Title	:	Portsmouth schools turning to intervention at earlier age
By	:	Deirdre Fernandes
Date	:	April 3, 2004
Source	:	Virginian-Pilot
URL	:	http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=68435&ran=131933

Portsmouth schools turning to intervention at earlier age

By DEIRDRE FERNANDES, The Virginian-Pilot
© April 3, 2004

PORTSMOUTH — The morning drill at the New Directions Center is well-established.

So this school year, when the school for troubled students became the first in the region to accept elementary-aged children, the 6-year-olds lined up in the cafeteria every morning alongside the 13-year-olds.

The school’s staff pats them down searching for contraband candy or large amounts of cash – anything more than lunch money is suspect. Then each student moves through a metal detector. “It’s the policy,” said Kevin Brown , the principal. “If you misbehave on the bus if you’re a first-grader or an eighth-grader, you’re going to get the same consequences.” At New Directions the consequences can be tough.

No recess. No physical education. No art. “It discourages them from coming back,” Brown said.

Superintendent David C. Stuckwisch brought Brown and elementary alternative education with him from Hopewell, where he ran the schools for almost 10 years.

Alternative schools are common for middle and high school students. But with the increased focus on test scores and school safety under the federal No Child Left Behind law, divisions may be turning to alternative education even earlier, said Dennis L. White, the president of the Alternative Education Association.

Portsmouth’s program, which serves 12 of almost 7,700 elementary students, and 95 students total, is one of the few in the state.

But Norfolk and Suffolk are studying the idea.

“I think we just need to start with early intervention,” said Thomas B. Lockamy, the chief academic officer of Norfolk schools, who will present his School Board with some ideas for programs this month.

Before an elementary student lands a 45-day tour at New Directions, other interventions are tried, including time-outs and a change of teacher.

“It can come off looking very hard-hearted, but if you had a child in one of those classrooms you would be in my office asking me what I’m going to do with that student,” Stuckwisch said. “My first priority is to the 24 kids back in the classroom.”

But critics worry that children might be labeled early. Students who believe that teachers have given up on them live up to low expectations, said Beverly Caffee Glenn, the director of the Hamilton Fish Institute on School and Community Violence at George Washington University.

“We don’t want this to be the school-to-jail pipeline,” Caffee Glenn said. “When you get labeled in kindergarten, there’s no way out.”

Students sent to New Directions have been in fights and have repeatedly talked back to teachers or refused to follow directions, said James Hurst Elementary principal, Evelyn Whitley, who has referred five students.

“This is a school, this is a learning environment,” Whitley said. “We want them to grow academically as well as have good self-control. There are individuals who don’t.”

Whitley hopes the smaller classes and personal counseling at New Directions will help students adjust their behavior so they can succeed at their home school. But cut off from that support, students can suffer, White said.

“Can you teach all of the skills and all of the coping mechanisms that child didn’t have in 45 days? I don’t know,” he said. “But you can get a good start and if you have a good start you need follow-up.” Brown visits schools to check on students’ progress. Some fit back in, others don’t, he said. Ultimately, the division has few options for students with discipline problems.

“If the behavior is persistent and consistent … there needs to be some sort of alternative elementary placement,” he said. “We have two alternative placements. Here or home.”

 

Page Updated: August 24, 2005