On Road Trip, City Seeks Alt-School Models

City officials returned from a New York City field trip with ideas for revamping New Haven’s alternative schools.

They picked the brains of principals, students and teachers from several New York City alternative or ​“transfer” schools, taking notes on how to make New Haven’s alternative schools more appealing and fulfilling educational options.

Alternative schools cater to students who generally have struggled to make it through high school, because of behavioral problems, special education needs or past trauma.

Reworking those schools is one of the Harp administration’s priorities in the larger plan of keeping kids in trouble in school, instead of allowing them to be pushed into the streets. The initiative builds on Youth Stat, a series of regular meetings among cops, city leaders, and community leaders strategizing to reach kids before they get involved in violence.

The trip took place Tuesday. The mayor and schools superintendent joined administrators and parents for the first-hand look.

Debriefing on the way home, district and school leaders agreed on the need to ​“rebrand” alternative schools so students consider them useful options instead of forms of punishment. They considered establishing pilot collaborations between individual schools and community-based organizations, which would provide students, and the district, with added resources and support.

North Queens

In New York City, alternative schools are called ​“transfer schools.” About 50 of the city’s transfer schools are run by strong partnerships between principals and community-based organizations, brokered by New Visions for Public Schools.

Principal Winston McCarthy partners with director Lainey Collins — from the human services organization SCO Family of Services—to run 8‑year-old North Queens Community High School. ​“The idea of partnership is integral to what we do here,” McCarthy said. ​“No one goes off and makes a decision without a conversation about, ​‘What’s the impact of this on our community?’”

Teachers and advocate counselors tackle academics and emotional health, ensuring kids stay in school. Fourteen teachers and eight advocate counselors support about 200 students, most of whom are above the age of 16 with fewer than 12 out of 44 required credits to graduate.

Superintendent Garth Harries said although New Haven Public Schools have ​“a lot of organizations that are our partners,” no one organization gets close enough to co-direct a school from within the building. ​“It creates a different kind of partnership,” he said.

“And a different kind of accountability as well,” said Larry Conaway (at left in photo), principal of Wooster Square-based alternative school New Light High. The closest thing New Light has to a community-based partner is Youth Stat, he said; otherwise, the school has little direct support from the community.

Harries also said he liked the fact that North Queens Community High has rolling admissions and rolling graduation while new students can enter the school only during a few designated time periods, limiting the disruption for existing students. New Haven principals have reported the negative effects high rates of transience have on their schools; the influx of students at any point during the year forces teachers to focus on discipline instead of academics.

Asia Carpenter (at right in photo) took several New Haven visitors on a walk through the school to visit classrooms.

Carpenter, who is 18 and graduating in March 2016, said she was ​“slacking” off in her previous high school. Her third year, she had seven credits. She was recommended to North Queens Community High. Now, a couple of years later, she has 22 credits. ​“I understand the purpose of this school,” she said. ​“I’m not going to come here and do the same thing.”

At the same time, students ​“having a bad time outside of school will still do badly. That’s what counselors are for,” Carpenter said. At her old school, she was ​“just a number,” but here, ​“you can just grab your counselor.”

“Do you still have kids come to you who are still in the fight?” JoAnne Wilcox, a parent with a child in a New Haven alternative school, asked the principal. She asked whether any students resist the help alternative and transfer schools can offer them.

McCarthy said school administrators do ​“intake” in the fall and the summer, interviewing students who are interested in attending the school. To some extent, the process is self-selecting since students understand the purpose of North Queens Community High before attending, he said.

South Brooklyn

The New Haven contingent next toured North Queens’ sister South Brooklyn Community High School, a partnership between the Department of Education and family service agency Good Shepherd Services. Advocate counselor Mary Arias (at right in photo) said the intake system is similar to their sister school; counselors interview students before they matriculate to find out why they left their previous schools.

“If you’re stressed about a pregnancy, a job, a boyfriend … we need to talk about it,” she said. ​“Students, when they’re first coming here, are not going to fall through the cracks.” Counselors meet with students and their parents multiple times throughout the year.

In New Haven, the Youth Stat program connects students having problems with internships or jobs either to provide them with a source of income or to encourage interest in a specific career. At New Light High School’s Youth Stat meetings every other Thursday, representatives from community organizations across the city sit with district and school representatives to figure out the best internship and job placement options for students who want them. Many, not all, are paid opportunities.

At South Brooklyn Community High School, the Department of Education gives the community-based organization money to offer internships to students to ​“re-engage them,” said internship coordinator Dave Arons (pictured above left). Students interested in internship opportunities have to go through an interview process, so administrators can determine their interests, and then two-week trial runs, to ensure good fits.

