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

DATE: SUNDAY, May 21, 1995                   TAG: 9505190049
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BETH MACY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Long

THE KID'S NOT IN SCHOOL

IT'S A chilly Wednesday morning, so the 17-year-old wears his baggy wool coat with the hood up, a faded bandana tied around his head. He's sitting in the parking lot of the T & H Christian Bookstore at 8:30 waiting on something or someone - he won't say exactly what.

He says he rides the bus daily to William Fleming High School, where he's supposed to be a junior, then leaves campus before entering the school doors. ``I just get high, get drunk and have fun all day,'' he says.

He returns to school daily for lunch, he says, to be with his friends, then leaves again.

``Very bad. Very, very bad,'' he says, pretend-scolding two fellow truants who walk up from the school. One girl wears a flannel shirt, the other a Guess sweatshirt; neither cares to divulge a name.

Both say they are 15, Fleming freshmen, and veteran skippers. They join the 17-year-old boy on the pavement, light cigarettes, then present a crash course in the art of skipping school:

``You gotta have a system. You can't just go out and skip,'' the 17-year-old says.

``Some kids leave their cars in the Hill's parking lot, check in at home room, then leave and get in their cars,'' says the girl in Guess.

Offers the girl in flannel: ``I leave, and as soon as I get to a phone, I call school and say I'm my mom and I'm not coming.''

She says a Salem policeman picked her up the week before when she skipped, then called her mom at work to pick her up. Grounded by her parents for the rest of the school year, she explains that she's skipping again so she can see her friends.

``If they wouldn't ground me, I wouldn't skip so much.''

Asked if she worries about failing school, she looked down at the pavement and said, ``Kinda.''

The two girls are looking for a ride to a motel on Melrose Avenue, where two friends they know - a boy and a girl - have spent the night. Just then ``Tee'' Paschal drives up in his red LeBaron to see the 17-year-old boy.

While his car idles quietly nearby, Paschal explains that he dropped out of school two years ago, when Fleming changed to a two-hour class block schedule. He's 18 now.

``I ain't gonna sit with no teachers for no two hours,'' he says. ``I mean, they expect kids to go in there, sit down and learn.''

Ever since, he's worked in a restaurant or two, and he's worked the streets. He beat up a kid who called him ``nigger,'' resulting in a two-year suspended sentence and a court order to take a class in anger control.

The court also ordered him to perform community-service work at Roanoke Area Ministries after police charged him with depriving his dog of food. He doesn't mind busing tables at RAM House, but says he didn't starve his dog.

``They skippin', they skippin', they skippin','' Tee says, pointing to three boys walking across the street. ``You stand here another hour, you might run into 20 kids.''

Asked if he regrets dropping out, Tee says, ``Kinda. But I can get my GED, then go into the military, then get a better job than I could if I went to college.''

``Tee, you gonna take us somewhere, please?'' the girl in the Guess shirt pleads. ``It don't matter where it's at.''

Tee and the 17-year-old whisper to each other, then walk to Tee's car, leaving the girls. The 17-year-old won't reveal his plans for the day, except to say, ``I gotta make some money first.''

As he climbs into Tee's car, he adds, ``I ain't gonna get caught; I believe in myself.''

``Don't ever say you ain't gonna get caught,'' Tee warns, almost philosophically.

``You know how many times people say they ain't gonna get caught?''

\ At Patrick Henry High School Toby Bobbitt greets a student who's a half-hour late for school: ``Good morning! We're glad you're here.''

She tells a mom who phones to see if her daughter came to school, ``Yes! Isn't that great news? Congratulations!''

Another mother phones to say her ninth-grade daughter is sick and won't be coming. The girl's bleeding heavily and might be having a miscarriage. ``I'd take her to the emergency room right away,'' Bobbitt advises.

When a freshman girl slumps into the counseling room to check in, Bobbitt flashes her a huge smile. ``I heard you did really good turning in your science assignments last week, like Miss Davis was practically doing cartwheels,'' Bobbitt enthuses.

``I got kicked outta class twice yesterday - for cussing my teacher out,'' the student says.

Bobbitt tells her, ``Well, today's a new day.''

One of seven Youth Experiencing Success (YES) counselors working district-wide in the sixth and ninth grades, Bobbitt is today's version of a truant officer. Every morning, she and counselor JoAnn Hayden try to track 45 PH freshmen who've been designated truancy risks.

