The January 29 march generated a fair amount of media coverage. Below are several of the stories:

• WORLDmag.com | NYC pastor faces eviction from community he loves to serve (Profile of Abounding Grace pastor Richard Del Rio and 20/20 executive director Jeremy Del Rio).
• Huckabee: War on common sense? (From Mike Huckabee’s opening monologue: ”Now that same city recently arrested New York City pastors and Christians because they peacefully protested an idiotic decision by the same heavy-handed Mayor to no longer allow unused public school buildings to be used by local churches.”)
• Massive march for fairness to NYC churches › A Journey through NYC religions
• Worshipers Blast Ban On Rented Space At City Schools > NY1 (Includes an interview with Jeremy Del Rio)
• http://www.news12.com/articleDetail.jsp?articleId=305734&position=1&news_type=news (News 12 coverage includes overhead helicopter footage.)
• Rally For Religious Gathering In Schools >Fox 5
• Hunger strike ends, fasting begins. Worship in public school controversy enters new stage on Sunday.
• Fernando Cabrera Marching Across The Brooklyn Bridge To Protest Ban On Churches Renting School Space
• http://www.amny.com/share/1.812039/1.3488614 (“It’s unnecessarily discriminatory against Houses Of Worship in New York City,” City Comptroller and John Liu told amNewYork.)
• Let religious groups rent NYC schools > NY Post
• Thousands March To Protest Ban On Using Public Schools For Religious Services > CBS 2

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Join 20/20 Vision for Schools on Sunday, January 29 at 3:30 pm, as we march across the Brooklyn Bridge to City Hall in solidarity with 68 congregations the City is presently evicting from schools on February 12.

Following 20/20 Vision for Schools’ Statement on the School/Church Eviction Controversy on January 12th, here are links to various media reports, as well as several embedded videos.

Watch CNN’s coverage here.

Jeremy Del Rio of 20/20 Vision for Schools believes that the ban will hurt low-income communities where most of the 68 congregations affected by the ban are located. “Mayor Bloomberg believes that children in New York City can’t tell the difference between the church that rents the building on Sundays and the academic instruction that takes place Monday through Friday. New York is smarter than that. Our children are smarter than that. They know the difference.”

GOLDEN LEGISLATION ALLOWING USE OF SCHOOLS FOR WORSHIP SERVICES PASSES SENATE EDUCATION COMMITTEE

Cabrera: “We are optimistic.” | WORLD New York

NYC Worship Protests Intensify

NYC Clergy/Councilman protest of DOE (Youtube Video link)

NYC’s senseless slap at prayer (NY Post)

Protest movement grows, Bronx Pastor willing to die to oppose city policy against churches meeting

NYC Press Conference 01/18/12 (Vimeo video link)

NYC Press Conference 01/18/12 from Christian Monzon on Vimeo.

WNYC News Blog – Clergy, Politicians Protest Ban on Worship in Public Schools

Perp Walk for Praying (Youtube video link)

Waves of pastors, professors, politicians, lay people arrested at Bloomberg’s annual State of City

At least 30 arrested at rally against public space service ban (News 12 video link)

City Council Members Make the Case For Houses Of Worship in Closed Public Schools (NY1 video link)

Temperature check: how the crowd outside see the Bloomberg administration

For the last couple of years churches have worked as partners with many city public schools. Jeremy Del Rio of 20/20 Vision warned that the churches cannot let the conflict with the city government to reduce their focus on the important role that churches are playing in sustaining and improving their communities. “The biggest challenge is that we have reduced the relationship between churches and schools to a landlord tenant relationship. We’re not just tenants in buildings, but were partners in the transformation of our schools.”

Churches Change Tactics to Fight Ouster From N.Y.C. Schools (NY Times)

New York City Church Leaders Arrested Fighting for Right to Worship

Clergymen in Cuffs as Protesters Are Arrested (NY Times Cityroom Blog)

In New York, both city-wide Christian monthlies published “Why Public Schools Matter to God (and Should Matter to You Too),” a column that makes the case to pastors and faith leaders why literacy and education reform are issues requiring their leadership and congregational investment.

Outreach magazine, one of the nation’s most widely circulated Christian magazines, profiled 20/20 in their “Going Public” article about reimagining how churches can engage public schools.

Here are excerpts and links to both articles.

