Education in Utica to enter new millennium
Hopes high for Proctor plan offering students choices
Utica (NY) Observer-Dispatch,
Sun, Jan 12, 2003
CECILIA LE
Observer-Dispatch
Beginning this
fall, Utica high school students will embark on an ambitious educational
experience called the Millennium Project. This is the first in an occasional
series about the project and what it means to students, educators and
taxpayers.
When Utica's high
school students walk into their classrooms the first day of school in
September, they will become part of the largest educational reform the
school system has ever taken on.
And there is a lot
of work still to be done.
In order to create
smaller learning environments and expose students to careers, Thomas R.
Proctor Senior High School will restructure this fall into four academic-themed
houses that students will choose among. It's called the Millennium Project.
School leaders hope
the $51 million plan will better prepare Utica's students for life after
high school.
Like many students,
11th-grader Mark Needham is excited about the project, but he has some
reservations.
He looks forward
to a bigger school with upgraded Internet accessibility but worries he
might not get his first choice of academy.
He views the project
as a way to pursue his interest in science, but said he might not see
his friends in school as much as he does now.
"I'm still uncertain
about it," Needham said as he ate in the gym-turned-cafeteria acting as
the Proctor lunchroom while the school is under construction.
"Socially, it might
be a negative," he said. "You want to be with your friends, but they're
pursuing something you don't want to pursue. It's more important you get
your education."
Conceived in 1999
as a partnership between Utica schools and Mohawk Valley Community College,
the project promotes two major goals.
The first is to divide
a growing high school population into four smaller schools, located in
the four wings being added as part of the school's $37 million construction
project.
At the same time,
the project strives to expose students to careers through focused courses,
mandatory internships and opportunities to receive college credit.
In a school district
in which 72 percent of students receive free or reduced lunch, many may
have thought little about their futures.
"Some of these kids
have never realized that they can go to college or or do something with
their lives besides lie on the couch all day," Millennium Project Director
Delores Caruso said. "We're going to expose them to all the choices that
are out there."
House hunting
The high school is
working its way through a massive schedule of student-counselor interviews
to nail down which academy students want to choose.
Like Needham, most
Proctor students seem to be selecting academies based on their interests.
Only a few said they would choose based on the decisions of their friends.
"Surprisingly, they're
picking what they want to do," 11th-grader Justin VanGorder said of his
classmates. "If they pick what their friends are picking and it's not
their interest, they'll just end up wanting to change anyway, and I think
people know that."
Felix Santana, a
10th-grader, agreed few are being swayed by their friends.
"We'll still get
to eat lunch together and stuff, so why would we do that?" he said.
Proctor guidance
counselor Dana Mrzlikar said he was pleasantly surprised to find the same.
"I didn't have any
sense that was happening at all," he said. "I think they left the assemblies
with enough information to make an educated decision based on their own
interests, not by following their best friend into an academy they have
no interest in."
But 11th-grader Krystal
Brown disagreed.
"I think everyone
is picking the same one as their friends," said Brown, who wants to become
a nurse. "It's going to be a big school. No one wants to be by themselves."
And some students
are just waiting and watching. When asked what concerns he had about the
change, 11th-grader Aleksey Panasyuk just grinned widely.
"We'll see next year,"
he said.
Large student
population
When the ninth grade
moves to Proctor in the fall, school leaders -- who already struggle to
prevent dropouts, maintain discipline and address individual student needs
-- will be looking at a student body of about 2,400.
"When you have 2,300,
2,400 students in a building, it's like a factory," Proctor Executive
Principal Ronald Mancuso said in support of dividing the school into quadrants.
Cited for then-high
dropout rates and low attendance, Proctor landed on the state's "bad schools"
list in late 1996 and remained there for more than three years. District
officials in 1998 moved ninth-graders out of Proctor because of overcrowding,
seeing the move as one way to address the problems.
Dropout rates have
declined since, but overcrowding will threaten the school once more when
grade configurations shift in the fall to relieve crowding in the elementary
schools. By expanding the school, dividing it and introducing thematic
programs, the Millennium Project seeks to negate that threat.
