No alternative

When troubled students wreak havoc in the schools, kicking them out is just a temporary solution. If they don't get help, their classmates can suffer.

Cityscape by Sarah McNaught

For kids like Billy Niedzwiecki, who has been pushing the puck since childhood, making the varsity hockey team should have been a cherished moment. But Niedzwiecki's biggest memory will be that he couldn't play.

On December 22, the Southie High student was attacked in a school bathroom by four classmates who stabbed him five times and stole a gold chain left to him by his late grandfather. Niedzwiecki underwent emergency surgery at Boston Medical Center; his injuries weren't life-threatening, but they'll keep him off the ice.

What makes the incident especially disturbing is that two of the alleged attackers have a history of causing trouble. Just a month before the attack, one of the suspects was released from a Department of Youth Services (DYS) correctional facility, where he'd served seven and a half months after being convicted in an armed robbery at Dorchester High on Septem-ber 25, 1997. Another suspect had been transferred to Southie High from Charlestown for disciplinary reasons.

During the 1996-'97 school year, the most recent for which figures are available, 1500 students were removed from Massachusetts public schools in connection with incidents involving assaults, drug deals, or weapons. Suspending or expelling such youths makes the schools safer, but in too many cases, the offenders have nowhere else to go. Instead of receiving the type of alternative education or counseling that could help them change their behavior, they are left unsupervised to wander the streets, often getting into more trouble. When they return to school they are behind in their education and, as in the South Boston case, may continue to threaten their fellow students.

According to the Department of Education's 1996-'97 annual report, the number of students expelled or suspended from the state's public schools has increased 52 percent since the 92-'93 school year (the first year the Department of Education began keeping such records). A little more than a third of students removed from classrooms did not receive alternative education.

State attorney general Tom Reilly predicts that the problem will only get worse as the school population increases over the next decade. In the past, what amounts to token attempts to counsel and educate students with disciplinary problems have been only marginally successful. In the wake of the South Boston stabbing, the school department, DYS, the AG's Office, and youth groups are again working to put together a solution. But their efforts may not be enough.

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One problem with the existing system is the treatment of kids who've been in trouble with the law. Juveniles convicted of a crime and ordered to DYS detention are routinely released back into the mainstream school system without any transitional period in an alternative educational environment, complains Eliot Feldman, executive director of Boston's alternative-education programs. If violent kids aren't counseled one on one, he says, everyone suffers. Young offenders don't learn from their crimes, and their classmates may be endangered.

"After kids serve time at a DYS center, they are sent back to school, where they boast that DYS isn't a big thing," says Billy Stuart, a Dorchester District Court probation officer who's worked with juveniles for the past 20 years. "Just because the kid's been locked down doesn't mean he has corrected his habits. The current system has no bite and no rehabilitation set up for these kids."

To make matters worse, school officials are often in the dark about their students' histories. Administrators at Dorchester and Charlestown high schools have dealt with highly publicized disciplinary cases during the past few years. All say they were shocked to find out that some of their students had criminal records or histories of discipline problems.

That was the case with Walter Rack, a 17-year-old Dorchester High student convicted of raping a 15-year-old classmate in December 1997. At the time of the attack, Rack was out on bail from Dorchester court on a pending assault and battery charge, but the school was unaware of his history. That same year, Rack had been transferred to Dorchester from St. Sebastian's school, in Needham, for disciplinary reasons.

Others say undetected criminal records are just part of the problem. In noncriminal cases, troublemakers are merely transferred from school to school in what critics see as an attempt to avoid rather than fix the students' problems. Last year, according to the Department of Education, 200 students were transferred for safety or disciplinary reasons. Often, as in the case of the transfer student who attacked Niedzwiecki, officials at the new school are unaware that the student has caused trouble in the past. Boston schools superintendent Thomas Payzant says that schools are notified about disciplinary transfers, but many school officials say they aren't receiving the information. Teachers can get information from a program called Community Based Justice, which provides lists of teens in trouble for truancy, drugs, or threatening behavior. Yet new students aren't put on the lists unless they are immediately identified as troubled, and transfer students are considered new students.

Charlestown High School headmaster Michael Fung says that though the safety of students comes second only to their education, schools can't ensure safety when they don't know their students' histories. "We take in about 10 to 15 transfer students a year," says Fung. "Sometimes students come to us with complaints about threats or fights, and we handle it a certain way because we don't know that the student making the threats may have a history of disciplinary problems."

Fung adds that students sent to his school as disciplinary transfers are given a second chance. "We try to ensure that they have the chance at a new school to start over," explains Fung, "but it is hard for young people to put their best foot forward if they are just being shuffled around without any intervention."

Some schools, in particular, get more than their share of troubled teens, leaving them with a dual challenge: to protect the safety of the general student population while providing the at-risk youths with the tools they need to rejoin the mainstream. "We have surveillance cameras inside and outside the building as well as school police who patrol the school all day until 4 p.m.," says Dorchester High assistant headmaster Karen Carlin, who has been at the school since 1980. "What we don't have is the means to provide at-risk students with the one-on-one attention and the counseling they need in order to return to school. We're a high school with close to 1000 kids, so we simply can't accommodate those students whose success depends just as much on personal guidance as on education."

In March of last year, Boston mayor Thomas Menino demanded that DYS stop sending troubled teens to Dorchester High, and that other schools stop transferring their disruptive students there. At the time, 15 DYS students attended the school.

But the resulting reform effort was nothing more than a Band-Aid. Instead of being sent to Dorchester High, the students were sent elsewhere, with no attempt to warn teachers or administrators at their new schools. One Brighton High student was suspended seven times before he was transferred to Charlestown High this past December. Even though it was labeled a "disciplinary transfer," Charlestown officials say they didn't know the specifics of the student's history. Shortly after he arrived at Charlestown, the student was suspended for triggering a false fire alarm. After he returned from his suspension, he was expelled for possessing a gun.

