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Summer 2014
who possessed strong leadership skills.They had to be
able tomotivate a team of people to go out and imple-
ment their vision.No one I interviewed seemed tough
enough. So, I accepted that StrawberryMansionwas
where I was supposed to be.”
She knew from her own experience that the principal
had to be a presence in the classroom, the hallways, the
cafeteria – everywhere.
“The onlyway I could go in there, the onlyway I
could start to understand them,was by letting them
know that I actually did love them,” she explained. “You
couldn’t go in there if you didn’t really love them and
you couldn’t see all the good the students had to offer.
I was dealingwith them day to day, and I knew I could
see the goodness in all of them.”
ThenWayman discovered that the school district
was planning on closing StrawberryMansion.
“That’s when I had it,” she said.
She decided to take a stand, and confronted the
school board.
“You have closed every school in this community
that has to take all children,” she said, underscoring that
high-achieving children are accepted by charter and
other specialty schools, but that StrawberryMansion
accepted everyone.
“Do youwant all my kids to die, or go to prison?” she
asked. “That has to be what the plan is, because there’s
nowhere else for these kids to go.”
When the school board held publicmeetings to dis-
cuss closing StrawberryMansion,Wayman rallied her
students and their parents.They crowded into the
meeting room, and refused to be dividedwhen the
administration tried to send some of them into another
room.Theywouldn’t budge.Eventually, the board
relented and StrawberryMansion remained open.Late
in the academic year, the school received a visit that
would have a profound impact.ABCWorldNews
anchorDiane Sawyer and her teamwere looking for
a school to highlight in theHiddenAmerica series
for “Nightline.”
During Sawyer’s visit, the odor ofmarijuana filled the
hallway.Fights broke out in the cafeteria and students
Jozel Bryant-Johnson
’15, a former student
ofWayman and a
current KU senior,
surprisedWayman
during her visit to
campus in February.
FEATURE
were arrested on drug-related charges and handcuffed
in front of their peers.A young boywent home and
cooked on a single burner for his brothers and sisters.
A young girl struggling to achieve was bullied and
assaulted by another girl. Students accepted into
college couldn’t afford to enroll.
Sawyer saw beyond the violence, she understood
why things were so bad.
“When she walked into the building, and she talked
to the students, she said, ‘OhmyGod, this is not vio-
lence; this is poverty,’”Wayman recalled.
The story aired onABC’s “NightlyNews”and
“Nightline” inMay 2013, under the title “Fear and
Hope at StrawberryMansion.”It was not well received
in the neighborhood.The communitywas up in arms,
upset about the airing of their ‘dirty laundry.’But ABC
had gone out on a limb and provided a number onscreen
for people to call and offer support.
“The phone wouldn’t stop ringing,”Wayman said.
“It went all night, and through the very next day. I
had to turnmy office into a telethon. I had to bring
people frommy classrooms toman the phone, so
many people were calling.”
And nobodymentioned the violence; the calls were
all about support. Soon, the college enrollment fee for
every student was covered by donors throughout the
country. In a follow-up segment on “Nightline”aired
inDecember,Wayman bursts into tears as she recalls
what those phone calls
meant to her: “Ohmy
God, somebody besides
me actually does care.”
Had her own hopefulness
become badly depleted?
“That’s correct,” she
said during an interview.
“I did not know how I was
going to get past this.Every
day I would go in there and
say, ‘Lord, youwantedme
to come in here – because I’m a believer that way – and
how am I supposed to do it? It’s justme.’”
“And then I had to realize, it’s not just you, ‘I’m here
with you,’” she said, referring to the presence ofGod
she feels in her daily life.
The news programs brought something else, too:
invitations forWayman to keynote the Pennsylvania
Conference forWomen and theMassachusetts
Conference forWomen. She shared the stage in
Pennsylvania withHillaryClinton.Hermessage in a
nutshell: urban education is in trouble, and hope should
not be denied to any of America’s children.
Other battles remained, such as getting the school
a football team. She was receivedwith skepticism and
