Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [200]
Before Oprah left South Africa in 2002, she broke ground on the site that would eventually become the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls. “This time I will not fail,” she said. She returned home and started to do her homework on how to build the finest girls’ prep school on the planet, for that’s exactly what she had in mind. “This school will be an example to the world,” she said.
Through her involvement with A Better Chance, Oprah sent her niece Chrishaunda Lee to Miss Porter’s School, an elite, almost all-white girls’ school in Farmington, Connecticut, that had graduated Gloria Vanderbilt, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, and Barbara Hutton, the debutante dubbed America’s “poor little rich girl.” Oprah had been so impressed by the change in her niece after Chrishaunda attended Miss Porter’s School that she established the Oprah Winfrey Prep School Scholars, and through the years contributed more than $2 million to scholarships.
To fund her own school she started the Oprah Winfrey Operating Foundation, later changed to the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy Foundation, which she financed herself. Initially she pledged $10 million, but by completion, the project would cost more than $40 million. Plans escalated from “a nice boarding school to a world-class boarding school for girls,” said Dianne Hudson, who coordinated the effort.
Oprah continued researching other prep schools, including the Young Women’s Leadership Charter School of Chicago and the SEED School of Washington, D.C. She also sought advice from Christel DeHaan, a philanthropist from Indianapolis who quietly built schools for poor children around the world.
By this time Oprah had developed very definite views on education, especially in U.S. public schools, which she was not shy about sharing. After doing two shows on the country’s troubled educational system, one titled “Oprah’s Special Report: American Schools in Crisis,” she considered herself well versed in the subject. So much so that on a visit to Baltimore, she pronounced that city’s school system an “atrocity.”
In an interview with WBAL-TV, Oprah said, “What is going on [here] is a crime to the children of this city. It’s a crime. It’s a crime that people can’t figure out.” She added that she had considered making a charitable donation to Baltimore’s public school system but decided it would be throwing good money after bad. “What I’ve learned from my philanthropic giving is that unless you can create sustainability, then it’s a waste. You might as well pee it out.” She also said she had discussed the city’s “atrocity” with Nelson Mandela. “I was actually sitting in his house telling him about the black male situation here in Baltimore,” she said, citing (inaccurately) a 76 percent high-school dropout rate among black males. “He did not believe me.”
Neither did the Baltimore City School Board, which tried to set the record straight. “We need to be Dr. Phil and counter with the facts,” said Anirban Basu, a school board member, who corrected the high-school dropout rate to 50 percent (not 76 percent) of Baltimore’s black males.
Oprah’s diatribe was met with a tepid response from city officials, who seemed afraid to tangle with someone of her wealth and high regard. “I think she’s not aware of the progress that has been made here,” said the mayor, Martin O’Malley. “I’m sure it was not malicious on her part.”
The Sun was not so diplomatic. Stating that the problems of all inner-city schools are rooted in poverty, Dan Rodricks wrote, “High concentrations of poor children in schools is a formula for failure, and that’s been studied and proved. Poor families have few choices, so they’re stuck.” He suggested that Oprah, who got her start in Baltimore, “hock a couple of rings or some shoes” and donate to the local chapter of the Children’s Scholarship Fund, which provides partial scholarships for poor children. “I think you know about this. If not, ask Stedman … he sits on the organization’s national board.… Think Baltimore children are being deprived of a good education, Oprah? Write a check.