The first day of school turned out to be much more than a day of getting back to the three R's for several students at Sheep-Harney Elementary.

Also showing up Monday was the Elizabeth City State University football team, the first group of local men to participate in the Million Father March.

The River City Community Development Corporation organized the local event, which was founded by the Black Star Project in 1996 to help improve education for black and Latino children.

Team members were joined outside the school by a group of second-grade students, pastors and community leaders.

Abel Sutton, vice-chairman of the Pasquotank Ministers Council for Education, remarked to the crowd, "It's so wonderful to see all of you fathers here even though ... some of you don't have children in this community. Just your presence alone today represents your commitment to your child. I do ask if you haven't already called your child today ... make sure that you call them. Make sure that you keep that connection with your children, because it's important that we have fathers that are connected with their children to help make our world, to help make our community better."

Team members, including several who acknowledged being fathers, pledged to encourage children in their education, to take an active role in their children's lives and to volunteer at the school at least three times this year.

Angie Wills, small business developer for the corporation, said that when fathers have a role in their children's lives, the children have better grades.

"We're working to help close the achievement gap as it relates to our educational system," she said. "If you look at the numbers, it has been proven that ... African American males lack the math and reading skills that are required to pass the end of the grade testing. So as we said again today, when men show up, our children do much better in school."

River City President and CEO Lenora Jarvis-Mackey said the event can be a beginning to more involvement by fathers in their children's education.

"We are concerned about the fact that our schools are not reaching AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress) at the end of the year," she said.

She said the event wasn't heavily promoted this year as it was planned shortly before the first day of school, but some local pastors did ask fathers to take their child to school Monday as part of the initiative.

"When I thought about it I said, 'Well, you really don't have time to organize this the way that it should be,'" Jarvis-Mackey said. "And so we were going to wait until next year but then you know looking at the situation in our own community we couldn't afford to wait another year so we had to start somewhere."