Most of the students have already missed more than 20 days of school; many have failed several classes. If they can get them here, get them to make up missed work, maybe they can prevent the kids from ``X-ing out'' - teacher jargon for the F's given when students miss more than five classes, unexcused.

``Coming to this huge campus from middle school is a tremendous adjustment,'' Hayden says. ``Ninth and tenth grade is when most drop out if they're going to.''

``If you can get them to hang in there, see the value of school, usually by the 11th grade they've made it. They're working by then; they see who gets the promotions.

``But in the ninth grade, it's so far removed. They tell us all the time, `But I don't get any money for coming to school.'''

YES counselors visit homes and talk to parents. They sometimes cruise the city parks for kids skipping school. But their main strategy is a piece of paper - an attendance contract the students pick up each morning, then take to each class for their teachers to sign.

The punishment for violating the contract? None.

``Because then they wouldn't come,'' Hayden explains. ``The key here is we're always glad to see them - no matter if they're late, or they've missed the past three days. They need that positive connection, knowing that we care and want them to be successful.

``Sometimes I can't stop smiling because I smile so much! But it's important for them to see that positive face.''

Lamonte Burwell ambles in late to the YES office in his baggy pants and jacket, a ski cap on his head.

``We missed you yesterday, Lamonte,'' Hayden tells him. ``I heard you got into a situation over the weekend.''

``I got stabbed,'' Lamonte, 15, says. ``It was still hurtin' yesterday, so I stayed out.''

``I hope you get 'em back,'' another student tells him.

``That's not good advice to be giving Lamonte,'' Hayden says. ``We want Lamonte to be around here.''

\ In the tidy living room of her West End apartment, Lamonte's mother talks about the YES program and her son. ``Miss Hayden's been here. She thinks he's improving, and that makes him try harder,'' Melissa Kabia says. ``Lamonte used to hate school, and he still don't like it that much, but at least he's doing his work now.''

Lamonte was suspended once last year from Woodrow Wilson Middle School for wearing his jacket in class, Kabia says. At 13, he was put on probation for breaking into someone's house. ``He got in with the wrong friends,'' his mother explains.

The youngest of four kids, Lamonte hopes to follow the path of his sister, a William Fleming graduate who plays basketball at St. Paul's College in Lawrenceville. His two brothers both dropped out of high school, and Kabia worries Lamonte may follow their path instead.

Bouncing another son's 5-month-old son on her lap, Kabia points to her daughter's trophies and certificates displayed in the room. ``He's trying to be like her. He plays basketball in the Inner-City league. I think he's their star, too.''

Lamonte's uncle, a McDonald's manager, got him an after-school job. Another uncle takes him fishing on the afternoons when Lamonte doesn't work. ``We're trying to keep him busy,'' Kabia says.

She says she doesn't know the circumstances surrounding Lamonte's stabbing. ``Sometimes when I hear the ambulance down the street and I don't know where he's at... or I hear a gun going off, I think the worst.

``It's a little New York here. And that boy worries me. He's drawn to trouble like a magnet.''

\ Inside the T & H Christian Bookstore, gospel singer John Kee's CD competes with the din of car stereos thumping on Hershberg Road. The title song of the recording: ``Show Up.''

It's Wednesday afternoon.

Assistant manager Sonja Tucker worries about the two girls she saw in her parking lot this morning. ``Right after I came in, the principal, Killer Miller, came down here and caught them,'' Tucker says.

``He was talking to them, and then he came in and said if we see [truants] again to call him or the police.''

Tucker arrives at work at 9:30 every morning. If it's sunny outside, she counts on spotting skippers in the parking lot or behind the store. It bothers her that they litter on the property, she says, but mostly she feels sorry for them.

``I feel for 'em because it's on them; it's on their futures. They're the ones who're gonna be struggling to find jobs.''

Asked to describe Miller's reaction to the skippers, Tucker said, ``He was just upset. I mean, he was mad.''

\ Outside the Coulter Hall office, principal Miller is mad indeed. He's got three other students waiting to see him - for skipping.

And news that a reporter and photographer interviewed the morning skippers puts him on the defensive.

``Those kids you talked to, a couple of 'em don't even go to our school,'' he says. ``They're county kids. I brought two of them back and sent one [in the flannel shirt] straight to class.

``The other one [in the Guess shirt], she told us she goes to alternative ed, but I called over there and that child doesn't even go there.

``Happens all the time. We get calls from Hardee's, Stop-In or T & H, and we find out three-fourths of the time, they aren't even our kids.''

