Talk show host Oprah Winfrey, in 1996, donated $43,000 to hire the school's first in-house social worker. Cartoonist Charles Schulz, of "Peanuts" fame, donated funds to build a girls' honors dormitory.
School officials are also stepping up efforts to reach more alumni.
While alumni giving is up, it remains at less than 10 percent of all donations received, according to Beady. "They give, but not at the level we would like."
The struggle for the survival of Black residential and independent schools is seen as critical. More than forty years after Brown v. The Board of Education, "visible racial distinctions still remain in America's public and private schools," concluded a study released in June by the Frederick D. Patterson Research Institute of the College Fund/UNCF. The impact has negatively affected the academic achievement of African-American students in preschool through high school.
"That's why we can't stand to lose these schools," Beady says, "because of what it stands for and the potential that it offers as, at least, a partial solution to the academic mess that this country is in."
There's a need for an alternative to the nation's "one size fits all model of educating students," he adds. "Schools like Piney Woods offer that kind of alternative system."
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