Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 12, 1993 TAG: 9306140344
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Staffers and students feed it softened cat chow. They hold it in their hands and it sings and chirps.
"We take in everything," bus driver Jimmy Hubbard says.
The staff at Alternative Ed scoops up the kids spit out by other schools - kids who are always in trouble, kids who've been in jail, kids who don't do well at the big high schools.
Alternative Ed confronts drug dealers. Drug-addicted parents. Poverty. Orphans. Teen parents. Homelessness.
The staff tries to make up for it all.
They wake up kids when there's an early school trip.
They fetch them Band-Aids. Buy them clothes. Get them glasses. Dispense their medicine. Chase them down the hall to make sure they swallowed it.
They cheer at their graduations.
Sometimes, they go to their funerals.
Alternative Ed is often the kids' last hope. If the staff doesn't connect with them, they may be out of school forever.
School nurse Dorothy Campbell let a girl stay at her house while social workers found her a foster family. "These are our babies," Campbell says. "They are the most precious things."
Teachers, security guards, the bus driver - they all have a few kids they click with. It's an unofficial parenting system, a natural parceling-out of kids who need a lot of attention.
"We just try to adopt them all," counselor John Crawford says.
Teachers knew a teen-age guy wasn't doing well in his foster home, so they pushed for another.
Juvenile Court Judge Philip Trompeter admires, but feels sorry for the small staff. "They're saddled with multiple problems they have no resources for, through no fault of their own."
For all this, Alternative Ed's teachers earn some of the lowest wages in Roanoke schools.
"My teachers don't get paid at scale because it's not valued by those in the upper echelons of the administration," current director George Franklin says.
For all the soft hearts, the staff can be tough.
When they've given a kid lots of chances and he's blown it, they move on.
They perform educational triage. They can't waste time on the ones who don't listen.
Sometimes, they report sadly to one another that a kid has "turned thug." They shake their heads. They lose kids to the streets all the time.
"Chumps." "Thugs." "Outlaws." "Hard-core." It's staff code for the unreachable ones.
When former Alternative Ed student Percy Johnson III, 17, was shot and killed on a Roanoke street last winter, Franklin wouldn't talk about him.
"He's dead. He chose a path that led to that. I need to work on those that aren't dead yet," Franklin said, ending the conversation.
Vicki Havens, the center secretary, and math teacher Harry Jones gulp their lunches one day in the closet-sized teachers' lounge. A soap opera's on TV.
Jones, munching peanut butter crackers, used to be a cereal chemist, testing wheat at Roanoke City Mills. He started teaching 11 years ago, first in Salem, then at Alternative Ed.
He has an informal style. He sits on top of desks. He joins clusters of students in the corners of his room. He has a running line of conversation that draws kids into math problems on his blackboard.
In the winter, a kid was horsing around and pushed him. Jones fell. He chipped a knee bone and the fall stretched ligaments. He missed school and still wears a brace. He doesn't think the kid meant any harm.
Jones enjoys these kids, even when they get frisky. He tries to understand what landed them at Alternative Ed.
Many lost faith in school years ago; Jones figures around the fourth grade.
Kids start getting more homework around then - "assignments that require a lot of parental supervision, and the parents don't have time to deal with it." When they don't do well, that little-kid bond with teacher falls apart.
Havens came to Alternative Ed after 25 years as a homemaker. She has a daughter, 22, and a son who graduates from Patrick Henry High School this week.
"When I got here," she said, "I was a middle-class little white lady that didn't know a whole lot about the inner city.
"I can hear-tell they're felons, or they're out of school for fighting, but until they show me that side of them, they're fine.
"A lot of these parents are good parents, but they're up against odds that are overwhelming. Their kids are exposed to killings. Their kids are exposed to drugs. Their kids are exposed to early sex.
"It's a whole 'nother way of living from your average suburb with your green grass and all that."
by CNB