“Gateway To College” Staying Open

New Haven will continue offering a career-focused alternative for high schoolers who’ve fallen behind in their studies.

The Board of Education’s Finance & Operations Committee added its sign-off at a Monday meeting at the district’s Meadow Street headquarters to renew the Gateway to College program for a second year.

In an effort to increase the high school graduation rate by offering more age-appropriate instruction, the program allows 50 over-age students — who might already be raising kids or providing for their family — to finish up their diploma requirements and obtain a job certification at Gateway Community College.

The contract for $550,000 (or $11,000 per student, which administrators said costs less than the usual per-pupil allocation) still needs to be approved by the full board at its meeting next week. It is paid entirely through two state grants, the Alliance and Priority Schools programs.

During the standard three-semester program, students between 16 and 20 years old spend their first semester catching up on credits, then have a year to enroll in advanced courses taught by Gateway’s faculty that will also count as college credit.

“We are talking about students who are on the verge of dropping out of high school,” said Dolores Garcia-Blocker, the district’s outgoing director of college and career readiness. ​“This gets them back on track with a high school diploma.”

While they gain the freedoms and the responsibilities of a more adult schedule, including the allowance to take classes on nights and weekends, the students are still heavily supported through the transition, with tutors and counselors on hand.

Gateway also provides free meals in the cafeteria, all textbooks and rental laptops.

“I think the ones who most appreciate being in the college environment are the 17, 18, and 19 year olds, who don’t want the high-school rules and bell schedule,” Garcia-Blocker said. ​“They’re now in a college environment with other young adults who look like them. They’re walking about, and people don’t know they’re high school students.”

Earlier this year, the program’s directors said they had discussed adding another 25 students, but before the contract came up for renewal, they decided to spend another year focusing on the quality in the program’s initial roll-out before expanding.

One year in, the program’s directors now say they have a better idea of which students are right for the program, after seeing two of every five students enrolled leave early.

In 2018 – 19, 68 students signed up for the program. Already, 15 of them graduated from the program early, and 10 of them continued with their college studies.

Next year, the program’s directors want to see the matriculation rate increase to 80 percent. They say they plan to reach that goal by making college brochures readily available for students, organizing tours of local schools like Southern Connecticut State University and University of New Haven, holding info sessions on admissions and financial aid, and creating internship opportunities.

Meanwhile, 28 of them dropped out of school, because they quit altogether, returned to their high school or enrolled in Adult Education.

Next year, the program’s directors want to see the persistence rate increase to 75 percent. They say they plan to reach that goal by bringing in motivational speakers to talk about strength and hope, to develop individualized plans for struggling students, to involve more community organizations as volunteers, to engage more with parents about student’s academic and behavioral progress, to provide more social-emotional support through the nonprofit Continuum of Care, and to link up with on-campus student activities.

Within the same period, grades have started to slowly tick upward. In the spring semester, the average GPA rose from worse than a C‑, at 1.60, to close to a C+, at 2.17, for high-school classes and a C, at 2.06, for college classes.

The program’s directors said that at the end of this year, after students have had a chance to complete the full three-semester program, they’ll have a fuller sense of what’s working.

At the beginning, the program was thrown together in just a matter of weeks. It came together a semester early, as Superintendent Carol Birks sought new programming after the school board voted to consolidate the district’s three alternative high schools to save money.

Garcia-Blocker said that led to a number of challenges with recruiting students, hiring staff and dealing with logistics. But as the program moves ahead, Garcia-Blocker said, she’s learning whom the program works best for.

“The ideal student’s average age is 17 years old, and they ideally are more than halfway through their high-school credits. Those students can actually see a three-semester graduation,” she said. ​“But if a student has less than 10 credits, they’re not going to finish in three semesters. I don’t know if that’s a frustration or an incentive.”

The board members on the finance committee said that the half-million dollar contract looked like a big expenditure, but they said the investment would be worth it.

“It’s a small investment,” said Ed Joyner, one of the two elected board members. ​“We really should be doing more for those kids. We should take them on field trips to see the high side of life, they should be mentored by the best people we could find, and there ought to be some type of work-study to earn a little money in school as well. Because if you look at how much we spend to incarcerate or hospitalize someone, it shows we should be spending our money here.”

Darnell Goldson, the board’s president and the other elected member, said that he was ready to give even more to the program.

“I think we’re actually underfunding these students here,” he said.