Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 12, 1993 TAG: 9306140359
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
What goes on in this little-known annex could affect the future of Roanoke as much as what happens in Norfolk Southern corporate offices, the Dominion Tower or the city courthouse.
This is the Alternative Education Center, the parts Roanoke school system's M*A*S*H unit for young people about to drop out or be thrown out of school - and, perhaps, out of mainstream American life.
Virtually unknown to Roanokers, it wields life-and-death, make-it-or-break-it power in this town. An estimated 1,200 young people have received its staff's acute attention over the past seven years.
Its teachers keep some of the city's most precarious young people in school, on a constructive course, alive. They offer an affectionate home each school day for kids who are unwanted, at least for a while, at Roanoke's two high schools and six middle schools.
"We're serving kids nobody else wants," says Peter Lewis, on leave as the center's director this year.
With help, the kids may do great things.
Sometimes, though, they wander off. Since 1990, at least five former students, all teens, have been accused of killing people. At least four, also teens, have been murdered. Others are in prison.
For every dire tale, there are ones to rejoice about: kids who've gone to college, to the military, to jobs, off to start families.
Some of the time, Alternative Ed teachers shepherd students toward high school graduation, into work - and, occasionally, on to bigger things.
Alternative Ed expects 22 of its students to graduate from high school on Wednesday - almost twice as many as ever before.
It is 9:35 on a February morning.
Cheryl Perry's "personal social adjustment" class is under way. She's working on self-respect.
Guys fool around at their desks, punching each other, jiving each other.
"We're not here to fight," Perry says. "We're not going to curse."
Perry asks the fellows to describe something they like about themselves. "Stand up, sweetheart," she says to a boy, who says only that he has dark eyes.
A light-skinned black teen-ager wants lighter skin, "like my father."
The guys make fun of each other. Perry asks why they can't respect each other.
"I've never had respect, so I don't know," a freckle-faced kid says. Well, he adds, maybe he's had it sometimes. But he states, "Today's world is not about respect."
"It ain't no respect in the world, it ain't," he insists. "It ain't full of respect, so I don't respect nobody."
A red-haired boy chimes in: "I think respect is just in school, for teachers and stuff like that. Out of school you don't respect nobody."
The light-skinned black student stands tall and says, "You got to respect the laws, so you don't get in no trouble. I didn't give respect to my grandmother."
She may give custody of him to other relatives. "If I get into any more trouble," he says, "they're gonna lock me up."
At the close of class, Perry is near tears. She's new at Alternative Ed.
She can't believe it. "These children don't understand RESPECT."
Early in June, she corrals the kids into a class on peer pressure.
"They were magnificent," she says afterward. They were orderly; they let each other speak without interruption. "They raise their hands!"
Alternative Ed defies the image of a school where students move about in an orderly fashion, where they sit attentively at desks and listen obediently to teachers.
If Alternative Ed's students did all that, they wouldn't be here.
Roanoke's middle and high schools send kids who are unruly, having social problems or who just won't come to school.
It has the reputation as a place for troublemakers. But many students are just truants, or need personal attention.
Alternative Ed's policy is to take no special education students, including those with emotional problems and learning disabilities. Kids accused of weapons offenses also are blocked from attending.
Some students have been in all kinds of trouble.
They confess they've dealt drugs. They've stolen cars. Some were out of control at their home schools.
Counselor John Crawford had a student who saw his mother shot and killed. Other students have had brothers and best friends killed. Others' parents are in prison, and some kids' folks hit the road long ago.
Some parents, though, are hard-working, caring people who aren't home much. "That street out there can change the best kid," says Jimmy Hubbard, a school bus driver.
Teachers say many students don't know the basics of social interaction, the things that never need to be put into words for more carefully tended kids: that they're judged on how they look and behave; that if they listen respectfully to someone, they might win the same respect; and, most of all, that it pays to do the right thing.
George Franklin, the center's director, takes students downtown to the City Market. He wants them to see how they might fit into Roanoke.
Some kids have seen little of this small city.
Franklin remembers how they got hot dogs and sodas one day and ate on a bench outside. Nancy Patterson, an administrator at another city school, stopped by. Franklin rose to greet her.
Later, the kids wanted to know why he did that. He explained what to many people is a simple thing, but something these kids never noticed - that sometimes a man stands to greet a lady.
Alternative Ed is a shock at first.
Kids curse, holler, scuffle, slouch at their desks, sleep, pop gum, talk in class, wear their jackets with the hoods up. They fight the rules.
"You ought to be here in September. That is total war," Franklin says. "They come here having hit the teachers, having told the dean to go to hell."
Alternative Ed puts up with loud kids for a while - until the staff can get them to see that they're acting stupid. "It's better for them to be HERE acting stupid," he said. Here, where teachers are used to it, here, where people care about them.
A blood-curdling scream pierces the school entranceway one spring day. A girl shrieks, "Get off me! Get off me!"
Should somebody call the cops?
No, it's just a middle-school girl who fights going to physical education outings at the YWCA. She hates PE. This day, when the bus was loading up, she hid in the bathroom, then in two other rooms.
Ray Williams grabbed her before she ran out of school. She's screaming bloody murder, but all he's doing is calmly holding her wrists above her head as other students glide in and out the front door.
Williams, an administrative assistant, says he'll let her go, "if you'll act civil." She calms down, and goes to the Y with the others. In no time, she's laughing again.
On the streets, these students may seem menacing, tough.
At Alternative Ed, they can be kids. They laugh a lot. They're glad to be here. They're safe.
"I believe the positive is stronger than the negative," Franklin says, "The problem is, the positive hides itself."
Field trips - getting them out of Roanoke, getting them to see beyond their hometown - are a big part of Alternative Ed.
