Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 27, 1994 TAG: 9411280065
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RICHARD FOSTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BEDFORD LENGTH: Long
Dennis, 16, walks through the school door, pushing past the teachers waiting for him. He refuses to be patted down for weapons.
Instead, he seats himself at a table in the front of the room, his features hardened into a scowl, his sandy brown hair falling in front of his face.
"Dennis, come over here!" a teacher says. Dennis does, running right past the teacher, making a break for the door outside.
The school's coordinator, 6-foot-4-inch, 280-pound Gary Lowry, tackles him from behind and they land in the wet mud and grass outside. An aide joins Lowry, and they wrestle Dennis to the ground, sitting on top of him. The boy screams obscenities wildly, flailing on the cold ground, his arms and legs striking only air.
Standing on the school's front porch, his mother sadly watches the scene unfold.
It's a typical day at Bedford County's Bridge School, which - from its students to its teachers - is a very atypical place.
Located in a small, tan brick building across from Bedford County's Public Schools Administration Building on Bridge Street, the Bridge School is an alternative school for 26 behaviorally troubled children from fourth to 12th grades. For many students, the school and its coordinator and three-person full-time staff are the only things standing between them and the street.
In its second year of operation, the school received an award for educational excellence last year from Virginia Tech.
Before the Bedford County school system opened the Bridge School last year, the county placed its problem students at Rivermont, a privately owned school in Lynchburg. A state grant that evaporated this year allowed Rivermont to operate a regional alternative school for Lynchburg, Bedford and Campbell counties. Rivermont ended its program this fall.
In Western Virginia, Bedford is the only school system outside Roanoke and Lynchburg with an alternative school for students of such a wide range of ages. Most school systems in the region provide alternative education for high school and middle school students, but only Bedford provides it for elementary school students as well.
"Some of the older children are getting to the point where they can be good role models," said Brenda Cowlbeck, the Bridge School's administrator. "They'll talk in discussion about how they would do things differently if they had it to do over.
"They tell the younger children how bad things could be if they keep going the way they are."
Some of the older students are drug dealers. Others have been locked up for felonies such as car theft. Some have carried guns and weapons to school. Still others just can't cope in a regular classroom.
Mostly white males, the students come from varied backgrounds. Some have single parents and live in poverty. Others live in $300,000 homes. Some stay for as little as a few days; the "lifetimes" stay for a year or longer.
"They have the same problems at home," Lowry said. "Their parents won't listen or they have no control.
"A lot of these kids are college material, but they have no home life. Some of the kids don't get any meals until they come to school for lunch. Mom and Dad just don't care."
In a learning atmosphere unlike that of any other school in Bedford County, the Bridge School helps youngsters cope with their problems, with the goal of returning to a regular classroom environment.
School days at the Bridge School begin shortly before 9 a.m., when students arrive on a bus that brings them from their individual schools. Some have waited for the bus in the principal's office because they're banned from going inside their former classrooms.
Entering the Bridge School, the students line up single file, automatically extending their arms out to their sides as they are patted down for weapons. Their book bags and purses are opened and examined. All hats go on pegs near the door.
They then line up to order lunch, which is shipped in from Liberty High School. Most of the kids order pizza and chocolate milk. Some don't order anything. "They're saving their money for cigarettes," instructor DeFraunce Lewis says with a sigh. The students file by, one by one, most wearing expensive sneakers and baggy jeans.
They wear sports T-shirts and oversized baseball jackets favored by rap stars. Some have long hair; others have their hair dyed or partially shaved. A couple wear Grateful Dead necklaces and crystal jewelry. "Some of you owe me 20 minutes from yesterday," Lowry's voice booms as about 10 students walk to the back of the room, standing a few paces apart from each other in silence, looking angry. "Remember, if you talk, that's five more minutes for everybody." They stay pretty quiet.
Right now, all them are taught in one room, which is arranged somewhat like an old-fashioned schoolhouse. Lowry's desk is at the front; round tables are scattered in the middle of the room and computers line one wall. Two small restrooms are in the back of the room. Posters about drinking and driving and teen pregnancy share wall space with a newspaper article about teens in jail.
Next year, the school will expand into an adjoining building, giving students recreation space, lockers, and counseling rooms. There also will be areas to separate violent students.
As the students finish up their punishment time, they take their seats and work on classroom assignments sent to them by the teachers at their individual schools.
In the meantime, teachers call the parents of students who haven't shown up. They also call parents to inform them if their child has detention. Students earn a minimum of one point for each behavior violation. Five points means detention from the end of the school day at 2:25 p.m. until 6 p.m. It also means longer days for the teachers, most of whom work six-day weeks because the school operates from 9 a.m. to noon on Saturday for detention.
"No sir, you have to pick her up," Lowry says to one parent in a firm voice. "She doesn't have a ride. You agreed to this in your contract."
Students enrolled in the Bridge School are recommended for the program by the principals at their home schools. Parents sign a contract agreeing to terms such as drug abuse education and allowing instructors to physically restrain children if necessary. Parents agree to provide transportation if a student loses bus privileges. The students are not allowed to participate in organized school sports.
