A unique school in Manhattan has made it its mission to keep at-risk students in class. NY1 Education reporter Michael Meenan filed the following report.
At 17, with only a ninth grade education and less than five months in the United States, one young man from Tibet hoped to still become an engineer, but knew the odds were against him. Now he says he is getting ready for college.
"I think it's my luck to find this school," says Jamyang Tashi. "I was hanging around and I saw this school. I came in, and they said it's a perfect school for you."
The school is Manhattan Comprehensive Day and Night High School, where 800 young adults, two-thirds of them non-native English speakers get their diplomas, usually in two years. Sixty-percent go on to college. Classes are held in the evenings and even on Sundays. For an older immigrant child, or a drop-out lacking the academic credits for graduation, the school offers a non-traditional path. Like 19-year-old like Rap Kung, also of Tibet, who less than a year ago barely spoke English.
"My ambition is very high and right now I am on my way to that ambition, to be a physicist," he says.
The school proves that individualized attention, a flexible curriculum and a strong mission gets results for students who would otherwise be dropouts. Comprehensive Development Incorporated is the school's support center for counseling, tutoring and college placement.
"We have kids who are actually the victim's of torture, and we can get very specific counseling in the community for them," says Comprehensive Management's John Mancuso. "We have kids who have been homeless, so we can get services to wrap around them so they can get a place to live and not interrupt their education."
For Kaiser Domingo, the way he dressed at 16, some unhealthy habits and an admitted bad attitude got him kicked out of Seward Park High School. Hopelessness set in, but he thought about his parents' struggles as Filipino immigrants and decided to try Day and Night.
"My parents will die and know that I am something," he says. "I am somebody, not a bum on the street panhandling, asking for money. I am actually doing something for myself."
Nneka Washington was cutting all her classes at an Uptown high school and knew she needed to get out of the neighborhood if she wanted to graduate. She did and at 17 she is now in college thanks to this high school.
"If you put your all into it, you are going to graduate on time," she says. "It gives students who are not accepted into other schools because of their record a chance to graduate with a high school diploma."
Perhaps its most important mission is to serve as a model for how to meet a real demand for alternative paths to diplomas for those the system once wrote off.