Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, June 12, 1993                   TAG: 9306140351
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THEY'VE ALWAYS HAD TO ROUGH IT IN ALTERNATIVE ED

The science class met on the stage. Teachers used the kitchen and the pool room.

Many years before, the city schools had two Alternative Ed programs - one for boys, one for girls.

Total Action Against Poverty, Roanoke's anti-poverty agency, ran the Alternative Ed program for a few years in the old Jefferson High School gym.

In 1986, Peter Lewis, a counselor and advocate of students on the verge of dropping out, talked the school system into reclaiming Alternative Ed. He became its director.

Two years later, Lewis and his partner, George Franklin, landed their own place for Alternative Ed.

They were given the old vocational education wing of the city's former all-black high school, Lucy Addison, at Fifth Street and Orange Avenue Northwest. The school is now Addison Aerospace Magnet Middle School.

Alternative Ed bears signs of its shop history. A sign on one classroom door says "307 METALS." Another door is marked "POWER AND TRANSPORTATION."

Lewis and Franklin had little money to convert the wing to classrooms, so they had students build some with donated lumber.

A building inspector said the work wouldn't pass code, so the school system reworked the rooms. Alternative Ed got new windows, lowered ceilings and classrooms with heating and air conditioning.

"They did it because the students over here built funky classrooms," Franklin said. He and Lewis are masters at prying gains from adversity.

In September, a former student shot an Alternative Ed senior in the hip as the victim sat in his car in the parking lot. The attacker then chased his target into the building as students ran for cover.

Addison Aerospace built a wall that kept Alternative Ed students out of its hallways. A fire inspector declared it a hazard and the wall was torn down. Still, inside doors that connect Alternative Ed with Addison are locked.

This semester, two Alternative Ed boys were charged with showing a knife to Addison girls at school. Franklin heard the case in Juvenile Court and says it was not a big deal. The boys and girls got into an argument, but, he said, the boys didn't mean any harm.

Soon afterward, Addison put up a 7-foot chain-link fence around its back yard.