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

DATE: SUNDAY, June 13, 1993                   TAG: 9306140361
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SCHOOL'S FOUNDER `MAD THAT MORE PEOPLE AREN'T MAD'

He digs into school records and pulls out pictures of them as innocent little children. "Look at you!" he'll say.

He gets their favorite elementary teacher on the phone. "I got so-and-so in here and he's really acting the fool," he'll say, and the kid and the teacher will talk.

He goes to homes and hauls sleepy-headed kids out of bed.

Not long ago, a mother complained that she couldn't wake her children, all students at the Alternative Education Center that Lewis started seven years ago.

He went to the house and, with the mother and a big cup of ice water at the ready, he woke the kids in time for school.

Lewis was a home/school counselor at William Fleming High School in 1986 when he was called to the old Jefferson High School gym. Total Action Against Poverty, Roanoke's anti-poverty agency, ran an alternative education program there for kids in trouble at their home schools.

A girl was being kicked out. She had been handcuffed and was being hauled off by police.

"The girl had an IQ of 135, but was a real hellion," Lewis recalled.

She inspired Lewis to lobby the school system to reclaim such kids rather than dump them on TAP.

In 1986, William Hackley, assistant city superintendent, and Superintendent Frank Tota set up the Alternative Ed Center, first at the Orange Avenue YMCA and now in a wing of Addison Aerospace Magnet Middle School. Lewis became director.

Lewis has been a teacher for 28 years. He and his wife, Harriet Lewis, director of Roanoke's Northwest Child Development Center, operate Apple Ridge Farm, a Floyd County summer camp that teaches wilderness survival and academics to poor youngsters.

When Peter Lewis isn't helping raise their two sons, he's trying to save Roanoke's teen-agers - especially its young black men.

He's dead serious about it.

Of the 17 Roanoke teen-agers killed or charged with killing in the city since 1990, at least nine had been at the center.

Lewis doesn't understand why people in Roanoke aren't more upset.

"I'm mad that more people aren't mad. I'm mad that people aren't more outraged about crack and guns and the inappropriate language and all that kind of stuff."

He says Alternative Ed is struggling against great odds to make up for enormous losses in community life.

"The three institutions that used to mean so much, particularly in the African American community, were home, church and school. Right now, each of those institutions has a lessening influence, and they aren't what they used to be."

Schools are the only institution left with guaranteed contact with all children.

"We get kids who've been out of control for a number of years and we're asked to make a difference."

Lewis is a liberal thinker in some respects, but he's a law-and-order man when it comes to kids' need for structure and discipline.

Everywhere he goes, he talks about those three key institutions - home, church, school - and how children need help when they're little.

By March every year, he was dragging. His blood pressure was up.

This year, he stepped back and became a visiting teacher - part truant officer, part counselor, part liaison with courts and social services. He's not sure what he'll do next year.

Lewis is on leave as director this year, but he still goes to center almost daily. George Franklin, Lewis's friend and longtime partner at Alternative Ed, is holding down the job of director.

Lewis is still hooked on what a dedicated teacher can do for a kid who needs a hand.

"Some kids are going to make it despite what the school does, but the kids over here are going to make it because of what we do."