A rocky path back to school
In city, efforts of former dropout, family, and teachers are marked by frustration, but propelled by hope
Slumped over in his hooded sweatshirt, Sylvester Cooper said nothing as his grandmother and mentor pelted him with questions, pleas, and admonishments.
It was October, just the second month of school, and the teenager was already facing his second disciplinary hearing for excessive absences: He had skipped 18 of his first 29 days of freshman year at Charlestown High.
As Cooper sat in the school's front office, his mentor, Emmanuel Allen, a former dropout who helps Boston teens get back in school, leaned forward and looked the 15-year-old in the eye.
"If you don't figure out this school thing now, you're going to get trapped," said Allen, 30.
Cooper nodded, but avoided Allen's gaze.
Yvonne Cooper, 65, stared wearily at the grandson she has raised since birth. "I can't close the book on you," she said. "I can't do it. It's got to work. It's got to work."
Cooper, who had dropped out of school last spring, is in his second tour of the ninth grade. He is participating in a new joint effort of the Boston public schools and Boston Private Industry Council to return dropouts to school. He was one of 34 students on the school system's list of 1,660 dropouts who initially agreed to re-enroll.
Cooper's first seven months back in school reflect several serious stumbles -- not just by the teen but by the adults who were supposed to help salvage his future. At a number of key junctures, he lacked critical support when he needed it most.
The first stumble was his school assignment.
He was randomly placed at the 1,200-student Charlestown High. On the second day, he never showed, complaining of the 90-minute commute on two buses and the subway from his grandmother's Roxbury home. To make the 7:20 a.m. school start, Cooper had to get up at 5 a.m.
School system officials explained that they simply placed students where there was space; they acknowledged that there was little effort to determine the best schools for returning dropouts.
Charlestown's principal and Cooper's teachers said they had not been told about the dropout recovery program and were not prepared to give extra attention. They knew nothing about the unassuming teen with a boyish sense of humor who showed up on the first day of school with a history of failure, yet also of potential.
Cooper attended Catholic school until the third grade and did well, then transferred to a Boston public school. As a fifth-grader, he read and did math at the eighth-grade level, and was so eager to show off his reading prowess, he would read aloud his assigned passage and then keep going.
"He is a smart little cracker," said John Martorana , who taught Cooper in the fourth and fifth grades and is now a lawyer. "But even when he was in my class, he didn't like school. He has to have somebody who's constantly on his back."
The boy frequently got in trouble for goofing off. But he worked hard for Martorana.
"He respected me so I respected him," Cooper said. "I guess I was just looking for that all through my years of school."
After fifth grade, he floundered because he refused to do the work. He attended three middle schools, littering his report cards with Fs. Nonetheless, he was promoted to Dorchester's Jeremiah E. Burke High School.
He never showed because his grandmother had sent him to live with relatives in Virginia in the summer of 2005 to shelter him from escalating neighborhood violence. The Boston school system labeled him a dropout when his grandmother failed to report his transfer.
After seven months in two Virginia high schools, he dropped out last spring and returned to Roxbury, where he lives with his three foster brothers, older sister, and 1-year-old nephew as well as his grandmother. He had not earned any credits in Virginia.
"When I got into high school it was just like everybody around me was skipping so it was like, can I try it?" Cooper said. "And then I just got carried away and kept doing it, falling behind, noticing it's hurting me."
Last summer, he agreed to re-enroll in Boston schools after Allen contacted the family during his outreach to students on the dropout list. Cooper said his conversations with Allen made him want to go to college.
While Allen was able to lure Cooper back to school, the mentor's role eventually would fade, leaving Cooper without a key booster and prod.
In the beginning, Allen, one of two outreach workers monitoring returning dropouts, acted as a liaison between school and home. He represented Yvonne Cooper during the teen's first discipline hearing in mid-September because her arthritis and a bad hip made it difficult for her to travel to Charlestown High.
At the time, Allen was tracking about half a dozen students. Though only six of the dropouts showed up at school the first day, many more would trickle in later. As Allen's caseload grew to more than 40, he tried to check on students' progress monthly but could not keep closer tabs.
"For some kids, they just need one call," Allen said. "The relationship with Sylvester is intensive and we didn't necessarily plan for that. I would have liked to have been a lot closer but it's hard."
Hope that the teen could still redeem the school year came for him, his grandmother and his mentor at one of the lowest moments -- during that second discipline hearing at Charlestown High last October.
Cooper told a school administrator that he skipped so much because of the tedious commute. The administrator suggested he transfer to an alternative school in Roxbury, near his home.
"A new start," Cooper said. "I can go with it . . . . I wouldn't skip no school if it was down the street."
The alternative school, Boston Day and Evening Academy, has just 200 students in its day program; students earn diplomas at their own pace, and no grades are given. Students must pass muster on a portfolio of their work and presentations in each subject.
The school closely monitors students, a staff member told the teen, his grandmother, and Allen during an information session.