Miller calls the three skippers into his office and slams the door. He gives them a verbal spanking so loud it shakes the glass on his window.

Sherwood Kasey, the visiting teacher who helped Miller haul the two girls back this morning, waits outside his office. The girl in the flannel shirt will receive in-school suspension, he says.

\ When Kasey started out as a visiting teacher 18 years ago, his main thrust was dealing with truants - getting them out of bed, meeting with parents, cruising the streets for skippers. But as juvenile crime worsened, the schools' purview broadened, along with his duties.

Where high school secretaries used to phone the home of every student who didn't come to school, now there are so many absences that a recorded-message machine handles the calls. (Parents press a touch-tone number if they're already aware of the absence - if they're home, if they have a phone.)

Where Kasey used to haul truants out of bed and into school, ``Now I don't do that anymore. That's not a good omen.

``You don't know what you're gonna run into,'' the former phys-ed teacher says. ``You don't know what they possess.''

Schools need to try harder to identify at-risk elementary students, Kasey believes, working with social services to intervene with family counseling. ``A lotta these kids who skip, they have to go back to the home, but there's no parental guidance.

``And even if we take every truant to court, they can't keep filling up

Sanctuary or Coyner Springs. Our hands are tied.'' Santuary is the city's home for kids in crisis; Coyner Springs is the juvenile detention center.

Ruffner Middle School sponsors in-school dances for kids with perfect attendance, he notes. The Noel C. Taylor Learning Academy, formerly called alternative education, gives out candy bars to kids who don't skip.

Schools need to offer more rewards for attendance, he says. They need more attendance personnel to call and visit homes, and more counselors, but funding is limited. The YES program, for instance, was nearly eliminated this fall as part of Gov. George Allen's proposed budget cuts.

``You have to try meaningful things with each one of them - sometimes change their schedules, be a little flexible. As it is now, I just pick the ones I can reach the quickest.''

Before he and Miller chased down the two girls skipping, Kasey says he picked up yet another morning skipper near the Christian book store and took him home.

``I'm getting too old for this,'' he says. ``One of these days I'm gonna run up on something I don't wanna run up on.''

\ It's 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, when William Fleming junior Chris Battin is scheduled to be in pre-calculus class. Instead he's at the Stop-In Shell station on Hershberger Road with three of his friends, drinking orange juice and showing off his myriad tattoos.

``I've already failed the class, so what's the use?'' Chris says. ``I'm not as hard-core about skipping as I used to be, but I've got a real killer headache right now.''

His friend Matt Wright, a freshman who says he's failing all his classes, says he attended school just one period today: lunch.

``I've already failed the year, so it'd be embarrassing to go back now,'' Matt says. ``When I do go, they think I'm a new student.''

The four guys - two of whom asked not to be quoted - have spent the afternoon under the trees behind the field near the school, smoking cigarettes and listening to a portable CD player.

Chris says his parents sent him to Sanctuary for skipping. ``I got the 2 1/2 week vacation,'' he says. The other guys laugh.

He's passing three of his five classes, which is an improvement over last semester, he says. ``Your parents can't stop you from skipping. I mean, you have to pay for your own consequences.''

Matt's consequences will be to repeat the ninth grade next year - if he shows up. ``I plan not to skip next year,'' he says, looking down at the shiny tile floor.

``Skipping's addictive. But after you skip so much, it gets to be kinda boring.''

The four guys toss their juice bottles into the trash then walk outside, where a fleet of buses passes by, heading toward William Fleming High School.

The final school bell of the day is ringing less than a block away, but the four boys aren't there to hear it. They disappear behind the store, walking toward the trees.

T'S A chilly Wednesday morning, so the 17-year-old wears his baggy wool coat with the hood up, a faded bandana tied around his head. He's sitting in the parking lot of the T & H Christian Bookstore at 8:30 waiting on something or someone - he won't say exactly what.

He returns to school daily for lunch, he says, to be with his friends, then leaves again.

``Very bad. Very, very bad,'' he says, pretend-scolding two fellow truants who walk up from the school. One girl wears a flannel shirt, the other a Guess sweatshirt; neither cares to divulge a name.

Both say they are 15, Fleming freshmen, and veteran skippers. They join the 17-year-old boy on the pavement, light cigarettes, then present a crash course in the art of skipping school:

``You gotta have a system. You can't just go out and skip,'' the 17-year-old says. ``Some kids leave their cars in the Hill's parking lot, check in at home room, then leave and get in their cars,'' says the girl in Guess.