HAMILTON — It's less than 30 miles from Christ Church in Hamilton to St. Mary's Church in Upham's Corner in Dorchester. In many ways, it might as well be 100 times, or even 1,000 times, that far.
The physical distance will never change, but the two churches are launching a program this fall that promises to link them in a mutually beneficial alliance.
Christ Church is offering SAT tutoring to local high-schoolers, in both English and math. The cost of the 10, 90-minute sessions will be $800. Those proceeds will be used to pay for scholarships for similar tutoring programs for students at Jeremiah E. Burke High School, which is in St. Mary's Parish.
The Rev. Eric Hillgas is an assistant priest at the Dorchester church. According to the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, 69 percent of Burke 10th-graders who took the MCAS English test in 2008 either failed or needed improvement. In math, 72 percent fit one of those two categories.
The school has a 23 percent annual dropout rate, and its four-year graduation rate is just 40 percent.
By contrast, in Hamilton-Wenham the 10th-grade MCAS results showed just 8 percent of students were failing or in need of improvement in English, and only 9 percent fell into one of the two bottom categories in math.
Hillgas thinks the church should take an active role in trying to break the kind of economic and social cycles spawned by those numbers.
"The neighborhood should be better because of the church," he said.
The benefits for Christ Church are less tangible, but the pastor, the Rev. Patrick Gray, believes they are real.
"You're doing someone else good by doing good for yourself," Gray said.
Wenham resident Kali Reynolds is the Christ Church site manager for the tutoring. She and Hillgas knew each other through a mutual friend. She noted that while local students won't be able to claim their tutoring as credit toward their graduation requirements for community service, it will reinforce the importance of helping others who are less fortunate.
In Dorchester, Hillgas said free tutoring will be available for students who can't afford to pay anything, but when possible parents will be asked to help pay for the program. Those proceeds would in turn be used to underwrite things like drivers' education, another critical need in the community.
Both Hillgas and Gray see the tutoring as an example of the Episcopal Church evolving to changing times and meeting new challenges.
"In the Christ Church community, there's a push to become more involved locally," Gray said.
Hillgas said Upham's Corner has "a bit of a notorious reputation," and since he and his wife live in the neighborhood, they're sometimes touched by violence that can leave even the innocent dead.
"It's personal for us, in some ways," he said. "St. Mary's is a parish in distress. Children are dying. We have a real need for partners."
For now, both churches will be happy just to see this new program succeed, but there's also hope it could one day lead to other collaborations that would bring a community in need and a community of privilege closer together.
"Who knows what grows out of it," Hillgas said. "It would be exciting to see. The sky's the limit in terms of where this goes."
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