// “Going Public,” by Dave Urbanski, with Sidebar by Jeremy Del Rio, Outreach (Sept/Oct 2009)

A growing number of congregations are learning that outreach to public schools doesn’t mean tearing down an iron curtain or diving into a sea of protests and lawsuits. There’s very little to figure out, invent or dream up. In fact, apart from discovering and meeting the schools’ needs, everything else—spiritual conversations, church attendance, rsion experiences—happens naturally.

[They] have discovered the painfully obvious truth that the church has a credibility problem in America, and if churches have any hope of influencing lives within schools, they have to meet the schools on their terms.  This starts with serving with no strings attached — along with an open ear to helping schools overcome their biggest stated obstacles.

// “Why Public Schools Matter to God (and Should Matter to You Too),” by Jeremy Del Rio, Tri-State Voice and Love Express (Sept 2009)

How many eighth grade Bible studies lead with Lamentations? Or Leviticus?

Yet last I checked, Lamentations and Leviticus are part of the Biblical canon, along with Romans and Revelation and lots of other heady reading material.

Should it matter to pastors then that average graduates of America’s city schools read at eighth grade levels?

If pastors believe Scripture, then absolutely it should.  Romans teaches that spiritual transformation occurs by renewing the mind according to the Word of God – not at altar calls or church services.  Besides being ill-equipped to compete in an information economy, where the currency is fluency with words, how likely are poor readers to engage the written Word?

Regardless of whether literacy matters to pastors, it matters to prison wardens.  States allocate prison construction dollars based on fourth grade reading test scores.

Download the article pdf here.

In September 2008, Jeremy Del Rio launched 20/20 Vision for Schools in New York City with one idea in mind: What would happen if church leaders activated the people in their churches for “good deeds” within public schools?

Here, Del Rio shares how 20/20 Vision has succeeded and why he believes churches are called to this backyard mission field.

If the moral test of a society is how it treats children, America has failed the same test year after year for decades. Specifically, we have failed to educate the urban poor despite promising equal access to quality education for all. This educational inequity–where the place of one’s childhood determines the quality of one’s education–has been called our nation’s greatest injustice and the Civil Rights issue of our day.

And churches have watched it happen.

As we looked at what it would take to accomplish comprehensive reform, we knew it would require multi-sector, collaborative strategies led by men and women willing to commit. And churches are uniquely positioned to lead this effort.

First, the God we preach requires us to care about justice (Micah 6:8, Isaiah 61:1-8). The prologue to Proverbs 31’s Wife of Noble Character describes the Bride of Christ at her most noble: “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy” (Proverbs 31:8-9).

Second, Jesus activates us as salt and light, that the world “may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:13-16). Salt that loses its preservative and flavoring effects–or remains inside the saltshaker of our churches–is useless.

20/20 Vision is bent on activating churches. Our vision is that first graders of September 2008—the graduating high school class of 2020—would reverse decades of chronic underperformance and graduate in record numbers, equitably across demographics and neighborhoods, with the skills and character necessary to achieve in life.

Mobilizing congregations for scalable engagement requires a plan, and 20/20’s school adoption paradigm moves congregations from no relationship to holistic, transformative relationships. It begins by committing to pray for a specific neighborhood school as often as the church prays. If America’s 300,000 evangelical churches actually prayed for its 100,000 public schools, dare we expect God to answer?

It continues as congregations overcome generational mistrust by cultivating personal relationships at the school. Next, churches become answers to prayer by responding to felt needs with meaningful acts of service such as beautification efforts or event sponsorships. Then they develop an ongoing presence by volunteering as coaches, mentors or tutors, or coordinating leadership clubs. Finally comes the credibility to affect policy both at the school and district level.

To date, nearly 200 New York churches have adopted schools through 20/20. Together, these churches have open-sourced a multi-sector effort to transform education in America. Because the problems are too vast for one person, group or community to overcome on its own, sharing ideas, best practices, funding solutions, evaluation methodologies and reform strategies represents the best way to engage the best minds in transforming public education in this country.

If it’s “about the kids,” 20/20 reminds us to share.

And to lead.

–Jeremy Del Rio

ONLINE: JeremyDelRio.com; 2020Schools.net

Rev. Jeremy Del Rio, Esq. is the lead architect of 20/20 Vision for Schools.