School for at-risk youths sets up clash of good wills

Some see drain on city's resources, others cite end to cycle of neglect

Program director Melanie Burke plays spectator at a facility run by Rediscovery Inc., which is proposing a charter school for at-risk youths. ( Joanne Rathe/Globe Staff)

Jorge Delgado's road to a GED has been anything but smooth.

Bouncing among seven group homes, three foster homes, and homelessness since the age of 13, he went to seven high schools before a Waltham group home run by Rediscovery Inc. gave him the consistency to succeed.

Now 19, Delgado says he would have jumped at the chance to attend Rediscovery Academy, a proposed charter school for up to 220 at-risk youths that the agency wants to open in the city.

"Destiny is absolutely based on opportunity," said Delgado, who has earned his high school equivalency diploma and hopes to attend college.

But where advocates see opportunity for a neglected population, Waltham officials see a magnet for troubled teens statewide that could increase gang activity and crime and siphon off money from an already cash-strapped public school district.

"This would be a disaster," Sergeant John Brooks, with the Waltham Police Department, said at a recent hearing on the proposal.

The state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education has scheduled a Feb. 24 vote on whether to approve Rediscovery's charter high school, which would be unlike any other in the state: one aimed at students ages 16 to 24 without family or social supports, who have been homeless or in foster care, in trouble with the courts, are unmarried mothers, or have disabilities. The nonresidential school would start with 60 students and then expand to a maximum of 220 over four years. Although the proposal calls for the school to be in Waltham, no specific location has been named.

Rediscovery is one of three charter proposals under consideration by the board this spring; of the 61 charter schools operating statewide, three are in communities west of Boston.

While Rediscovery's plan has won significant state support, local officials have voiced angry opposition. The Waltham City Council and School Committee unanimously oppose it. But even some opponents agree that the intention is a noble one: to educate disconnected youth who have fallen through society's cracks.

Rediscovery Inc., which runs a group home for up to 12 youths and other programs in Waltham, proposed the charter school after seeing many of the students it serves be denied placement in public schools, said chief executive officer Danielle Ferrier.

"We have kids that come to Rediscovery House that local public schools do not want to take," she said.

Children are required by state law to attend school only until age 16. After that, schools can use loopholes and paperwork to delay enrollment for a student, said Ferrier. Her teenage clients may be at Rediscovery House for six months waiting for a school to accept them, she said.

"Our kids are an extraordinarily marginalized group," said Ferrier.

As they move from foster home to foster home and program to program, they often have to reenroll in each new community, starting the waiting game all over again, said Ferrier. The Rediscovery charter school would put an end to that, she said, offering a measure of stability that is often elusive to such teens.

The charter school proposal has received letters of support from the commissioners of the state's Department of Mental Health and Department of Children and Families. Other supporters include the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.

"I actually think it's brilliant," said Nancy Allen Scannell, director of policy and planning for the society. "I'd be surprised if this proposal doesn't become a model for the country." Some high schools have small programs to help at-risk students, she said, but nowhere in the state is there a school like this.

Opponents who have lined up against the plan include two members of Waltham's Beacon Hill delegation, state Representatives Peter Koutoujian and Thomas Stanley, and Mayor Jeannette McCarthy. But the most high-profile opposition has come from the Police Department.

Since September 2006, 94 incidents have generated calls to police involving 30 youths living at Rediscovery House, according to Detective Patrick Hart Jr., who spoke at a recent public hearing that was videotaped by the local public-access television station. Of those 30, 11 are confirmed gang members, he said.

"The increase I've seen in gang-related activity and violence in this city is alarming in the last two years," said Hart. "And a lot of it has to do with some of the clients that live at Rediscovery House."

One client had collected 54 charges, including three counts of assault with intent to murder, said Hart.

Sergeant Brooks added that the problems had spread to neighboring Newton and Watertown.

Police Chief Thomas LaCroix said that although the school's mission is a good one, the cost that his department would have to bear in increased calls would be too high. "We can only handle so much," he said.

Ferrier, Rediscovery's chief executive, responded in an interview: "What the police did at the public hearing was really focus in on a small number of kids and really dramatize the issues with those kids. . . . The majority of our youth are not the youth they are describing. They've taken something out of context for fear-mongering."

Waltham High School has an alternative program aimed at youths who need extra help. The program includes vocational education options, and provides social workers who can assist students with a variety of issues, said Margy Donnelly, a member of the city's School Committee.

"As an educator, I think the philosophy and theory it's based on, that you can put 220 students from highly difficult backgrounds . . . in one physical building and contain them academically and contain them behaviorally and ensure constant attendance, is not a practical reality," she said in a phone interview.

Another huge concern is funding. Although the school is proposed to draw students from all over the state, Waltham school officials, including Superintendent Peter Azar, are concerned that many students would move to the city, effectively becoming the responsibility of the Waltham district.

What that means, according to David King, a former business manager for Waltham's school district, is that each outside student at the charter school who becomes a resident of the city would cause the state to subtract about $16,000 from its aid payment to Waltham, with the money going to the charter school. King, now an independent consultant to schools on financial issues, said that the state does not add $16,000 for every student who enters the Waltham public schools.

So, a key question is how many students would move to Waltham, rather than commute, since the education aid payment for the charter school is drawn from their home community's school district.

Ferrier said that there would be a "neutral effect" on Waltham's funding, and that it's easy to distort the issue because the funding formula is so complex.

Susan McKinney, president of the parent-teacher association at Stanley Elementary, said the proposal is not what a charter school is supposed to be, because it doesn't offer a new choice to most parents.

"I'm not really opposed to charter schools in theory," she said. "I think they're great if they really are offering an alternative. This isn't an alternative for me; it's not an alternative for anyone I know."

McKinney said although she has sympathy for the teenagers and young adults who have had to struggle in their lives, the Rediscovery charter school is not the answer.

"I'm not completely heartless. Those kids are in a situation that they pretty much can't get themselves out of. It was the hand they were dealt. I think we as a society should be helping them," she said. "I just don't see how it is equitable to ask the Waltham public schools to bear a significant burden."

Delgado lived in Rediscovery's group home before moving to an "independent living" arrangement, which means he has an apartment provided by Rediscovery. He is the first to acknowledge he has issues, but says he would have loved to have had the consistency the proposed charter school would offer.

"If I don't have the opportunities that everyone is afforded," he said, "I'm not going to be able to achieve my potential."

Lisa Kocian can be reached at 508-820-4231 or lkocian@ globe.com.