Madam Speaker, I rise today to enter into the Record a two-part series published in the New York Daily News by Erin Einhorn and Carrie Melago entitled: Room 206: Then and Now. This series chronicles the challenges faced by twenty students…
Madam Speaker, I rise today to enter into the Record a two-part series published in the New York Daily News by Erin Einhorn and Carrie Melago entitled: Room 206: Then and Now. This series chronicles the challenges faced by twenty students who began together in gifted kindergarten class at Harlem's Public School 36 but have taken diverse paths in terms of academic and personal development. Many of these students are succeeding against the odds to earn high school diplomas, while others have become causalities of societal forces arising from circumstances in their homes and community which conspire to tear them down. Citing family support and self-motivation as building blocks for their perseverance, the students graduating from high school this year who were once in Room 206 represent what minorities in New York City can accomplish despite institutional inefficiencies and personal difficulties.
More than half of the African-American and Hispanic-American students who enter New York City public high schools do not graduate in four years. Some of the challenges faced by the students cited in the New York Daily News series included the lack of useful teaching and sufficient guidance counseling due to the overcrowding of schools, family tragedy, and peer pressure to join gangs. However, 16 of the 20 students interviewed will graduate this year on schedule from high school: 3 from public schools outside of the city, 2 from private city schools, and 11 from New York City public schools.
The series also illustrates the diverse paths two young men can take with similar family backgrounds but dissimilar backing in terms of academic and professional development. One student had the support of counselors, teachers, and a mentor, while the other student had none of the above and efforts to gain the attention of the under-staffed guidance office by his mother were fruitless. The first young man will graduate this year from high school and pursue a bachelor's degree in law or medicine, while the latter was pulled out of high school to protect his life from rival gang members and will attempt to complete a GED program for the third time this year.
Both young men aspired to earn high school diplomas, but the disparity of sponsors within the New York City public school system can be attributed to their contrasting positions. We must work to ensure that our students achieve academic success and do not become victims of circumstances that can divert their path of learning. I encourage my colleagues to support the enhancement of middle and high school curricula and human resources that can provide the greatest opportunity for minority students disproportionately affected by school inefficiencies.
Room 206: Then and Now
(Erin Einhorn and Carrie Melago)
The year is 1994, and the kids gazing out at the camera for
their annual class photo have just entered the New York City
public schools. As the girls smile broadly and some of the
boys try to look tough, they're captured at a time in their
lives when the future seems so far away. But in the 13 years
that followed, the 23 kids who had the good fortune to test
into the gifted kindergarten at Harlem's Public School 36
would see their class splintered by adversity and fate. One
of the girls would grieve the murders of both her parents.
One of the boys would be arrested three times and spend a
week on Rikers Island. One would get involved in a gang.
Another would attend a city high school so violent she'd see
four knifefights in four years.
Their very personal stories illuminate a sprawling public
school system where some children find ways to flourish but
many become lost. Nearly 60% of black and Latino New York
City public school students don't earn a diploma after four
years of high school. But somehow, most of the youngsters who
donned navy blue uniforms with little red ties to pose with
teacher Rhonda Harris would beat the odds.
``It's a very big struggle, very big, trying to give them a
good education, trying to have them stay out of trouble,''
said Denise Ortiz, a mother of six whose daughter Estrella
was in that class. The Daily News spent two months tracking
down the children of Room 206, finding 21 of the 23. Eleven
report they're graduating this month from New York City
public schools, two from city Catholic schools and three from
public schools in other cities.
Two are still enrolled and working toward diplomas, and
three have drifted away from the daily grind of education,
unsure if they'll find their way back. Kelvin Jones, who
dropped out last year, is one of the lost. ``Once you leave,
you're going to get too used to this outside life, sleeping
all day, doing what you're doing,'' he said. ``You ain't
ready to go back to school.''
The children of Room 206 could be from any public school.
