JOHNSON: Tiny academy provides big returns

By Bill Johnson, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published January 16, 2009 at 12:05 a.m.

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I am going to tell this story on Raylene Wayoe but only because she ought to know how her own story can turn out.

She is the sweetest little thing, not yet 4 feet tall; her angelic face framed by a head full of tiny little braids.

When I walked into the room, she was standing at the head of a long white table, perfectly erect, her arms stiff at her sides, in a dress, a starched white shirt and blue cardigan sweater.

I had come to Watch Care Academy, the tiny, struggling Park Hill private school I have written about often, to see its founder, Janie Perry, on a totally different matter. I thought I might have been intruding.

"She's not in trouble, no," Janie Perry said sweetly, motioning me over.

The man standing to the side of the table put his index finger to his lips and shook his head to confirm it.

The next thing I know, Raylene Wayoe is reading 10 sentences to me from the workbook splayed on the table in front of her.

She misses not a word.

"She could not read at all less than a year ago," the man explains. "Her mother and I are very proud of her."

His name is Raymond Wayoe. He is Raylene's father, a 32-year-old cab driver in Denver, who on this afternoon was called in by Janie Perry because his daughter had refused to do the fill-in-the-blank exercise in the book.

What I had not witnessed was the little girl writing in all the correct answers as her father and Janie Perry watched.

Raylene Wayoe is 4 years old.

Her parents immigrated seven years ago to Denver from Ghana where Raymond Wayoe said he had attended private school. Unlike the U.S., there they had evaluated him based on what he knew, not what age he was.

Yet he makes cab driver wages. So last fall, he placed Raylene in a public school early childhood education class.

"They only baby-sat my daughter," he said.

A friend told him of Janie Perry and Watch Care Academy.

"I want the best for my daughter," he said, not stopping to explain that this week she and her classmates are learning of the presidential oath of office.

"It is a promise, isn't it?" Raymond Wayoe says to his daughter, still standing erect. She nods.

"Are we not making promises this week, too," he asks, "those we promise to keep - to do our work, to mind the teacher and not to tell lies.

"Isn't that correct?" he says gently.

"Yes, Daddy," the little girl says.

The reason I love this place and keep writing about it is because stories keep falling out of its woodwork.

Sixteen-year-old Ain Ealey and her folks rush into the little school in search of Janie Perry. They have news.

Ain (pronounced Aye-Eeen) Ealey was 4 years old when her parents, Dee and Luke, turned her over to Janie Perry. She was nearly 10 before she left.

Now a junior at East High School, grade-point average close to 4.0, she tells her former teacher that she has been selected as one of 30 juniors from across the country to serve as a United States Senate page.

"I used to be one of those fathers," said Luke Ealey of Raymond Wayoe, who has returned to his job on Denver's streets.

The Ealey family lives just up the street from Watch Care Academy. He runs a janitorial service in town.

His oldest two girls are graduates of Spelman College and Xavier University. Both are now in master's programs, one studying medicine and the other engineering. His oldest son is a journalism major at Florida A&M.

"I sent all five of my kids to Janie. Ain now wants to be a doctor," Luke Ealey, 55, said, "and I have no doubt she will be. She has already made up her mind. I am so proud of her and believe she will go on to do great things."

Ain Ealey speaks in the way every child who has ever studied under Janie Perry does: quite properly, with "sirs" and "ma'ams" tossed in liberally.

"I didn't even apply for it, sir," she said of the Senate page's job. "The crazy part is, I know people who did."

The girl who first got it was a senior and by the rules ineligible for the job. She called Ain Ealey to tell her she had put her name in.

"At first, I didn't want to miss my junior year, but then this woman from the government called. My teachers began calling. And then we had a meeting with all my siblings," Ain Ealey said.

In that meeting, everything was settled.

"A chance to work in the Senate during the first term of the nation's first black president, sir? C'mon," Ain Ealey said. "I think of it as divine intervention.

"You know, there was a student in my debate class who was going for it. He told me everyone else gets there through money and people they know but that I would be going based on the same way Barack Obama got there - through hard work and academic achievement.

"I get to watch how the United States Senate works!" Ain Ealey said. "I know it will be a life-changing experience."

Raylene Wayoe likely will always remember the embarrassment of the day when she was 4, and Janie Perry called her daddy into class.

My hope is she will read this not too far down the road and understand.

johnsonw@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2763

• January 16, 2009

  11:37 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  geriatric1943 writes:

  Compare this story to the one that blames taxpayers for not paying more in taxes to 'better' the public school system.

  More money is not the problem, but a better understanding of the needs of individual students and the ability to allow them to excel.

  As Mr. Wayoe said in the article, when they sent their child to public school, Raylene was been babysat and not taught.

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