Dropout is now in, lesson learned
Hub schools vow support
Sylvester Cooper , with his baggy sweat pants, gleaming white
But when his teacher began quizzing students about last school year, Cooper's answers stood out. This was not his first freshman year.
Last spring, he quit two months before school ended. The 15-year-old is back in the classroom because of a new push by Boston public schools to get dropouts to return. Although counselors tried to persuade 1,660 high school students to come back, only 34 agreed.
The odds are against Cooper and the other returning students eventually graduating , school officials acknowledge, but they hope an added personal touch this year will make a difference. Two outreach workers, hired by the Boston Private Industry Council as part of a new experiment with the school system, visited the students and their families over the summer. They plan to track the progress of the returning students and continue the visits in an effort to figure out how to make school work for teens who have given up.
Charlestown High teachers emphasized to Cooper that they were not focusing on how students did last school year.
``The good thing is, coming into high school right now, everybody is in the same boat you are," said Kathryn Holte , his algebra teacher. ``It's all new for everyone."
Cooper and the other returning students range widely in age and circumstance. Some missed a few months. Some missed a full year of school. Though state law requires students to stay in school until age 16, enforcing that has always been difficult. Nearly a third of Boston students drop out of high school over four years. Last year's dropouts represented 8.8 percent of all high school students last school year.
Of the 34 who said they would return, the outreach workers knew of six who showed up at regular high schools yesterday. Eight others chose alternative programs, while 11 missed the first day for various reasons, including fighting with a parent, not waking up in time, or not liking the school they were assigned. The remaining nine did not respond to the workers' phone calls.
Cooper came to school partly because his grandmother, who has been raising him in Roxbury since his infancy, made him choose: Go back to school, sign up for a religious boot camp in Texas, or enter Job Corps. A high school diploma, rather than a GED, opens up more options, said Cooper, whose own mother dropped out of high school as a junior. He speaks daily with his parents, who live in Boston.
``I just want a better future," said Cooper, who recently decided he wants to attend college.
After earning decent grades in elementary school, Cooper rebelled, and he attended five Boston middle schools in three years, said Yvonne Cooper, his grandmother. His teachers constantly complained about him disrupting class, making jokes, and teasing girls, she said. His grades dropped because of his attitude. He said he felt his teachers did not care enough about his success.
He was supposed to attend a Boston high school last school year. But last fall, because of neighborhood violence, his grandmother sent him to live with relatives in Virginia. He tried two different high schools and had problems at both. He wound up suspended for cutting classes. With two months left in the school year and on the road to expulsion, he quit school in Virginia and returned to Boston to live with his grandmother.
In his previous attempts at high school, he said, he focused on socializing and didn't care about academics. He didn't have a career goal or motivation to stay.
His grandmother, 65, said Cooper's enthusiasm for school began increasing this summer after he met Emmanuel Allen, a 30-year-old outreach worker who had dropped out of a Boston high school at 17, returned at 19, and graduated at 21. Yesterday, Allen checked up on Cooper in some of his classes, met his adviser, and connected him with the football coach. Cooper said a big incentive to return to school is playing football. He plans to try out next week.
``You usually have to shake him and beat him to get out of bed, but he was up when I got up at 5:30 a.m.," said his grandmother, who graduated from high school and, after going to trade school, worked as an insurance broker for 30 years. ``He was already showered and ready."
The teen, who took a bus and a subway to school, had a rocky start once he arrived at Charlestown High . He had enrolled so late he was not on any of the class lists, so had to wait 45 minutes in the cafeteria and missed his first-period class. But he soon forgot about the early annoyance as he began recognizing former classmates from elementary and middle school.
He had come into Charlestown intent on transferring to another school where he thought he would know more students. But old friends greeted him in the halls and hung out with him in the cafeteria during lunch.
``It was a laugh," he said of his first day. ``I liked it. I fit in."
Throughout the day, Cooper, who wore a button-down shirt with Sylvester the Cat on it, resisted the urge to be the class clown. He listened when teachers laid the ground rules and went over the material they would cover this year.
When classmates harassed some teachers and roared at one another's jokes, Cooper sat silently in the back, occasionally cracking a smile. He said he's confident he'll pass all his classes because he likes most of his teachers and senses that they care about his progress. Nearly all have volunteered to help him after school.
``I know he's not going to start out on the honor roll, but I do expect him to do his best," said his grandmother. ``I'm not going to be here forever. He needs to take responsibility for his own self."
Tracy Jan can be reached at tjan@globe.com. 