The News chose them by chance, starting with a top Harlem
high school, Frederick Douglass Academy, and asking to meet
with top seniors. That led us to Kamal Ibrahim, a standout
who plans to major in physics at Carnegie Mellon
University. He gave us the name of Mrs. Harris, his
kindergarten teacher. She led us to her 1994 class.
We found Kamal's classmates by word of mouth, public
records and the Internet. Most agreed to tell their stories.
Three refused. They made different choices along the way, but
all of them started in the same place: a well-regarded school
carved into a rocky bluff at 123rd St. and Amsterdam Ave.,
across from the Grant public houses.
The year the students of Room 206 started kindergarten,
budget cuts meant students were crowded together in aging
classrooms. Schools in poor neighborhoods were staffed with
high numbers of uncertified teachers, and a lawsuit filed the
previous year alleged that the average guidance counselor had
to work with 700 kids. These youngsters were off to a good
start at PS 36, a K-2 school, but there were problems ahead.
Some of their families left town in search of better schools
and safer streets. Some scraped together pennies for Catholic
school tuition. Others used fake addresses or pulled strings
to navigate a public school system that's as much a tale of
inequality as the city itself.
In third grade, Jermaine Jackson enrolled at Harlem's PS
144, which was so chaotic the Board of Ed shut it down in
2001. In a crowded class there in 1997, he became
distracted--and lazy, he said. He fell behind and had to
repeat the third grade. ``'It's not really their fault
because I didn't try, either,'' he said.
Artavia Jarvis says she was hit by a teacher in the fourth
grade at Harlem's PS 125. Her parents promptly enrolled her
in parochial school, saying they'd rather remain in public
housing so they could afford her tuition. Artavia doesn't
think she would have graduated from public school. ``I would
have continued being bad,'' she said. Other kids fell off
track in middle school or high school, including Morgan Hill,
whose mother moved her to New Jersey in ninth grade. ``I miss
New York and that's where I want to go back to, but I think
this was the time that I should have gone away,'' she said.
But Room 206 also produced public school success stories
like Unique Covington, whose grades and writing skills got
her into a small, creative sixth through 12th grade school in
lower Manhattan called the Institute for Collaborative
Education.
Her middle school classes had 17 students, enabling her to
build close relationships with teachers. In high school,
instead of exams, she wrote up to 20-page research papers and
presented them to panels of teachers and students. Bound for
the University of Hartford in the fall, she credits her
success to great schools, an involved mother and herself.
And then there's Letricia Linton, who was 3 when she
witnessed her mother's murder and 10 when her father was shot
in the head by a mugger. She was raised by a powerhouse of a
grandmother who pushed her to succeed and to draw on her past
for strength. Tragedy ``made me want to do more with my life
because I see how short life is,'' she said.
Graduating Thursday from Frederick Douglass, Letricia knew
she'd be successful because she had the right ingredients.
``You have to have family support,'' she said. ``You have to
have a good relationship with teachers. You have to have
motivation within yourself. . . . And you have to have
hope.''
They were smart children who tested into a gifted
kindergarten at Harlem's Public School 36 in 1994, but Lance
Patterson and Ronnie Rodriguez would each fall in with the
wrong crowd. Lance would be arrested. Ronnie would join a
gang.
Their challenges were similar, but they've ended up in very
different places. One has a mother who will watch him don a
cap and gown this week. The other has a mom who blames
herself. ``I should have kept a closer eye on him,'' Sandra
Lugo said of her son, Ronnie. ``I should have been on him
maybe a little harder, been a little stricter.'' What
happened to the two boys on their travels through the city's
public schools tells an important story about the fates that
divide kids into the half who graduate on time and the half
who fall off track.
