Singing and dancing before class. A reading curriculum rooted in African American stories. A school culture that allows children and staff to express themselves loudly and joyfully without fear of getting in trouble.
For decades, these approaches have been at the heart of Freedom School, one of St. Paul Public Schools’ most popular summer programs. And now, they may be coming to the regular school year.
In the fall of 2025, St. Paul Public Schools plans to begin an Afrocentric program at Benjamin E. Mays Elementary School, inspired by its Freedom School summer classes.
Freedom School, a national program through the nonprofit Children’s Defense Fund, was born out of the 1964 Freedom Summer in Mississippi — a civil rights-era initiative to improve the education of Black children attending inferior segregated schools. For more than 50 years, the program has helped inspire and educate children in summer months. Now, it will inform programming during the school year as well.
Chauntyll Allen, a school board member who pushed for the program, said it was “decades in the making.”
“For the Black community in St. Paul, this is a huge win,” said former school board member Jeannie Foster.
“For the Black community in St. Paul, this is a huge win.”
Former St. Paul school board member Jeannie Foster
The school board approved the new program on July 16, after a recommendation from a working group. The new program centered on African American culture and history comes as part of a larger push by the district for culture and language programs, including a longstanding Hmong immersion program and the new East African Elementary Magnet School, which opened last fall.
The details of the new Afrocentric program are still being worked out. District officials say they have yet to determine what the curriculum will look like, or even how many grade levels will be included at first.
But district officials hope that like its Freedom School inspiration, the new school-year program can boost student engagement, literacy and joy — especially among African American students.
Jackie Turner, the district’s executive chief of administration and operations, said the program would be designed specifically to increase student achievement. When students feel the curriculum is relevant to their lives, she said, attendance and student engagement tend to increase while negative behaviors decrease.
“If all three of those things happen, the belief is that achievement will go up as well,” she said.
‘Giving them a voice’
On the last Monday in July, kindergarten through eighth-grade students sorted themselves by age group in the school gym of LEAP High School in St. Paul’s Payne-Phalen neighborhood. They huddled in three dance circles as they prepared to start their morning assembly.
When Corey Frazier, the Freedom School site lead for LEAP High School, asked them what day it was, the students started jumping up and down on cue.
“It’s Monday!” they chanted. “At Harambee! And Freedom School’s in the house!”
Harambee, which translates as “all pull together” in Swahili, is a Freedom School highlight for many students and staff. The hour-long assembly includes call-and-response chants, singing along to both a remixed “Hallelujah” chorus and Nas’ “I Can,” a read-aloud from a community leader, recognitions of good student behavior and birthday songs.
It’s a high-spirited, energetic and affirming way to start the day. And though it’s not yet clear whether or how Harambee will be part of the new Afrocentric program at Benjamin E. Mays, many staff members say it is key to the Freedom School model.
Malique McCoy, an intern teaching the third- through fifth-graders, said he’d like to see Harambee at some schools during the school year. McCoy attended Freedom School growing up. Between his experience as a student and a teacher, he’s been at Freedom School every summer for the past 24 years.
“We really give the kids a chance to get some of that energy out,” he said. Participating in the Harambee — singing, dancing, speaking on the microphone — gives kids a chance to express themselves and makes them feel more comfortable speaking in class, he said. When McCoy was a student, those experiences helped him feel more comfortable giving speeches and acting in school plays.
“It’s really just giving them a voice,” he said. “I feel like that’s really the main thing that Harambee does, and what Freedom School does well.”
Some of his students, working on acrostic poems about their own definitions of success, agreed they’d like to see Harambee at school.
“You get to go on stage and dance and stuff,” said 9-year-old Jasmine.
The Rev. Dr. Darcel Hill, who is now the executive director of Freedom School for St. Paul Public Schools, first got involved with the initiative 25 years ago looking for a summer program for her son. She recalled how Harambee helped him start the day better.
“He really needed that to get the antsies out,” she said.
