the church. The others are college students who attend Tabernacle. “It’s a cross spectrum of young adults,” the pastor said. “They learn cutting-edge techniques to work with at-risk youth.”

Last year’s success rate at Tabernacle, gauged by CDF assessment tests, showed “95 percent of scholars had no summer reading learning loss” and “all of these scholars maintained a grade level of reading ability and many gained at least an academic year’s worth of reading ability.” Scholars take pre- and post-assessment tests.

Pastor McKee said he and the church membership of some 300 “have a passion for education.” “We know Youngstown schools have challenges,” he said. “It’s up to the community and churches to do whatever we can to help and assist the school district to enrich our children.”