Youth advocates support at-risk students with rides, jobs and a sympathetic ear.
Syracuse, NY -- One day when seventh-grader Edgardo Pizarro was out in the hall, skipping class, he saw the man who ran a new program for kids who need help in school.
“I was failing all my classes. I didn’t have nothing, really, going for myself. And I went up to him personally and I asked him, ‘What do I have to do to join the program?’” said Pizarro, who went to Blodgett Middle School in Syracuse.
Wayne O’Connor accepted him into the first year of Syracuse Choice, an intensive anti-dropout, anti-violence effort. The program, which started in 2003-04 with middle school students, provides “youth advocates” and after-hours support for Syracuse students at great risk of failing.
Pizarro, now 18, will graduate from Fowler High School Saturday. He says Syracuse Choice — and the program that absorbed it, Hillside Work Scholarship Connection — got him to graduate. He also credits O’Connor.
Edgardo Pizarro, 18 (right), goes over his English essay with Sakima Grimes, a teacher's assistant at Henninger High School in Syracuse. Pizaro, who was once failing all his classes in seventh grade, graduates Saturday from Fowler High School.Pizarro had a child when he was 16, and at times he wanted to quit school to work more hours and earn more money to support her. Pizarro said O’Connor lectured him and asked what kind of father he would be without a high school education. Pizarro stuck it out.
“I’ll be the first one to graduate out of my family,” he said.
This month, the original seventh-graders will graduate. There are eight of them still in the program, Pizarro included, plus another student who started in ninth grade. All told, 13 of the original kids are on track to graduate or have graduated.
The program provides students with “youth advocates” who monitor their grades, behavior and attendance and who are available outside of school hours. Students get tutors if they need them, rides to appointments, a paying job in high school and whatever help they need to stay on track. Their part is to keep up their grades, attend class and stay out of trouble.
Students are eligible for the program if they have at least two of these problems: poor attendance, age that is old for their grade, failure in core subjects, low test scores or multiple suspensions from school. They also need to be in a South or West side middle school or in any Syracuse high school.
Almost all of the students come from low-income families and most are from single-parent families, O’Connor said. Some parents work long hours and can’t always provide the support they’d like to and some have their own issues, said O’Connor, who is reluctant to sound critical of parents.
“We break down the barriers because our motto is ‘no excuses.’ There’s not excuses, it’s just reality,” O’Connor said.
Here’s the reality: Just before graduation he and his staff were pushing a senior on the verge of graduating — or not. He’d passed all his Regents exams but still had work to complete. He’s been in foster care almost his whole life. One day he is focused and on task, the next day he is totally off, O’Connor said.
He has seen many students who sabotage their own success even when success is inches away.
“One of the most important things that our advocates do is to keep that sense of the future in front of them because they so easily succumb to the present,” O’Connor said.
Jasmine Drake, 17, enters the June 8 commencement ceremony of the Hillside Work Scholarship program at Syracuse University's Hendricks Chapel. Drake believes she would not have completed middle school without Syracuse Choice and the Hillside program that succeeded it. She is a Henninger High School graduate and plans to attend Onondaga Community College. Henninger senior Jasmine Drake, 17, is one of the original students who made it to graduation this week. In seventh grade her own anger kept getting her in trouble at Huntington School, so she joined O’Connor’s program. Drake doesn’t think she would have made it out of middle school without it. She said she has little support at home and in essence has been on her own since age 14.
“It took me awhile to get motivated even though I was in the program. But then I would talk to people,” she said. “The Choice program it helped me a lot, and then when we moved to the Hillside program, it helped me even more because there was more people I could talk to.”
Her youth advocate, James Price, and O’Connor were always there, she said. When she had personal problems going into senior year and could not attend school, she came close to dropping out until they arranged instruction at home.
“When I had problems, no matter what, I could go to them and I would talk to them and I would feel so much better. Like days I felt like crying or doing some crazy stuff, I could just call Mr. O’Connor or call Mr. Price and they like talk to me and everything would be good,” said Drake, who plans to attend Onondaga Community College.
Carvin Butts was in seventh grade at Levy when he got called down to the office and introduced to O’Connor, who told him he had an opportunity to change his life. In return Butts had to be in school at all times, to focus on his work and meet O’Connor half way. Butts said he knew he could trust O’Connor, whom he called a serious man.
“He helped me out a lot. And he let me know, basically, that I shouldn’t give up and I can do whatever I want to do once I put my mind to it. And I got through and I’m about to graduate,” Butts said.
He now wants to study archaeology in college.
O’Connor was an administrator who worked for the Syracuse district for 33 years when former Superintendent Stephen C. Jones picked him to run the new Choice program. The initial money — $230,000 — came from a high-profile campaign organized by the business community during a rash of youth violence.
Hillside Family of Agencies, a Rochester-based nonprofit, took over the program in 2007, changing the name to Hillside Work Scholarship Connection. O’Connor became executive director in Syracuse.
Marcus Odom, 17 (left), talks with Wayne O'Connor, executive director of Hillside Work Scholarship Connection. Odom is a former participant in the Syracuse Choice Program and was later invited to join Hillside. The Work Scholarship program is finishing its third year in Syracuse, not long enough for students who started out in the program in seventh grade to have graduated, so graduation rates are not available. But last year 89 percent of the students passed to the next grade, O’Connor said.
The program is funded by the school district, other government money and donations, including $2 million last year from the Wegman Family Charitable Foundation. The program costs $3,100 a year per student, according to Hillside.
O’Connor said Hillside provides more resources than Choice’s could, including jobs for students, many of them at Wegmans. The program now can reach far more than the 80 or 90 students Choice’s could serve, O’Connor said.
This year, Hillside says it works with 670 students in all five Syracuse high schools and seven middle schools. This year there are 27 seniors in the program and they are all expected to graduate.
Next year the plan is to increase participation to 950 students, if the money is available, O’Connor said.
The plan was to expand the program to North Side middle schools next year and the East Side schools the year after that, but next year’s North Side move is on hold until more money can be found, O’Connor said.
Syracuse Superintendent Daniel Lowengard says the only problem with the program is that more students aren’t in it. It is effective because it gives students support outside the school day, individual attention and jobs that are tied to their schoolwork, Lowengard said.
“Our goal is to have 200 Hillside graduates every single year,” Lowengard said.
Every year O’Connor speaks with the program’s graduates a few minutes before they walk the stage, but he doesn’t always make it through the entire commencement exercise.
“This year’s different. This year I go to all four graduations, the entire ceremony, because I’ve got my kids I’ve known for six years walking the stage so I want to be there,” he said.
Hillside Work Scholarship Connection classmates from the four Syracuse high schools gather for their commencement ceremony June 8 in Hendricks Chapel at Syracuse University. How it works
Youth advocates are the heart of the program, organizers said. Each of the 23 advocates handles 30 students. Among the things they do:
• Check every morning to see the students are in school. If not, they call them. If they can’t reach them, they may drive to the student’s house.
• They stay after school to work with students.
• They’re in the classrooms and at school working with teachers, students.
• If there are problems at home, they figure out what help the kids need.
• They know the students’ teachers, families, principals and all of them have their cell phone number.
• They talk to a student one-on-one to defuse problems in classes.
--Contact Maureen Nolan 470-2185 or mnolan@syracuse.com