Ohio State basketball legend and college basketball analyst Clark Kellogg is helping launch a preparatory boarding school for young Black men.
Kellogg, now a CBS college basketball analyst, joined Robert Murphy, a former Columbus City Schools principal and founder of the school, Franklin County officials, and Ohio State faculty at the OSU campus on June 26. At the event, they announced that Kellogg would be chair of the launch campaign for the Columbus Masters Preparatory Academy.
The academy is a planned boarding school aimed to provide a “transformative outcomes for young Black men.” The school is aiming to open by fall 2028 after it acquires property in central Ohio.
Kellogg played basketball at Ohio State from 1979-1982 and professionally for the Indiana Pacers before a career in broadcasting. He told The Dispatch the program resonated with him because of his own experience at a single-gender school growing up in Cleveland.
“As it relates to our young Black men, there’s clearly some value in being connected to a cultural environment that’s nurturing and understanding and empathetic and challenging,” Kellogg said. “To see development in education in a holistic manner in this type of unique environment is worth pursuing and making happen.”
Murphy, who has been working for several years to launch the program, said he was pursuing a boarding school model because of the challenges young Black students face. When studying what makes single-gender schools successful, he said he found many of the traditional schools spent their Mondays getting students back into an academic mindset.
“If I get a young man here today, and he’s not there tomorrow when he comes to school because he’s been in the neighborhood – maybe he doesn’t have a good home life, or is homeless, so it’s hard to build upon what we did that day,” Murphy said. “So the boarding school mitigates all of that.”
The school is planned to open as a private school, because Murphy said that there is no provision for charter boarding schools and said that there is not much history of boarding schools attached to charter schools. The school also plans for 30% of its student body to be foster children from the Franklin County Children Services.
Children Services Director Chip Spinning said creative solutions like the Masters Academy were needed to not just mitigate problems with children’s’ lives, but to empower them to success.
“We are committed financially and as a partner to moving this work forward,” Spinner said. “And seeing that the young men we’re serving have this opportunity so they can move forward as well.”
Cole Behrens covers K-12 education and school districts in central Ohio. Have a tip? Contact Cole at cbehrens@dispatch.com or connect with him on X at @Colebehr_report
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Clark Kellogg helping launch Columbus boarding school for young Black men
Reporting by Cole Behrens, Columbus Dispatch / The Columbus Dispatch
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By Cole Behrens, Columbus Dispatch | USA TODAY Network
