School brings hope and promise to Camden students and their families
It was the sagging roof at her Camden elementary school a decade ago that prompted Marteha Stewart and her family to try their luck at the LEAP Academy University Charter School, a then-untried enterprise billing itself as an alternative to the city’s long-troubled public school system.
“The roof was caving in. My mom was so fed up,’’ recalls Stewart, who was a fifth grader at the time.
Stewart, now a junior at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers, quickly found more than a secure roof over her head at her new school. On her first day, her pencil drawing caught the eye of art teacher Donald Williams, who spent the next eight years prodding her to do more – entering her work into contests, taking her to galleries, persuading her to attend summer art camp, and closely monitoring her progress until the day she graduated.
For Stewart’s former classmate, Israel Castro, now a criminal justice major at Rutgers–Camden, it is English teacher Elayne Sama who stands out.
“She introduced me to Shakespeare and so many others. She laid such a foundation,” he said, that when he got to college, “the professors were surprised at my level.”
Both graduates say they were required to achieve much more at LEAP Academy than simply to master a favorite subject. Gloria Bonilla-Santiago, the school’s founder, best sums up an even larger expectation the students encounter from the moment they enter as preschoolers.
“We are college-driven,” says Bonilla-Santiago, the director of the Center for Strategic Urban Community Leadership at Rutgers, and a longtime professor of public policy. “Kids come here and know they’re going to go to college.”
As the school celebrates its 10th anniversary this fall, Bonilla-Santiago notes that every member of the first three graduating classes was accepted at either a college, university, or professional school. Last spring, a student was admitted to Brown University, an Ivy League first for the school.
College is both a dream and a guiding principle for many of the Camden students and families who have embraced LEAP, with its high expectations and demands. But for Bonilla-Santiago, it represents a promise to the community that supported the school from its infancy. In the early 1990s, she was awarded a $1.5 million planning grant to design an educational alternative to the city schools from the Delaware River Port Authority (DRPA), an agency whose primary focus is bridges, transportation, and economic development. She argued that improving the local schools was a necessary first step toward the region’s revitalization.
“I pleaded with them: If they build the waterfront and create jobs, who will staff them if there are no families here?” Bonilla-Santiago recalled. It struck a chord, and she was able to use the money to convene a group of researchers, public school teachers, parents, and local community leaders to help design the school and serve as a base of support.
She has been networking, fundraising, and proselytizing ever since. She has assembled a startling array of resources to ensure that nothing stands in the way of her students’ march toward higher education. Through collaborations with institutions such as Rutgers, the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, and Cooper University Hospital, the school offers on-site health care for entire families; free legal advice on housing, debt, and other issues; and literacy, computer, parenting, and community advocacy classes for LEAP families. More than 2,500 mothers, fathers, and grandparents have passed through the Rutgers Parents Academy, and some have stayed on to help run it.
The modular units that served for the school’s first two years have blossomed into state-of-the-art elementary and high schools housing 870 students, nestled between Rutgers buildings on Cooper Street. Bonilla-Santiago is busily fundraising for yet a third building to house children from birth to 5 years old. With characteristic determination, she expects to open the school within the next two years, and has elicited Rutgers’ support by arguing that it will provide a “little lab” for researchers to “study the social, emotional, and cognitive problems little ones have, touching on issues like ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder), learning, and language problems.”
As their part of the educational bargain, LEAP students accept conditions such as uniforms, a 200-day school year, and 5 p.m. dismissals – and that’s for the students who are doing well. Those who are struggling must seek extra tutoring either in the evening or on Saturdays. For their part, parents are required to volunteer more than 40 hours a year at the school in various capacities, make sure their children arrive and leave on time, and ensure that they follow school rules while they are there. Families sign contracts with LEAP before their children matriculate, and those unwilling to meet its standards are encouraged to withdraw.
“It’s a longer year, a longer day. At the time, I thought it was a disadvantage, but as I look back, I realize I had less time to get in trouble,” Castro said, adding that there were clear rewards for doing well, and none of the obvious disincentives.
“You were popular there – not if you were a geek – but if you got your work done,” he recalled. But he did even better than that, and was rewarded with school trips to South Africa, Cuba, and Puerto Rico.
As the lengthy waiting list suggests, the school has both won over the community and satisfied its initial patron, the Delaware River Port Authority. As the school marks its 10th anniversary, John Matheussen, the agency’s chief executive officer, remarked: “This was an important investment to DRPA. It was unique, and may not come again. We’re not normally in the business of investing in these types of opportunities, as we’re primarily a transportation agency. But I believe that for generations to come, this will pay dividends.’’