CHATTANOOGA, TN (WDEF) -Communities can play a vital role in a child’s education. With that in mind, families, neighbors and local leaders recently gathered at Orchard Knob Baptist Church. The wanted to make sure everyone was on the same page for successful school year. And that is a far-reaching example of “What’s Right With Our Schools.”
Prentice Gilbert is the Youth Pastor at Orchard Knob Baptist.
Gilbert says, “This is a great opportunity for us to be able to kind of bless the school year and bring in our administrators, our teachers, our students, and just kind of really get us all set off on it on a great start. Our young people face so many challenges every single day, and to be able to ensure that we set them up for success this year, we just always felt like the best way to start that is covering them in prayer. This is our third year, second year that we’ve widely publicized it in this manner, and last year was a great success and gave a great opportunity for a lot of our city leaders as well to be thankful for watching. Success, we had last year, we absolutely want to make sure we came and did it again.”
Dr. Rodney Morton is the Senior Pastor at Orchard Knob Baptist.
He explains, ” This is about reassuring our children, our scholars, our students, our faculty, administrators that we’re coming together as one Chattanooga to support the quality of education. This is not just going back to school. This is about our schools going forward. So, it brings people from various segments of the community from all ethnic religious backgrounds. You know, we may come from different sides of the fence, when black, white, Hispanic, Republican Democrat, whatever Baptist Methodist Pentecostal, but one thing we’re united on and that is we want a world-class education here in Hamilton County for all of our scholars.”
Prentice Gilbert adds, “So again, making sure our teachers understand it. It’s not just them in the battlefield. It’s the community behind them. And more important to make sure our children know that each and every one of us, our community leaders, our churches, our parents, we’re all in the fight together. We’re all in the fight to ensure that they have a success and know that they got our support. No matter when it is. For our church, it’s not just about today. We want to make sure they know that we have their back all year round.”
He concludes, “No matter which organization, no matter which neighborhood you’re in, no matter which church or which school you go to, school you go to, that we’re all committed to the same success. Making sure that they know how much we love them and how much we support them. And no matter what the challenges are, we can face them together and we can accomplish an attack them together.”