"I go to your house if you don't come to school," said Madison Leatherwood , a community field coordinator. "I knock on your door. I kick your bed and ask why you're not in school."
Yvonne Cooper welcomed the help: She has tried each morning to wake her grandson. First, she called his cell phone. Then she yelled. As a last resort, she would climb downstairs and knock on his door.
High hopes were soon dashed. Despites the promises made during orientation, the teen would repeatedly break the rules without consequences.
Within weeks of starting at the school, Cooper, who had just turned 16, became one of dozens of the school's regular truants. When he did show up, he frequently wandered the halls, prompting the school security guard to dub him "hallway kid." If he went to class, he often was the class clown, hiding from the teacher in the closet or throwing paper wads.
Many mornings, his grandmother believed he had left for school, but Cooper was playing hooky -- sleeping in, playing video games and watching action movies. Sometimes, he biked with friends or recorded raps in a friend's house about the allure and dangers of the city's streets. Two of his friends have been killed in the last five years.
His grandmother's dreams for him weighed on his conscience every time he cut school. His mother, a high school dropout, had moved out when Cooper was six months old. He occasionally talks to his parents, who live in Boston. But it's his grandmother he calls "Ma."
"I want her to see me make it before she goes, or I go," Cooper said. "I want to make her happy and show her that I can do it, but I'm just screwing up and just not doing the right thing."
At the end of the first term in early December, Cooper skipped a meeting with his math teacher to present what he had learned, the only way he could earn credit. His math teacher, Christopher Johnson, scheduled a second appointment, but the teen skipped that meeting too.
"What's the point of going if I don't have the work he wanted?" Cooper said.
Cooper, complaining of a headache or feeling woozy, frequently sought refuge in the nurse's office instead of going to math. The school nurse would toast him a cinnamon-raisin bagel with cream cheese, make him hot chocolate, and let him take a nap, covering him with a blanket.
Cooper's nonchalance frustrated Johnson, who would later teach the teen what he missed.
"It's like he wasted his year so far," Johnson said. "A lot of the students that we have unfortunately have been pushed along. All we do is go in circles and that's the reality of it."
As his adviser, Johnson said he left several messages for Cooper's grandmother in November and December about the teen's absences, but could not reach her until January.
Yvonne Cooper said she never knew about the calls and remained unaware of her grandson's poor attendance for months.
"They're not doing what they promised to do," she said. "That's one of the reasons these kids fail."
To the Coopers, no one, including Allen, seemed to be paying attention: The mentor had not spoken with the teen during his first three months at the new school.
Allen said he had stopped by Cooper's school several times to talk to his teachers and knew about his attendance problems. He said his calls to the teen went unanswered, and he had not had time to follow up in person because of other responsibilities. Allen reappeared in Cooper's life in February, visiting the house twice after the teen's grandmother called for help.
In January, the school began to address Cooper's attendance record after he was caught in the hallway arguing with a friend over buying marijuana. Teachers reported that he sometimes came to class high. A school official asked him and his grandmother to cosign a contract agreeing that the teen would arrive at school by 9 a.m. and attend every class on time and drug free, or risk expulsion.
Two hours later, Cooper was 30 minutes tardy for math class. No one said a word. The teen skipped school altogether the next day and many more days without repercussions -- until one morning in mid-February. The school's community field coordinator paid a surprise visit, knocking on Cooper's bedroom door, where a handwritten sign warned visitors against bringing food or entering in shoes. The teen rubbed his eyes in shock, and vowed to return to school as soon as he recovered from strep throat.
The school had finally fulfilled the threat to rouse students who were absent.
With less than three months left in the school year, Cooper's future remains in limbo. He is neither in nor out of school. He drops in only when he wants to.
He says he still wants to go to college and perhaps study criminal justice, but realizes he has made no progress toward that goal this year.
Allen, even as he's trying to stay on Cooper and other returning dropouts, is getting ready to locate more than 1,000 students who have dropped out this school year -- and persuade them to re-enroll. He sets a modest threshold for success with Cooper:
"If he decides to blow this year, fine," Allen said. "There is no deadline. To me, a win is if he's not shot and if he's not locked up. As long as he's able to make a decision, I'll call him."
The school system next year plans to hire a specialist to select the right schools for the returning dropouts and better support their transition.
Each principal will also name a staff member to more closely watch students' attendance and academic progress.
"Everybody had good, ambitious intentions but it had to be better coordinated," said Philip Jackson, the school system's director of alternative education.
Cooper said he wants to be able to care for his grandmother as she ages and recognizes he has to take responsibility for his future.
"I'm slacking. If I don't change what I'm doing, can't nobody do anything to help me. You can only rely on yourself. Eventually, I will."
Tracy Jan can be reached at tjan@globe.com.
LATER IN OCTOBER 2006. Skipping again:
Cooper starts playing hooky within weeks of transferring to the alternative school. When he shows up, he often cuts math class to hang out in the nurse's office. His math teacher, Christopher Johnson, escorts him to the nurse's office on his second day at the school when he complains of feeling ill. 