Working with the
district is the New England Small Schools Network, part of the fledgling
small schools movement gaining steam nationwide for the last several years.
The 2-year-old organization
is guiding Utica and five other school districts as they implement the
massive reform.
"Our belief is that
when kids go to school, they're going to enjoy it more when the know the
people they're going to school with, the students, the teachers -- and
that the teachers benefit from the collaboration of working on a small
team," said Stephen Spring, a school reform coach with the network. "When
the kids are bumping into a teacher 14 times a week instead of two times,
they gain so many advantages from that."
Personal attention
is considered especially vital in an urban district like Utica, where
students may be dealing with poverty, language barriers, crime or other
problems. And in a large school like Proctor, some may slip from freshman
year to graduation without ever having their needs addressed. Some of
the high school teachers have never met each other, Mancuso said.
The four Proctor
academies each will staff a team that includes a principal, a career specialist
and a team of teachers who hope to work more personally with their student
load of about 600.
"The key is for students
to feel like they've got their own faculty," Superintendent Daniel Lowengard
said. "This is their chance to do stuff that means something to them.
They're being asked to choose what interests them, which we hope will
get them more excited about coming to school."
Some in the dark
Students seem to
support the project, saying it will help them choose a career as well
as relieve crowding in the school.
"This wasn't offered
to my mom when she was in high school," 11th-grader Saquoiha Goodson said.
Many students fear
they won't be able to make it across the new building in time for class.
Some are just glad they'll be able to stop eating in the gym.
Still others have
little idea what the project is about, some responding to the words Millennium
Project with blank stares.
"It's very confusing.
Nobody knows what it is," 11th-grader Sherry Melendez said. "I picked
anyway, but I don't really know what (the academies) are."
"It was too rushed,"
said Panasyuk, who wants to go into chemistry. "We went to the auditorium
for 20 minutes and now we're just expected to decide."
But Mrzlikar, the
guidance counselor, said school leaders have worked ceaselessly to educate
students about the project, holding assemblies, in-class presentations
and parent conferences.
"We have bombarded
these students with information," he said. "If they still don't know about
it at this point, it's because they're not listening."
'Not locked in'
Project leaders repeatedly
emphasize that choosing an academy doesn't lock a student into a career
path. Everyone must take the same core classes and meet the same Regents
standards.
Leaders say a student
in any academy still will be equipped to choose any career. Students will
not spend all day in their academies; they can take a class offered only
in another academy as well as take elective courses in the main building.
The same core academic
subjects will be taught in each academy, but with a slightly different
career focus. For example, a math teacher in the health academy might
have the students calculate the fluids a person needs to stay alive. A
math teacher in the liberal arts academy might use more word problems.
Proctor teachers have been developing themed lesson plans since last summer.
The purpose, leaders
say, is to make school more relevant to daily life, not push children
in a certain career direction.
"We're not asking
them in the eighth grade to make a commitment that's set in stone," Mancuso
said. "We just want them to start thinking about it."
However, students
who decide they don't like their academy will not have an easy time switching.
Requests to change academy will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis,
but project leaders have made it clear that students who expect to switch
must make a very good case for doing so.
Allowing students
to switch, they say, would rip them out of their small learning community
-- where the faculty knows them -- as well as upset the academies' demographic
balance.
Hoping to allay fears
that students will get stuck with the wrong academy, project leaders say
it's really not that important what academy students choose. More important,
they say, is the idea of small schools and general career exposure.
"The names of the
academies were chosen because they are so broad," Caruso said. "If a kid
is in the physical science academy, he's not going to be brainwashed that
he must be an engineer when he gets big. He'll be exposed to so much it
won't really matter what academy he's in."
Parent Nick Burns,
who has four children in grades seven to nine, said he finds it exciting
and somewhat scary that his children will be among the first to attend
the new Proctor.
"It's up to Utica
City School District administrators to convince us that if our kids make
a wrong choice and choose an academy they don't like, it's not going to
impact their education negatively," he said. "They've presented it that
way. They'll have to prove that and we'll hold them to that. I'm willing
to give them a chance."
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