[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 106 (Thursday, June 28, 2007)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1445-E1446]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


  WE MUST RECOVER OUR STUDENTS--ACKNOWLEDGING THE NEED TO SUPPORT NEW 
                        YORK CITY PUBLIC SCHOOLS

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. CHARLES B. RANGEL

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, June 28, 2007

  Mr. RANGEL. 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

[[Page E1446]]

     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.''

                          ____________________