Former students of the Berkeley Institute are being challenged by the chairman of the school?s board of governors to support their alma mater by sending their children to the school.

Calvin White claims that Bermuda?s black community deserted Berkeley once white schools opened up to them after desegregation.

He told that those who attended the school but criticise it now have no right to do so if they are not actively involved in helping it return to its glory days. ?If you want to be honest, the community that made Berkeley great walked away from Berkeley,? he said. ?When the desegregation of the schools took place in the late 1950s and early 1960s, many of the parents who would have normally sent their children to Berkeley for an academic education, chose to send them to the schools that had just opened up, such as Saltus and Warwick Academy.

?That was certainly an unfortunate event because the white community did not respond in kind. No white children came to Berkeley.?

Just under 70 percent of the senior four year at Berkeley graduated this summer, compared with 61 percent last year. Mr. White, who graduated from Berkeley in 1968, acknowledged that the school?s graduation rate had been disappointing in recent years, but said the board of nine governors had adopted a strategy which would see it rise dramatically over the next three to five years.

?Over the next three years I invite the public to just look at Berkeley,? he said. ?Look at our graduation rates as we go forward. Come and find out.?

He issued a challenge to Berkeley?s alumni ? which includes Premier Alex Scott, a number of Cabinet ministers, plus top civil servants and business leaders ? to ?put their collective will together to get behind the school?.

He added: ?I mean send your kids here! Not only that but become involved. To walk away from the school and not be involved and then make criticism of the school, I don?t think that?s quite fair.?

Only one of the father-of-five?s own children attended Berkeley but that was before he became a Seventh Day Adventist. The others went to Bermuda Institute.

?If I wasn?t a Seventh Day Adventist I would have sent them to Berkeley,? he says. ?I respect the right of a citizen to choose how they wish to have their children educated.

?What I have a problem with is a private system which flourishes at the disadvantage of the public education system. We are able to give a quality education at Berkeley.?

Mr. White said he hoped Berkeley?s new $121 million building ? which opens to students on Monday ? would inspire pupils but that they would also be motivated by the school?s illustrious past.

??This is the legacy that was given to them,? he says. ?This school has stood for excellence and still stands for excellence.?