Nakia, a 15-year-old high school sophomore, sits quietly talking about her dream
that someday she will have a career as a cosmetologist. It’s a dream, she says
she’s had for a long time, but only now does it appear that there’s even a glimmer
that it can become reality.
Not lot long ago, Nakia’s dreams always crumbled into the expectation, the realization,
that if she continued on her path her future would be in prison.
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At 15, Nakia is the mother of an infant daughter. Already she has spent time
at the Training School for violating probation. And she’s seen what five years
at the Training School have done to her sister.
“I used to fight a lot,” she says. “I’d get in trouble. But I was pregnant.
Things had to change.”
In front of her is a paper that details the progress she’s made since coming
to the Valley Community School, an alternative school in Cranston run by Gateway
Healthcare. It is one of four that Gateway runs for kids, from six to 21, who
have so exasperated the public school system that they have been thrown out
for behavioral or other problems. Kids looking for one more chance. Gateway
has targeted the schools as it begins its annual Light of Hope Campaign.
“I’m still working on changing,” says Nakia. “It takes a while. I don’t want
to spend the rest of my life in and out of jail.”
She’s no longer at home, but in a facility for unwed mothers, where she is able
to raise her child, hopeful of one day having her own career and her own home.
Nakia’s story, said Valley’s Superintendent James L. DePasquale, is not unusual.
“These students have been diagnosed as having behavioral and conduct disorders,”
he said. “They can’t function in public school. The majority come from single
parent homes. They have low esteem.”
They’ve been developing their anger since they were two or three years old and
then most often wind their way through a public school system that may diagnose
the problem early, but spends years seeking solutions, only to give up, usually
when the youngster is in junior high school, their behavioral patterns well
established, their anger deeper.
Valley School is their last stop, their last hope. “There’s a lot of emotion,”
said DePasquale. “They have not been nurtured. They’re not going home to milk
and cookies.”
DePasquale walks through the lunch room, past classrooms and behavioral areas,
saying how he now measures success by different terms. Sometimes, he says, it
is as simple as a youngster sitting quietly for a time. Sometimes it is in larger
terms, like seeing nine of 14 seniors graduate last year and two go on the Community
College of Rhode Island and another to hairdressers’ school.
The nine of 14 is a pretty significant number, says DePasquale, noting that
these same types of kids in the public schools experience a 60 percent drop-out
rate.
A former phys ed. teacher, DePasquale came to the Valley system four years ago.
Like the teachers on staff, ranging from the recent college graduate to the
once-retired teacher who became un-retired to work with these troubled youngsters,
he has a commitment to the 200 students at the Valley Schools.
“Our salaries are not as good as those at public schools,” DePasquale says.
“Our teachers here feel more that they are part of something good. They are
very committed to Valley School. On a personal note they feel they are making
a difference.”
“A lot of people would never think that I would change,” says Nakia. “When I
was in the other school I was just going to home room and leaving, hanging out
with my friends and getting in trouble.”
But having her daughter changed her outlook, and going to Valley School has
given her hope, determination and a chance at achieving her goal of becoming
a cosmetologist.
“I know that I’m going to finish school,” she says. “I may have my ups and downs;
that happens to everybody. I see myself going on to cosmetology school.”
A dream that now is also a possibility.
For Ed, Valley School was his chance to live
For Ed Lewis life didn’t hold out very much hope. He spent most of his childhood
in a series of group homes, separated at nine from his brother and sister. At
16 he was expelled from Hope High School over an incident he said began with
a racial slur.
“I didn’t have any hope at all,” he says now, a freshman at the Community College
of Rhode Island, living on his own on the East Side of Providence, and holding
down a part-time job as a manager at a fast food restaurant.
Ed’s story is not much different from those of many of the youngsters who get
one last chance at the Valley Community School, an alternative school run by
Gateway HealthCare. But it is different because Ed is the first Valley graduate
to go on to college (a second graduate has now also enrolled at CCRI), and is
the first recipient of a $500 scholarship to encourage graduates to go on to
higher education.
Ed has hopes now, encouraged by his academic success and his ability to make
it on his own.
“I live on my own, have my own place,” he says. “I’m paying my rent, paying
my bills. I used to be in programs because my mom couldn’t take care of me.
Me, my brother and my sister went our separate ways. He spent the next seven
to eight years in three different group homes, and found himself when he took
advantage of what he perceived to be his last chance at the Valley Community
School.
Now he wants a career as a musician. A piano player, who likes everything from
jazz to contemporary pop, he dreams of “performing in front of 15,000 people.”