But in many cases, expelled students are allowed to return to the system the following year. The youth could easily enter a new school without the teachers' knowing his history, explains Boston alternative-ed director Feldman.

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Alternative-education advocates say there is a way to prevent repeat offenders from disrupting classrooms while providing them with the help they need to re-engage with the regular school setting -- and both Boston and Springfield have such programs in place.

In Springfield's 25,000-student public-school system, problem students are immediately removed from the classroom. According to Dennis Vogel, director of Springfield's alternative-ed program, about one-fourth of such students are routed to some kind of alternative-education program after an initial assessment.

"We currently offer four programs, one of which is for students convicted of felonies," explains Vogel, who admits that because of lack of space and funding, not all at-risk students receive alternative education. "We try to deal with the current problem by working with DYS, the police, and the courts to identify problem students and supply them with counseling before they get in trouble."

In Boston, there are 10 off-site programs with 900 seats for students with disciplinary problems. Unlike the standard Boston classroom, where 30 students are assigned to each teacher, these alternative settings have a student-teacher ratio of 15 to 1. Feldman says that in addition to the regular curriculum, the facilities offer one-on-one counseling and special programs such as young-fatherhood classes, employment training, anger-management sessions, and substance-abuse rehabilitation.

But according to Citizens for Juvenile Justice, the state's only organization that works on dropout/delinquency-prevention programs, other states -- including Connecticut, Florida, Kentucky, Illinois, Virginia, and Louisiana -- are significantly ahead of Massachusetts in providing at-risk youth with alternative education. Massachusetts provides a budget of only $2 million, whereas the cost of educating all the students removed from the public schools would be $6 million, according to Feldman.

"It's not that we don't know what to do with these kids, it's that we don't have enough resources to work with every one of them," explains Feldman. "And there is no law mandating alternative education at this time." Of the 1498 students expelled or suspended in '96-'97, 538 did not receive alternative education, according to the Department of Education's annual report. The report also found that even among special-education students, who are required to receive alternative education if they are removed from class for disciplinary reasons, 10 percent got no such attention.

Lou Gitelman, who has run a Boston alternative-education facility called University High School for seven years, says he has seen many students enter the doors with no hope and leave with a bright future.

"These are good kids who need a little direction, and putting them on the street is not going to help," says Gitelman, who has worked in the school system for 22 years.

Trucia Cassagnol is one of those kids. Suffering from problems at home, she stopped showing up for classes at Charlestown High School and started to get in trouble. Before long, she was failing all her classes.

But instead of letting her slip through the cracks, officials at Charlestown contacted Gitelman and asked if Cassagnol could attend University High School. Now, two years later, Cassagnol is excelling in her studies, even taking two college courses at Bunker Hill Community College. She has also completed a 100-hour internship at Brigham and Women's Hospital.

"I consider my teachers my friends," Cassagnol says. "They work with us one on one and they talk to us about everything. I've had family problems, boyfriend problems, and conflicts at work that my teachers here have helped me through. I wouldn't have gotten that attention at a regular high school."

Cassagnol is glad she was guided in the right direction before her situation got any worse. "Kids with problems need a place like this to go," she says. "Many of us act out for attention, not because we are bad kids. They know that here, and they give us a second chance. I'd be on the street if it wasn't for University High."

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Government and law-enforcement officials have tried before to address the problem of disruptive and violent students. But alternative education has never been required for all youths removed from the public schools, and existing alternative-education programs have not been adequately funded.

Now, because of the recent stabbing at South Boston High School, the issue of alternative education has again received heightened attention. In the wake of the Niedzwiecki attack, Citizens for Juvenile Justice has pushed for legislation demanding alternative-education facilities in every school district in Massachusetts. The bill, sponsored by House majority whip Barbara Gardner (D-Holliston), will be heard by the legislature's education committee this spring, and would establish separate educational programs for violent and troubled youth statewide.

"The bill will establish a grant program for cities and towns to provide alternative education for troubled kids," explains Jack Gately, executive director of the organization. "The overall cost would be modest compared to the cost of incarceration that will accumulate if these kids are not dealt with properly now."

In another hopeful development, DYS expects to open a new transitional-education facility in Dorchester this month that would provide academic help and counseling to between 10 and 15 kids released from DYS custody, with the aim of returning them to regular public schools within three months. According to DYS, 600 Boston children are committed to the system each year. Of those, 300 are incarcerated and the rest continue to attend school. An additional 100 juveniles are released from DYS and returned to the mainstream school system annually.

And, in a "Children's Protection Project" announced last month, Attorney General Reilly said he plans to expand the Community Based Justice program, which he established in 1991 when he was Middlesex DA. The program's goal is to improve the communication between schools and law-enforcement officials so that administrators are prepared to identify at-risk youth and help integrate them back into the classroom and the community.

But as the state announces programs to build new schools, develop additional after-school activities, and increase the number of early-childhood-education centers, at-risk students currently in the system are falling through the cracks.

"I'm not a bad kid, I don't think," says 17-year-old Eddie Cardoni as he stands in front of a corner store on Monument Street in Charlestown. It's a little after noon and the tall, wiry youth stands alone. All his friends are in class, but Cardoni has been suspended for bringing a knife to school. It will be a month before he's allowed back, and he hasn't been offered a place in an alternative facility.

"I wasn't going to use it," he says of the weapon. "It was just a really cool hunting knife and I wanted to show my friends." Even as the teen offers up this explanation, a smirk appears on his face, as if he knows the excuse is transparent. "This sucks, though," he says. "I got nothing to do. I'd rather be in school."

Sarah McNaught can be reached at smcnaught[a]phx.com.