Some of the city’s most impoverished, at risk children are being given something remarkable everyday in New Orleans, a shot at an incredible future. Next year will mark the 10 year anniversary of the Good Shepherd School. The dream of a Jesuit Priest who was determined to change lives.
The Good Shepherd School is in the CBD, where there is a bustling mix of tourism and commerce. In a busy stretch of Baronne, children's laughter drowns out the traffic.
Good Shepherd is a sliver of a building, fostering dreams as wide as the universe. It was the brainchild of Fr. Harry Tompson.
Tompson’s charisma and giving heart were a powerful force. He put his stamp of love into projects all over the city like Café Reconcile and Boys Hope. At Good Shepherd, students pulled from failing New Orleans schools are introduced to a new way of living and learning.
Ronald Briggs is a founding board member.
“When we opened pre-Katrina most of the children came from the projects. Fr. Tompson wanted to take them and put them in a loving caring environment where they could receive an outstanding education.”
Only 79 Students attend Good Shepherd , it opened in August of 2001. Fr. Tompson died of cancer just three months before. But, he laid the ground work for educational, spiritual and emotional enrichment.
“At any point in time over 20 percent of the students here have parents who are incarcerated, have been, or are on their way. All the children have been subject to some kind of trauma.”
To get into Good Shepherd isn’t easy.
"We’ve taken kindergarten only and filled a few slots in the first grade.
We've been blessed by the scholarship program in Baton Rouge that takes care of the children in failing school district in New Orleans.
They go through and vet the parents and we come in and have a process we go through," Briggs said.
Parents or guardians must commit to a plan for 40 service hours a year. There is no tuition for the students, just a $125 dollar a year activity fee.
Someone in the family has to be responsible for the child. For first grader Brian Ridgley it’s his grandmother.
“His daddy is incarcerated and sometimes he gets emotional about it and he starts crying saying he wants his dad,” Ridgley's Grandmother said.
His father was convicted in a 2005 robbery in Jefferson Parish and was sentenced in 2008 to decades in prison.
“Brian said, maw maw can I write the Governor and ask him if he can let my daddy go because I know he didn’t do it.”
Good Shepherd is a K-7 school that follows the faith based nativity Miguel Model, one of 65 schools in 27 states...
Statistics from the 2008 2009 school year show 56 percent of students last year performed above grade level in reading. 56 percent scored above grade level in math. With the help of benefactors, the school takes it’s students on field trips like New York and Nantucket, exposing them to life outside New Orleans.
Ivan Phipps spent seven years at the school and graduated from 7th grade last may. He said he didn’t want to leave.
But students never really leave Good Shepherd, Alumni are tracked and guided to the next phases of their academic lives.
But for some students like Ivan Phipps, living up to Tompson’s dream is proving tougher than he ever imagined.
