Vanessa Boyd, enrollment coordinator with The Hill House Passport Academy Charter School, high-five's student Khadijah Geter during rehearsal for graduation. The school will be holding it's first ever graduation today. (Below) Despite working three jobs and facing many other obstacles, Marlene Burton, 22, will be graduating from The Hill House Passport Academy Charter School today. Diamond Mills with her daughter Madison Mills, 2, attends graduation practice for The Hill House Passport Academy Charter School. Robin Rombach/Post-Gazette
Marlene Burton of the Hill District once viewed middle school as the beginning of her end. But now at age 22, she will be among 40 students who are in the first class of graduates of the Hill House Academy Passport Charter School in the Hill District.
Ms. Burton said trouble started at the end of sixth grade and ultimately included homelessness, family complications, amnesia from a car accident and jail. Ms. Burton fell away from school, and by commencement time at Pittsburgh Brashear High School in 2012, she said, her diploma was four and a half credits out of reach.
She needed to work after high school, she said, but she couldn't land a solid job without a diploma. She was living wherever she could find space and working to survive.
She found opportunity at the Passport Academy, which opened last fall in a small space on the ground floor of the Hill House's Kaufmann Center in the Hill District. As a charter school, it is a public school, and the student's home school district pays a fee set by the state. While chartered by Pittsburgh Public Schools, the school has attracted students from 13 school districts.
The academy accepts full-time students who have withdrawn from a school and are between the ages of 14 and 21. It delivers a high school diploma rather than a GED, which was an important distinction to Ms. Burton. The charter school offers a "blended learning" program, which includes face-to-face instruction and online education.
The school also has practical classes, such as personal finance and computer literacy. Its adopt-a-senior mentoring program, which this year paired staff with seniors, helps to push students through to graduation, and relationship-building programs help students confront issues of peer pressure, bullying and family stresses.
Nearly 200 students came through the school's doors in its first year, said principal Dwayne Homa, but some stayed just a couple of days. About 130 came consistently. Of the 90 who aren't graduating, Mr. Homa said 80 percent say they will be back in the fall. In addition, 47 new students have signed up for fall.
"If I had to guess at the beginning, I was happy if we had one student to help change their lives, but 40 kids -- wow. I'm proud of them all," Mr. Homa said.
Before enrolling, Ms. Burton said she was ready to give up and go back to the streets, but the school has pushed her. Now she works three jobs and aspires to win a humanitarian award.
Classmate Diamond Mills, 21, of North Versailles, who also will walk across the stage of the Hillman Auditorium in the Kaufmann Center today, said if it weren't for the academy, she'd be back at square one.
Ms. Burton and Ms. Mills are impassioned when they talk about their teachers, who are more like mentors and whom they credit for their success in finishing high school.
Teachers help in any way they can, said Ms. Burton, including providing some meals and dreaming up new programs when they notice students are getting restless. When the seniors presented their final graduation projects in front of a panel of judges, teachers provided business clothes for students who didn't have any.
"This school has given me a family," Ms. Burton said. She and Ms. Mills want to come back next year to organize programs and a prom for the next class of students.
Ms. Mills teased Ms. Burton for getting emotional.
"Yeah," Ms. Burton said, giving in. "I'm definitely going to cry at graduation."
Source: Anicka Slachta / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. http://www.post-gazette.com/news/education/2015/06/24/Hill-House-charter...