But now, because of its example, many other schools are sending in applications for grants, and often getting them. Ollie goes outside the standard system to get not only money but teachers. She insists on interviewing and selecting the school's teachers herself, not relying on a school board's centralized distribution system. Ollie's methods have drawn some criticism - especially for how she runs the upper two grades. Any child in the neighborhood can come to Harriet Tubman for prekindergarten through fourth grade.
Some people think it's a brain drain.
Now we have a recruitment night. The finest prep schools in the Northeast come here to recruit our kids on academic scholarships. Then they go on to Yale, Colgate, MIT, all over the place. I ask them to give graduation speeches, too. The computers, modems, satellite dishes and other accoutrements of modern education are there for everyone from kindergarten on up.