She noted that the morning Harambee assembly focuses on children’s strengths through recognition of kind deeds and birthdays, chants and cheers. Previously, her son rarely spoke in class, and when he did he’d get in trouble, she recalled. But Harambee, which celebrates children’s strengths and invites them to participate, helped him to feel more comfortable.
“I noticed how he started speaking more, sharing and talking, and I realized that he’s kind of a good speaker,” she said.
Allen, the school board member, said Harambee represented the kind of culturally relevant structure that many schools are lacking. She recalled being scolded for laughing with students when she worked in St. Paul Public Schools as a paraprofessional.
“If you jump up and start yelling and dancing in a PWI [predominantly white institution] elementary school, you’re going to the principal’s office,” she said. “I want staff that are in this space to be able to laugh, to be able to have joy.”
“If you jump up and start yelling and dancing in a PWI [predominantly white institution], you’re going to the principal’s office. I want staff that are in this space to be able to laugh, to be able to have joy.”
Chauntyll Allen, St. Paul school board member
Across St. Paul Public Schools’ two Freedom School locations, about half the students are Black; most of the others are Asian, Latino, or multiracial. Many of the staff are Black, too. Hill emphasized the long multicultural history of the movement, starting with bringing Black and white people together in Mississippi during the civil rights movement.
McCoy said he appreciates working collaboratively with diverse colleagues. “We welcome everyone,” he said. “It’s not just about people of color. It’s not just about race.”
Getting staffing right will be key to creating a joyous school climate that resembles Freedom School, Allen said. Both she and Foster expressed concern about union staffing rules that could complicate efforts to prioritize staff with the appropriate cultural knowledge in the new program.
Leah VanDassor, the president of the St. Paul Federation of Educators, was unavailable for comment.
Allen said, though, that the union had worked with the district to staff the American Indian Magnet School, and many Indigenous educators ended up placed in that building. “I think there’s ways that it can be done,” she said.
Relevant curriculum fuels reading skills
Speaking wasn’t the only skill Hill’s son improved during his first Freedom School summer.
“My son started getting more interested in reading, because of these wonderful books that had characters that look like him and experiences like him,” she said.
Freedom School’s summer program focuses on literacy, featuring books with multicultural characters and the theme “I can make a difference.” And the program brings in diverse professionals from different career fields to read to students, too — showing them role models not just in books, but in real life.
Andrea Jackson (left) and NaRyah Davis (right), servant leader interns for Freedom School, ask their K-2 students if they know what a president is, in their literacy lesson focused on the importance of voting. Credit: Dymanh Chhoun | Sahan Journal
Hill got involved in Freedom School’s parent empowerment workshops, and quickly took leadership in the program. For years, expanding Freedom School has been a dream, as the community has watched the district build out school-year programs for other cultural groups. Meanwhile, African American student proficiency in St. Paul Public Schools has remained quite low.
But Hill believes that Freedom School can help. A district report from 2023 showed that students who went through Freedom School improved their reading proficiency by an average of nine months in just six weeks. And she pointed to other data indicating lower suspension rates and higher parent engagement for Freedom School students.
“If we could do that in six weeks,” she wondered, “what could happen” with a year-round school?
Generations of teachers
McCoy, the intern who has spent more than 20 years in Freedom School, recalls that Frazier, who now leads the program at LEAP, was his summer teacher when he was a kid.
“One of the main things that makes Freedom School so special is during the school year, kids of color don’t usually get to see people of color in leadership roles,” he said. “These spaces sometimes make them feel really comfortable.”
And now McCoy is training to become a teacher himself. He’s studying at Concordia University to teach middle school English. Several other Freedom School staff this summer are also program alumni. Some are completing their teacher training and some — including Hill’s son — are now licensed teachers.
McCoy recalled that his Freedom School friends who stuck with the program through middle school continued to be college-oriented, while those who left lost their college aspirations.
“You could see a drastic difference in their life trajectory,” he said. “I’ve seen firsthand how Freedom School affects people’s lives and can change people’s lives. I want to be a part of that.”