If students miss school, they don’t get paid for that workday, whether or not they actually attend work, Arias said. ​“The adult thing is you have to follow through,” she said. ​“School comes first.”

In a later debriefing session, New Haven administrators discussed making the internship process more centralized among Youth Stat schools and more oriented toward students’ career goals.

If internship placement is not centralized, ​“multiple schools will be going to the same people and tiring them out,” said Lola Garcia-Blocker, who heads the district’s Career and College Pathways. And they have to make sure kids are invested in learning and working hard at the internship, to avoid ruining relationships with business or organizations, she said.

South Brooklyn Community High takes in truant students ages 16 and above with fewer than 11 out of 44 credits. Many of those students go on to the city college system or to local community colleges after they graduate. School administrators offer students who are at risk of failing a ​“recovery period,” a specific, finite time during which they can make up work at the start of each trimester, Arias said.

Malcolm Welfare, the New Haven Public Schools’ leadership coordinator, said he wants to implement a period like that into New Haven’s alternative schools, so students don’t get frustrated and drop out of school. But he said students should not have to make up work while simultaneously trying to do well in new classes. Ideally the recovery period would stand alone.

New Visions

At New Visions headquarters, New York transfer school principals and community partners fielded questions from the New Haven team. District leaders wanted to know: How do the partnerships actually work?

First of all, the partnering organization has to prioritize education as its main mission, said Lucinda Mendez, principal of Bronx Haven High School. Both sides have to be willing to share leadership, she said. ​“Principals get very territorial and say, ​‘This is my school,’ but you can’t work like that.”

McCarthy and Collins of North Queens Community High said their eight-year partnership is founded on mutual respect. They came to the school from different backgrounds within education and eventually found themselves taking on each other’s vocabulary.

Hiring choices involve the entire school community, New York principals said. At Brooklyn Frontiers High School, a student committee screens candidates for teaching positions, said principal Alona Cohen. Candidates who don’t get past the student panel, have ​“no chance” at getting hired, she said.

New Haven district leaders said they wanted to implement more bodies for student engagement with structural school decisions, including hiring. Students should feel ownership of and pride in their alternative schools, a feeling more evident in New York’s transfer schools than New Haven’s alternative schools.

Students at the transfer schools want to be in school, even if they are consistently absent, Mendez (pictured above right) said. Transfer schools screen for students who are ready to work hard and change past behavior. ​“Real gangsters do not want to be in school,” she said.

Schools exist to serve students, she said. Often, ​“we say come and every message we send is, ​‘We don’t want you here,’” she said. ​“Their stories are stories of rejection. If you’re going to replicate that rejection, don’t bother.”

Debrief

As they headed back to their much smaller city, the New Haven team discussed ways to implement certain initiatives into their alternative schools.

Conaway offered up New Light as a ​“guinea pig” for an attempt at a deep partnership between a school and a community-based organization. He tagged Maysa Akbar, a psychologist at Integrated Wellness, as a potential directing partner.

The district should ​“rebrand” alternative schools so that students don’t consider them ​“something horrible” or a form of punishment, said Billy Johnson, who is now teaching restorative practices in district schools.

“Our kids come kicking not wanting to come to our schools. Those kids want to be there,” Conaway said.

Students at alternative schools should be trying to convince their siblings and friends to attend their schools. That does not happen now in New Haven, said Jenifer Blemings, a teacher at New Horizons Academy.

Harries expressed concern that an ​“intake process” identical to the New York system would end up ​“screening out” students who would have nowhere to go.

The process of re-branding involves changing the way the transition to an alternative school is framed. Students should feel they are seeking spots at a school that is a better for fit them, not being pushed out from a school that doesn’t want them, said Gemma Joseph-Lumpkin, the district’s executive manager of district strategy and coordination.

Ideally, the district would then be able to track students who are overage and undercredited in other schools and recommend they consider alternative schools, supporting them better in a better-fit school, Akbar said. Students they met at the transfer schools were ​“very goal-oriented,” and knew exactly when they were graduating and what coursework they needed to complete to get there, she said.

“The level of instruction [in the NYC schools] is above where it is in our classrooms” in New Haven alternative schools, Harries said.

Mayor Toni Harp agreed.

“Every class had a Smartboard and was engaged in discussion with the teacher,” Harp said. Teachers filled out detailed grading rubrics for each major assignment, to keep students abreast of the skills they had learned and those they were lacking, Harp noted.

Harries said the district plans to invest money in some of the initiatives proposed, such as expanding the size of alternative schools, centralizing internship programs and trying a partnership model.