300 Rally in Support of All-Male Schools : Education: Judge ruled last week against the Detroit academies for young blacks. Parents demand they be opened ‘one way or another.’

Protesting what they called a racist federal court ruling against the creation of three all-male public schools in this nearly 90% black city, about 300 people gathered outside the federal building Wednesday to demand that the controversial schools be opened.

The proposed programs, designed to address the crisis facing African-American boys, had garnered popular support in a community desperate to stop the steady stream of its young men flowing into the prisons and onto the streets.

But last week U.S. District Judge George Woods ruled that single-sex schools, no matter what their purpose, are unconstitutional. Parents who say the education system has failed their sons have vowed to fight for the programs to be reinstated, even as the Detroit Board of Education debates whether to appeal the Woods ruling.

“We’re going to open the schools one way or another,” said Brenda Stevens, whose 5-year-old son was to start at one of the three male academies next week. “I want Randale to have strong black male role models. I’m not sending him back to the neighborhood schools. They’re no good.”

The schools, which were to have a curriculum centered on African-American studies, tutoring, and the recruiting of male teachers, would have been the first in the nation to try such an experiment.

Detroit School Board President Lawrence C. Patrick Jr. said the board is still weighing whether to open the schools to girls or appeal Woods’ decision.

Woods ordered the board to negotiate a compromise with the two organizations that brought it to court, the National Organization for Women Legal Defense Fund and the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan. Neither group has yet been contacted by the board, said Howard Simon, director of the Michigan branch of the ACLU.

“I had hoped to hear from them earlier,” Simon said. “The clock is ticking on the semester.”

The ACLU and NOW have indicated that they would like to see the schools open as soon as possible with female students, but with the special programming intact.

Proponents of all-male schools say such a compromise misses the point. They argue that with two-thirds of the boys who enter Detroit high schools dropping out, compared with one-third of the girls, and 70% of the school district’s students being raised by single mothers, boys need the sort of guidance and education that can only be provided in an all-male environment.

And in a nearly all-black school district such as Detroit’s, Woods’ decision, aimed at preventing discrimination on the basis of sex, ends up discriminating on the basis of race and income, they contend.

“If you have money you can go to whatever kind of school you want,” said Geri Davis, balancing her youngest child on her hip and shepherding her older two in front of her as she marched in front of the federal building Wednesday. “But the average black guy can’t go to special schools. There’s got to be somewhere for them to go.”

But Helen Newborne, executive director of the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, said equal opportunity for girls, not race, was the point. “We don’t see a race issue here at all,” said Helen Newborne, “We see a need to provide quality education for all children.”