STUDENTS GATHER AROUND FLAGPOLES FOR PRAYER

JACKSON -- As more than 70 students held hands and prayed around the high school flagpole early Wednesday, the anger expressed by students' parents the night before wasn't visable.

Seventeen-year-old Andy Conklin was just glad to see how each year more students continue to come to See You at the Pole.

"All I can do is look at what we're doing today and say God is awesome," Conklin said.

See You at the Pole is a national event involving millions of high school students from all 50 states and 17 other countries.

In Cape Girardeau County, well over 200 students from Jackson, Cape Girardeau and Scott City high schools gathered between 7 a.m. and 7:30 a.m. around their flagpoles.

The Jackson students contrasted with nearly 500 adults who gathered the night before at the Jackson School District Board of Education's meeting. Many adults expressed anger over a prank last Spring when seven Jackson students "kidnapped" a friend, terrorized him and tied him to a cross.

As the students gathered on Wednesday before 7:30 a.m., they sang praise songs as a sophmore boy strummed a guitar.

They prayed for their school and their country. They had not gathered to cast stones, Conklin said.

"We can't do anything more than talk to them," Conklin said of the students involved in the prank. "All we can really do is try to be an example."

Sheryl Cobb, 16, said she had not known about the prank until this year. For her, it's more important that more students were praying around the flagpole this year.

At Cape Central High School, this was the first year teachers and administrators were invited to the student-led event. Teresa Haubold, a secretary for the Board of Education, said having adults present wasn't as big a deal here as it would be somewhere else.

"I have to remind some of the people who move to this area that it is in the Bible Belt," she said.

Although Dan Steska and Ron Anderson weren't at school flagpoles Wednesday morning, the respective superintendents of Cape Girardeau and Jackson schools had attended church together Sunday night. They went to a service at Lynwood Baptist Church that commissioned students to serve as missionaries in their schools, Haubold said.

"They're sending kids the right message," Haubold said.

All of the three high schools have students who pray together each week. At Cape Central, every Friday at 7:10 a.m. an informal student group meets. Jackson students meet at 7:30 a.m. on Thursdays. In Scott City, they gather around their flagpole Monday and Friday mornings.

Scott City students moved their twice-weekly prayers around the flagpole last year after students were killed at Columbine High School in Colorado, said Nathan Morse, a senior. It hasn't diminished the meaning of the annual event, he said.

"Whenever kids see other kids pray, that changes things," Morse said.

Many students find courage to be Christians in a public school by having others to pray with, he said.