These are trappings of Catholic worship, not the sort of thing you usually find in, say, a Baptist church or school. But the symbols of Catholicism don't particularly bother Janie Hays, a black, single mother who sends her daughter, Jasmine, to St. Vitus courtesy of a voucher. "We're Baptists," says Hays. But she doesn't mind that the school is Catholic because "if you think about it, there's only one God."

St. Vitus used to be a white ethnic enclave, an inner-city parish for the Slovenians who worked in the steel mills. Now, half its students are black.

This is what the school voucher program looks like in Cleveland. Catholic schools formerly devoted to serving their white, working-class communities are now conspicuously integrated by African-American Protestants. Same crucifixes, similar curriculum, changing clientele. Of the 235 students here, only about 70 are Catholic.

The voucher program was St. Vitus' salvation. A few years back, the elementary school was set to close, the victim of Cleveland's changing demographics. Whites were forsaking the old neighborhood for suburbia. Enrollment withered to 130 students. But the taxpayer-funded voucher program, which began in 1995, made it possible for low-income families to send their sons and daughters to private and parochial schools. The vouchers are worth up to $2,250 per pupil, more than enough to pay the $1,900 tuition at St. Vitus. In effect, it's a government subsidy that sustains the Catholic school.

"We're a regular U.N.," smiles Jeanette Polomsky, the round-faced, soft-spoken St. Vitus principal. "Our children learn together, play together and pray together."

Polomsky is not a nun, but she's a lifer. The oldest of six children, she graduated from St. Vitus along with all her brothers and sisters. Like her bishop, she's committed to the "church in the city" regardless of what racial group now dominates the neighborhood.

These days at St. Vitus there are a few Hispanics and Asians, but what's most obvious is the checkerboard pattern of white and black kids in each classroom. Stocky white boys with crewcuts and last names like Djurovic share rows of old-fashioned school desks with black kids who look like they belong in a gospel choir. They are all dressed neatly in variations of the Catholic common denominator: the school uniform.

That's the deal the Catholic schools make with urban black kids: We welcome you and your vouchers, we will be an anchor in your economically ravaged neighborhood, but you must play by our rules. "You can't get a whole lot of teaching done if the room is in chaos," Polomsky stresses. "We want our children to behave appropriately and to have some personal discipline. We try to teach them that they are responsible for what they do, and that if you make good choices there are good consequences that come to you. If you make poor choices, then the consequences might not be so pleasant."

Polomsky says this sweetly, with almost beatific grace, but you still get the message: Screw up badly and we'll expel you -- fast. It's something a lot of public school principals would love to do with deeply troubled, disruptive kids but can't, at least not as easily.

Hays, who works as a computer operator for the police department, appreciates the safety and structure St. Vitus provides. The voucher program enables Hays to send her daughter, Jasmine, to a school that's strict, old-fashioned and assigns homework every night.

But as Polomsky is quick to admit, St. Vitus is "not a little patch of paradise." Even with the voucher money, it's a financially strapped, struggling school with woefully underpaid teachers and no frills. The starting salary is less than $18,000 a year.

"Teachers could easily make an additional $10,000 just by signing on in a public school," says Polomsky. "This is a personal choice [our teachers] make. It's a commitment to the school, the Catholic faith, and to sharing that faith and education with the children."

Jasmine is faring well at St. Vitus, but she may not be able to stay. Last year, a federal judge, Solomon Oliver, declared the entire Cleveland voucher program unconstitutional -- a violation of the First Amendment's separation of church and state. The judge noted that 96 percent of the nearly 4,000 voucher students attend parochial schools and concluded that this amounted to "government-sponsored religious indoctrination."

There are African-American parents who agree with Oliver, although his ruling sparked a firestorm of criticism and the judge agreed to allow the voucher program to continue while the case is on appeal. Ultimately, the Supreme Court will probably determine the fate of the Cleveland plan.

Kelvin Woodford, a powerfully built, handsome man who splices cable for the Cleveland power company, removed his daughters from Catholic school because "I felt to a point it is an indoctrination." Woodford believes "you are taught with blinders" in religious schools. "A lot of people are trained and not truly educated."

He prefers the rough and tumble of public schools combined with strong parental involvement in his kids' education. Woodford, for example, requires his children to do weekly book reports for him.

But Fannie Lewis, an African-American grandmother and city council member who represents Ward 7, one of the poorest neighborhoods in Cleveland, says she just can't understand why a black parent could be against vouchers. "Using this church and state thing, I mean, that's nothing but a cop out," fumes Lewis. "People send their children to Catholic schools because they're looking for a better education, they're looking for discipline, they're not looking for no religion."

A maverick Democrat, Lewis helped initiate the voucher program to help black parents who are desperate to escape a failing inner-city school system. "It's like a burning house," explains Lewis. "What do you do? Let the house burn down and kill everybody or go in there and save who you can? That's what the voucher is about."

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