Schweiker visits school 'organized
for learning'
CEP teaches students nobody wants 

"When you walk in, it may seem like (the guards) touch you more than you want them to, but it's actually safe to come to this school," student Ninious Richards said. "You don't worry that someone is going to come into this school with a gun and point it to your head. You feel safe."

And respected.

"The teachers treat you like you're mature," the former Swenson Skills Center student said. "If you act like an adult they'll treat you like an adult."

"Look around," said James Nevels, chairman of the School Reform Commission. "What do you see? Structure. This is organized for learning."

The city's first Community Education Partners school, Front Street and Hunting Park Avenue, has no remote areas, no alcoves, no dark corners where predators can lurk.

Yet it is populated with students teachers want out of their classrooms, said Barbara Braman, CEP regional vice president, students who when they cut, "nobody wants back. These are kids who know they were not wanted." In 2001, 40 percent of the school's students were on probation.

"They came here for weapons offenses, aggravated assault, rape and robbery," said Braham, a former principal of Lincoln High School.

Last week, CEP hosted Gov. Schweiker and members of the House Urban Affairs subcommittee investigating school violence. The tour was a fact-finding visit and an opportunity to showcase what discipline can do for the most difficult student.

In 1999, the city contracted with CEP to handle its "troubled" students. Founded in Houston in 1995 to create an alternative to expelling students, CEP believes in giving students second chances.

Built in a former warehouse, the local CEP school held class during construction. It will hold a formal ribbon-cutting in a few weeks.

At about 75 percent of its 1,200-student capacity, the school is divided into self-contained learning communities made of four classrooms of 25 students per classroom. Except in honors classes, the students are segregated by sex.

Each classroom has a teacher and an instructional assistant, and every learning community has a learning manager that acts as a principal for that unit. "They work completely in isolation from the rest of the building," said Ruben Flores, CEP's regional director of curriculum and instruction.

"There's a regimentation here, an expectation," Nevels said. "It provides predictability for the child. They know where they are and know what's expected of them. If they don't do it, there are consequences. The exact opposite is chaos: yelling, screaming and running through halls."

Movement is limited. Each classroom is linked by a hallway no more than 20 feet, and each hallway has a bathroom with the bare essentials.

When students move about, they are expected to keep their hands in their pockets. When one students fails to follow the rules, the entire group is punished, a technique that develops unit cohesion through positive peer pressure. 

Lesson plans revolve around math, English, science and social studies. Computerized instruction programs follow state standards and the Philadelphia school district benchmarks.

"When the kids finish here, they have to take the same tests that the regular kids have to take, including the PSEA and the SAT-9," Flores said. "Our kids have improved, but we don't have hard statistics yet. We're just beginning."

Some evidence is developing. "We have had students who started in October and November and have completed one year of English," Flores said. "I would like to have the students for two years."

For now, students attend CEP for one year, then return to their former schools, a prospect many find unsettling.

One student was transferred to CEP after he used a knife to fight off an attacker. Though criminal charges were dropped against him, he landed at CEP when the school board dissolved and the state School Reform Commission took over. "They didn't know what to do with me, so they sent me here," he said. "This is so much better, so much safer, I don't want to go back to (my old school)."

In the honors program, the student feels like he's been given a second chance.

The order on which CEP thrives gives the students who might otherwise have been cast out of the school system and lost a second chance.

"Schools ought to (give) kids a sense of optimism, promise and hope about the future," Schweiker said. That's why, he said, the legislature moved to take over management of the city schools.

"CEP exemplifies the atmosphere we wish to recreate at 264 other schools in Philadelphia," Schweiker said. "When responsible adults come together (to) give kids a second chance, every day, every minute, every second inside these hallways and in these classrooms (we) confer that spirit in (the) kids." 

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