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There's another challenge to the success of Baraka or any similar boarding school: What happens when the kids come back to the city? The Abell Foundation steers the boys away from their neighborhood schools, placing the top students into City College High School and most of the others into parochial St. Frances Academy, tuition free. But the boys still must renegotiate their lives outside school, where many of their friends have dropped out and become involved with drugs and crime.
For some, this may be impossible, says Sister John Francis Schilling, who as principal of St. Frances has watched 18 Baraka boys try to readjust to life in Baltimore. Her school is located in one of the city's most crime-ridden neighborhoods. Yet a remarkable 90% of its students go on to college. Most of them are the first in their families to apply. Schilling agrees that Baltimore needs a boarding school, but wants it located in the city. "You can't take them away for the rest of their lives," she says. "The boys have to learn how to deal with this environment."
Her doubts about Baraka are shared by some members of the Baltimore board of education, which is sending two of its members to Kenya in November to evaluate the school and recommend whether to partly fund it in the future. Annual expenses now run about $14,000 per student. Embry is asking the city to pay half that amount--a sum slightly higher than what it costs the city and state combined to educate a child in the local schools. If the board declines, Embry says, his foundation will close Baraka. If the city does make a long-term commitment, Embry says, he will look to open more such schools in places where expenses are low.
Brandon would like to see more Baltimore kids go to Baraka. "I learned self-control," he says. "I learned not to be a ringleader or a crowd follower." Passing near Harlem Park, his old middle school, he seems embarrassed by the boarded-up row houses, the trash-strewn streets, the bars on the school windows. Like a nervous out-of-towner, Brandon begs a visitor to speed up the car. "I never go outside," he says. "I ain't associatin' with them hoodlums."
Check out time.com/education for photos and audio interviews with some of the Baraka students