The Scholars of Central High

On the morning of April 25 -- two days after Superintendent Benjamin Demps Jr. resigned, calling the Kansas City School District's governance "fatally flawed" -- community leaders took turns before TV cameras on the front steps of the district's main offices, declaring support for the elected board and calling on Kansas Citians to unite for the sake of the children. Among them was Nelson "Fuzzy" Thompson, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Greater Kansas City, who said, "I challenge the media to visit our schools. Visit the students. Visit the teachers. There you will see a different view of the Kansas City School District."

Mr. Everything
It's not quite summer, the half-empty season between the annual state tests and graduation, and most of the students of Central High School are somewhere else. Some have been purged from the rolls after months of absences. Others know they've already failed their classes and see no point in coming. A few more are simply enjoying the springtime, knowing a parent will write an excuse. Bryan Dial is at school even though at this hour, his attendance isn't required. Neither of his two classes occupies first period this semester. At a little after 7 in the morning, he's fitting teachers for graduation robes, wheeling a cart full of gowns through the school's field house. He stops at a man wearing a whistle and hands him a robe to try on. Bryan glances around. The field house is an impressive space, as wide as a Boeing hangar. An unmarred eight-lane rubber running track circles the hardwood floor. A couple dozen kids mill about in street clothes, chatting, occasionally slapping hands. "This is gym class," Bryan says absently. "If they don't suit up, they'll get a zero for the day."

Bryan writes down the man's name and robe size and moves along, using the cart to push open the doors and leave the field house. He glances to his left through a window toward the Olympic-sized pool. It's the centerpiece of this school known by some as "the jewel of the Kansas City School District." In 1991, Missourians laid out $32 million to build the school here on the corner of Linwood and Indiana. The goal was to desegregate by erecting razzle-dazzle schools to lure students from distant white neighborhoods. At the peak of the experiment, in 1995, Central's white student population rose to 12 percent. Now fewer than 4 percent of the students are white, and it's a neighborhood school again, drawing students from some of the poorest areas in the city. Regardless, Bryan's pride in his alma mater is undying. If there is a Mr. Central High School 2001, it's Bryan Dial: senior class president, student body president, honor society president, senior editor of The Luminary, the school's newspaper, and cocaptain of the debate team.

He wheels into the school's main-lobby atrium, an open, round room with a dozen or so doors and two metal detectors. Along the walls are several cases packed with trophies and memorabilia. There's one for band, two for sports, another for peer counseling and another devoted to the school's history, which stretches back to 1867 and the corner of 11th and Locust streets, where it opened as the first public school west of the Mississippi. Bryan pauses at a sixth case and admires the trophies and plaques. This is the one he helped fill, the one for the debate team. He absently strokes the stubble on his chin and smiles slightly. Of all that he and his classmates have achieved, nothing declares their intelligence and potential so triumphantly as these glass shelves full of shiny metal. He's proudest of the square plaque with the blue plate engraved "Sweepstakes Winner, Lincoln Prep Invitational." Lincoln Prep is a cross-town rival, the school with the highest test scores in the district, the school where students must perform or be sent back to neighborhood schools such as Central. Bryan was thrilled by the victory on Lincoln's turf "because I really dislike the snobbish students there. I wanted to win very badly, and we did."

He moves past the trophy case and into the English wing, toward the first classroom on the left. Jennifer Balke, an English teacher, is standing in front of the room's closed door, listening to a skinny young girl's crying. "I couldn't get no sleep last night," the girl wails as a friend holds her around the shoulders. "I'm so stressed out! I'm losing sleep! I want to give up on all of it!"

Bryan hands a robe to Ms. Balke as if nothing were out of the ordinary. Still focused on the crying girl, Ms. Balke reaches for the robe and fits it over her arms and shoulders. Then a commotion breaks out in the classroom, two girls shouting at each other. Ms. Balke pokes her head in: "Keep it down in there!" She takes off the gown, hands it to Bryan, then races into the class, shutting the door behind her. Bryan pushes the cart neatly against the wall and follows the teacher inside. The girl leans into her friend, crumples onto the floor and cries even harder until another teacher, Susan Dunham, comes along and asks, "What's wrong?"