Praying Principal Says God Rules at His School
by Jim Brown
September 13, 2004
(AgapePress) - A public high school principal in Boca Raton, Florida, says he will not be deterred by criticism he has received for expressing his evangelical Christian beliefs.An atheist teacher at Boca Raton High School condemned principal Geoff McKee for telling staff at a recent faculty meeting that all of his significant decisions are made prayerfully. Yet another faculty member accused McKee of hiring only people from his church or those with a strong belief in God.
And a Roman Catholic parent complained about McKee's proposed "Introduction to the Bible" course.
Still, the Florida principal insists the attacks will not stop him from acknowledging his faith in God. He notes that the community he serves is extremely mixed, with 73 birth countries represented by the student population, "and just about every religious group."
Still, McKee says, "This community has been very supportive of me as a principal and of anything I've brought into the school, including trying to create as godly an environment as possible." Also, the principal says he prays for every student and teacher in each classroom he visits and throughout the day, asking "that God's spirit would descend on Boca Raton High to protect students from the evil one."
And McKee notes that he is not the only one praying -- a campus student group and a group called Mom's In Touch meet weekly to intercede for the school as well. The Christian school official says he has seen some dramatic immediate answers to prayer while on the job. In one instance, he recounts, "Literally, as I was praying, a staff member walked up to me and said he got a funny report about a child who possibly had drugs in one of the restrooms."
Upon retrieving the young girl, McKee says, "It turned out she had a purse full of pills that she said -- and it was a believable story to me -- she was stockpiling for a suicide attempt."
The high school's chief administrator considers that incident and several others like it to be moments of divine intervention. "I don't know how else to describe it," he says, "other than the Holy Spirit's active involvement in our school as a result of prayer."
McKee says God's influence is powerful at his school, and the evidence of divine grace has been and continues to be amazing. Since the Christian principal took over there, Boca Raton High has gone from being a school with seriously high crime statistics to one with the lowest incidence of violence in all of Palm Beach County.