Less than 1 percent of parents have refused to sign the contract. Those parents and their children were taken to Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court, where a judge ordered the parents to enroll their children in the Bridge School.
The students make one field trip three times a year - to Bland Correctional Unit, where they speak with prisoners. The next one's scheduled for February.
Inmates "talk with kids and tell them exactly what it's about," Lowry said.
"Most of these kids will make it in regular school again because they don't want to come back. In regular school, you can switch classes, see girls, go to the bathroom when you want. Here you don't do anything until we say you can. I wouldn't want to go to school like that all the time."
The difference at the Bridge School begins with the teachers, none of whom has a traditional background in education. Part drill instructor, part social worker, the teachers do whatever it takes to get a positive message through to the students - through fear and intimidation or caring and understanding.
So far, only about 22 percent of Bridge School students have returned. One student last year earned a $500 college scholarship with the help of the staff.
Lowry exemplifies the alternative spirit of the school. He worked for 24 years as a corporate merchandising manager for a chain of drugstores. Away from work, he volunteered his time with youth organizations such as Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Lynchburg, counseling troubled children. He coached sports leagues and worked with youth groups at church.
While he was working two days a week as a volunteer tutor and mentor for children with behavioral problems at Bedford County Elementary School, Lowry was offered the chance to head the Bridge School.
"Gary and the other teachers are pretty good with the kids," said Bedford Police Officer Mike Linton, who visits the school occasionally on his beat. "It's a definitely needed program. It not only helps these kids, it takes the disruptions out of the classroom so the kids who want to learn can learn, too."
Lewis, a full-time instructor, is studying social work at Liberty University. Before working at the Bridge School, he worked with mentally handicapped children. "When I was in high school, this would have been the perfect place [for problem kids]. It would've saved 90 percent of them [from dropping out of school] because all they're looking for is a little attention."
Rosa Carson also worked with the mentally handicapped and volunteered her time working with city youth groups. Before becoming a Bridge School instructor, she worked as a cashier at a gas station.
And John McCallum was the director of a survey engineering firm in Virginia Beach before he decided to try teaching. He started off student teaching last year at Jefferson Forest Middle School, where he had a problem student who was sent to the Bridge School.
McCallum spent an afternoon at the alternative school and was hooked. He applied for a job and was accepted this fall. "Last year, few teachers wanted to come up here to work with these kids," he said. "Now they're applying in droves."
The school has seen a massive increase in job applications and requests to observe its daily operations because of its unorthodox methods of dealing with problem students.
"This is a hands-on program. I'm the first to admit that," Lowry said. "It's nothing but a power play, especially with the more violent kids."
He recalled when a student came to school last year after washing down a dose of PCP, an animal tranquilizer known on the street as angel dust, with a fifth of brandy.
"I could tell it. His pupils were small. He said, 'I've got something for you' and refused to be searched. He just sat down with his hand in his coat, pointed toward me."
Lowry waited awhile, then grabbed the boy from behind. "It took three of us to get him and we still couldn't hold him. He was strong as a bull. I said to him, 'Don't hit me because I'll treat you like a man.'"
In a fury, the drugged student bounced against the school's unbreakable plexiglass windows, trying to get out. "It took six Bedford cops to restrain him, that's how strung out he was," Lowry said.
"Most of these kids are not bad kids. They're not drug dealers. They're just used to saying, 'What are you gonna do about it?'"
Speaking about Dennis, the 16-year-old that he and another teacher had to wrestle to the ground, Lowry said, "You can't stay mad with Dennis. I'm not sure he knows what he's doing half the time. Most of the outbursts we have with kids occur early in the morning when their hormones are chemically unbalanced."
Though Dennis isn't one of them, three students at the school take Ritalin, a mood-stabilizing drug used to curb attention deficit disorder.
Dennis attends alcohol abuse counseling and already has been to Rivermont, the former alternative school in Lynchburg. The day before this outburst, he cursed a bus driver and tore up a seat in the bus. The Bridge School may be all that keeps him from going to a detention home.
"It's all we have and we're lucky we have it," his mother said, adding that Dennis' grades have gone up since he's been at the Bridge School. "When the outside world got ahold of him, Dennis grabbed it and we haven't been able to get him back yet."
Lowry takes pride in his school's open-door policy, noting the school's windows and unlocked door. He allows parents and school observers to watch the students at any time. His own foster son was enrolled in the program for two months.
The physical confrontations are unfortunate, he said, but "if I didn't confront Dennis, everyone in the class would come out the door."
"We take control as soon as they hit the door. Dennis did what he did to see what was going to happen, to see if he could get away with it."
After his tantrum, Lowry and the other teacher let Dennis get up. Dennis gets a timeout; he sits alone at a table to cool off while Lowry sits near him. Soon, he comes outside to talk with his mother, who had dropped him off. He is crying, his breath still coming in dry heaves, his face red. He rubs his eyes with his fist, his head bowed toward the fresh mud and grass stains on his jeans.
"Now you gonna stay here today or do we have to lock you up in the jail downtown?" Lowry asks Dennis. "Why are you acting like this? You're embarrassed, aren't you?"
Dennis nods.
Standing nearby, Dennis' mother says, "This school is very good. They do what they have to do and that's why we like them."
by CNB