Parents gathered at the Arthur W. Christopher Community Center Tuesday to discuss the future of Burke High School. Amanda Kerr/STAFF

A meeting of more than 50 downtown Charleston parents, residents and community leaders Tuesday night made one thing clear something needs to change at Burke High School.

The question is what and how that change occurs. And thats why a group of downtown parents organized the meeting at the Arthur W. Christopher Community Center on Fishburne Street to find out.

Parent Elena Tuerk, who led the meeting, urged the diverse, and sometimes divided community, to focus on finding common goals for parents to rally around.

This is a really great starting point for us to remember that we have shared visions for our families and shared values, Tuerk said.

Tuerk tasked the group with identifying what a good community school looks like and how that could translate into whats needed at Burke. Suggestions included adding trades and bio-technology programs, identifying ways to attract more students to the school, implementing a rigorous college prep curriculum, partnering with area colleges such as the Medical University of South Carolina to provide targeted academic tracks and potentially bringing in an outside group to run the school.

But discussions about the future of Burke carried an undercurrent of racial tension over changes to the historically black school.

Many alumni spoke passionately about their alma mater, blaming the schools decline in part on the fact that the once strong trades program at Burke was taken out in the 1990s. Some alumni feared the school has been ignored because it is predominantly black

Burke should look like any other school and have the trades as well as academics, said Jerome Smalls, a 1969 graduate of Burke. We want everything any other children would have.

Read more from the original source:
Downtown Charleston parents weigh how to shape the future of Burke High