Lance and Ronnie are two of the 23 kids from PS 36 whom the
Daily News tracked down 13 years after they entered school to
see how they fared. Both boys are the sons of single mothers
who dropped out of high school, but vowed their sons would
succeed. Ronnie's mother lied about her address three times
to get him into good public schools. Lance's mother enrolled
him in the Boy Scouts and other activities to engage his
mind. But when Ronnie started getting into trouble, his
mother was the only one to notice. ``No teacher ever called
me to say he was failing or nothing like that,'' she said.
Lance, in contrast, was surrounded by supportive teachers,
an attentive guidance counselor and an inspiring mentor who
helped keep him on track. ``There was always someone in his
corner,'' his mother, Lorraine Patterson, said. ``A lot of
kids don't have that, but he was lucky to bump into people
who said, `I care. I think you can make it.' ''
Ronnie was a good student until middle school, when he
began to socialize more. His grades slipped and his only
option for high school was Louis D. Brandeis High, a massive
upper West Side school then known for
its gangs and its large number of dropouts. ``The classes
were jokes,'' Ronnie said. ``You'd go to class--it's
everybody playing around, yelling, screaming, doing whatever
they want, so if I'm not learning, I might as well just do
what everybody else is doing.'' Everybody else was cutting,
he said. A friend told him he'd be marked present if he
attended just the first three periods of every day, so that's
what he did. His mom arranged a meeting with a counselor to
try to set Ronnie straight, but the meeting was chaotic,
she said. ``I understand they're short-staffed but. . . it
wasn't a priority to have Ronnie motivated or to have him
do better.''
When he returned to school in September 2004, after being
held back in ninth grade, Ronnie buckled down. ``For that
month, I was doing everything I needed to do,'' he said. But
he had a poor academic foundation from middle school and
began failing tests. ``I'm thinking in my head: `Why am I
doing all this work if I'm not going to pass?' '' That's when
he gave up and joined a gang, he said, first a local school
gang, then the Latin Kings.
His mother tried to get him a transfer to another school
after he was chased one day by rival gang members with
knives, but when that didn't work, she pulled him out of
school. ``I didn't want my son to end up getting stabbed or
hurt or even killed,'' she said. Since then, he's tried two
GED programs, but neither has been a good fit. He plans to
try again next year so he can join the Army. ``It's sad,
because it's not what I want for him,'' his mom said. ``I
know college is not for everyone, but I thought he'd at least
get a diploma.'' Brandeis Principal Eloise Messineo did not
return calls seeking comment.
Lance, the class clown of his kindergarten, had strong
elementary-school grades that got him into the well-regarded
Frederick Douglass Academy in sixth grade. ``He was a little
pain in the neck,'' Principal Gregory Hodge said of Lance.
``I think I met with his mother 10 to 15 times, on the low
side.'' But Lance was bright, his teachers encouraged him and
he looked forward to coming to school. He came every day,
sometimes on Saturday, even after he got into trouble with
police, he said. Juvenile records aren't public, but Lance
says he was charged twice as a juvenile, once for stealing a
woman's purse and once for picking a fight with a stranger on
the street.
He was also arrested as an adult when he was 16. Those
records have been sealed, but he said he was charged with a
hate-crime assault that he wasn't involved in. The charges
against him were dropped, but not until he'd spent a week
locked up at Rikers Island, he said. It was one of the only
weeks of school he's missed. ``Actually, I think it was good
for me,'' Lance said. ``It clicked in my brain and made me
want to do better, like, `Oh, no, you can't do this. You've
got to do better for yourself if you don't want to be in and
out of jail. It's not fun.' ''
The juvenile court assigned him to a program called
Esperanza that paired him with a caring mentor three times a
week for six months. The mentor, Laurence Fernandez, was the
father figure Lance needed. Lance also had a guidance
counselor who stepped in and teachers who cheered him on. But
in the end, he did the hard work. He's bound for college in
the fall and hopes to become a lawyer or a doctor. ``I want
to do better than to just sit at home, working a regular
job,'' he said. ``I want to do better for myself. I know I
can do anything.''