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Principal Irene DaMota swept into her office, late for an appointment. A student in the Family and Consumer Science program had just been awarded a four-year $40,000 culinary scholarship. DaMota found it difficult to tear herself away from the jubilant awards ceremony. Successes are hard won by students at Roberto Clemente High School. Located in Chicago's predominantly His panic Humboldt Park neighborhood, Clemente High has long been the poster child for everything wrong with Chicago public schools.

As DaMota sat down, an aide handed her a neighborhood Hispanic newspaper, carrying a full-page advertisement with the flaming headline, "Massacre of a School." Filled with diatribes, the ad vilified Da Mota, branding her an "executioner" for allegedly expelling 1,400 Hispanic students in a "war against the people."

The truth involved more complicated factors, including the large number of students asked to participate in after-school tutoring, summer school, and other options to make up for failing grades. Only 80 students were actually dropped this past year from Clemente's rolls—as required by Chicago Board of Education guidelines for chronic truancy.

The two incidents—the scholarship victory and the vicious personal assault—are typical of DaMota's experience since be coming Clemente's principal about three years ago. DaMota is one of thousands of Christian educators around the country who have re fused to give up on public schools. As more Christians turn to home schooling, voucher programs, or traditional private schools, many educators believe public schools are more open than ever before to the contributions offered by Christians who are willing to work within the system and provide solutions that work.

At Clemente, no one coveted the assignment of attempting to turn around one of Chicago's toughest public schools. In 1994, Chicago newspaper headlines screamed Clemente's bad news to the world. School poverty funds were being used to bankroll a campaign by the Puerto Rican FALN (Armed Forces of National Liberation), a now-dormant terrorist group, to foment political unrest and promote Puerto Rican independence and freedom for convicted comrades—all at taxpayer expense. American flags were removed from many classrooms.

Test scores and nearly every other barometer of academic performance confirmed the obvious. Little education took place at Clemente. Fewer than 7 percent of students tested at grade level. Chronic truancy reached an all-time high of 26 percent.

Nora Salguero, a parent who now chairs Clemente's Local School Council, says the school had no stability or security. "My daughter attended a high-school assembly where an FALN speaker urged students to throw off the shackles of the 'dictators' they claimed were trying to control them," Salguero says. "That was when I knew I had to get involved."

DaMota had not been the school council's first choice as principal. The original candidate, a suburban educator, turned down the job after receiving a death threat by telephone. A second candidate did not pass muster with the city's board of education. When DaMota finally got the nod in February 1997, she sensed God's hand at work.

In the late 1980s, DaMota, weary of overregulation and burdensome rules, had reached a crucial turning point: whether to remain in public education. "I felt God gave me a calling to do this as a ministry—to work with and through the parents and with the kids," she says. "From that day forward, I saw no difference between ministering in the church and being a school administrator. God is working alongside me in ways I don't see, with students, parents, and colleagues."

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September 6 1999, Vol. 43, No. 10