Last winter, a bunch went to North Carolina A&T State University for a basketball game and campus tour.
The younger guys and girls couldn't go, so the next morning, they drew chairs around road-weary aide Anthony Wade as he talked about the trip. The kids listened hard.
"Check this out," Wade says. "They've got fraternities on both sides of the street."
Teacher Janet Claytor said some kids have never been out of Roanoke until these trips. In Greensboro, they were scared and walked the campus in safe clumps of friends. The guys hiked up their saggy pants, often worn so low they show their underwear. That's not the style at A&T.
All day long, kids stream up and down the broad hallway that dissects Alternative Ed's little building.
Teachers, security guards, bus driver - the whole staff - are on and off the hall all day, too.
It is a highway, a place to cruise and to connect with adults. Teachers steer them into classes and off the hall, rarely with anger.
The youngsters are on a crucial stretch of road, one of change - hormonally, psychologically, every way. Many are battling crises at home and temptations on the streets.
"If we spend enough days with them," Franklin hopes, "they'll see other people who can help them after they leave here."
The staff plays mom and dad, in multiples. Though the women sometimes talk tough, and the men often are tender, the staff's labors divide along traditional gender lines - the men handle the harsh discipline; the women use gentle persuasion.
Juvenile Court Judge Philip Trompeter knows what students get here.
"For many of these kids," he says "it's the only structure they've ever known. It's the only nurturing they've ever had in their whole life."
Each day at Alternative Ed is different. Some days are peaceful; many, tumultuous.
Teachers know when a kid's had no sleep the night before or had little to eat. The grouchiness ricochets all over school.
A thousand mini-dramas are played out here every day.
One morning, boys and girls gather around former Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Al Holland in his "boot camp" room. That's where he plays Papa, first thing each day.
It's like a clubhouse. They learn a little discipline, do a little homework, do flips on the big gym mats, and, mostly, talk with Coach Holland about anything.
He has his logbook out and goes over how many boot camp hours they owe him. A girl is unhappy, grumpy.
"Did you get a hug today before you came to school?" he asks. "Didn't nobody tell you they loved you?"
A guy comes to the boot camp door. "Gotta go to the bathroom," he grumbles.
Tom Brown, an aide, says no. The kid flares up. "I can't go to the BATHROOM?"
Brown: "You didn't ask."
Student: "CAN I go to the bathroom?"
"Yes," Brown says. He lets him out.
Even the center's roll is in constant flux. Three new students entered Alternative Ed one day in late April - not uncommon even that late in the year. Another student came in mid-May.
Some kids run away. Getting them into the building is an accomplishment.
The center is an informal place. Laid-back. Tolerant. Accepting.
The rule is, no matter what kids may have done at other schools, they start with a clean slate at Alternative Ed.
If the place had 10 Commandments, the first would be, "Thou shalt find the best in every kid who walks through the door."
Late in April, instructional aide Sharon Hicks brings in bridal magazines. She and two girls decorate a bulletin board with pictures of men in tuxedos, women in formal gowns.
She wants these kids - thought of as the outcasts of the school system - to go to their proms.
A guy prances by, wearing a hat. She motions for him to take it off, and he does. She calls out softly, amid the din of the hall traffic, "I love you."
Order is a momentary thing in classrooms.
Nobody at Alternative Ed claims the center is The Governor's School, but teachers pack the basics - and more - into classes.
The center is a place where the staff connects with as many kids as they can, every minute of an assaulting workday.
"These people teach children first, then academics second," Franklin says.
The staff's bond-making comes with a touch of a hand, an arm across a shoulder, a shared joke, or unbroken eye contact.
"When we get through, then the academics come naturally to them," Franklin says. "They're not slow. They're not stupid."
The teaching is what counselor John Crawford calls lessons "caught, not taught."
He says: "You have to model this stuff" - each staffer showing kids how to be fair, how to think, how to reason things out.
Teachers don't teach alone.
One spring day, Denise and Jimmy Hubbard stand by the front door. Denise is a school security guard. Her husband, Jimmy, is a bus driver.
They are reading a newspaper story about Bobby Ingram, who used to be at Alternative Ed. He's been sentenced to life for killing a customer in a crack deal.
Two teen-age guys listen as the Hubbards speculate about how much time Ingram will serve. They all seem to know Bobby.
Twelve years? Sixteen? Twenty?
Jimmy Hubbard tells the guys that people in prison get into fights. Misconduct stretches out a sentence. Bobby Ingram, 17 at sentencing, could be into his 30s before his release.
The young guys look somber, scared.
Evils of the outside world intrude all the time.
The staff competes with role models of the night.
"We're fighting against the drug dealer," Holland says. "We're fighting against the thief. We're fighting against the guy who's going to rob you with a gun."
At the end of the school day, guys who have cussed and fussed all day, fuming "I'm gonna leave!" - refuse to. They are escorted gently out the door to make way for night school students. The school's in operation more than 13 hours a day during the school year.
"This is an escape for some of them," Crawford says.
Not only do kids not want to leave at the end of the day; many fight a return to their home schools after months at Alternative Ed.
The goal: give them attention, build their confidence, help them figure out how to function in class, ship them back to their schools.
Assistant Superintendent William Hackley, Alternative Ed's mentor from the start, finds himself in perpetual conflict.
How can he blame kids for not wanting to leave? "It's a comfort zone," he says.
Students often stay a year or two, even three.
"One part of me is saying I ought to put them out and let them sink or swim," Hackley says. "Maybe sometimes we keep them too long, but I'd rather err on the side of the child."
They could drop out. They could wind up like Bobby Ingram. They could go to prison. They could be killed.
Alternative Ed, at the least, postpones all that.
by CNB