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Private inner-city school opening Academy caters to struggling low-income minority students Monday, September 17, 2001 By Liz Austin, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
When The Neighborhood Academy opens its doors today, its two founders' once-impossible dream will become a reality.
As the new inner-city private school grows, co-founders Josephine Moore and the Rev. Thomas E. Johnson Jr. hope to enable their students to realize their dreams, too.
"We want these students to be prepared to face the challenges of life," Johnson said. "We want them to face problems and solve problems. To struggle and endure and survive."
The school, at 5231 Penn Ave. near the Friendship and Garfield neighborhoods, wants to enroll low-income minority students who are struggling in Pittsburgh Public Schools but might succeed in a smaller or more structured school.
Forty students are expected to enroll in the eighth and ninth grades established this year, and administrators plan to add 10th grade and possibly seventh grade next year. The academy will have five certified teachers -- four full-time and one part-time -- and will be licensed as a private school by the state this month.
In addition to references from public middle school counselors and teachers, students are being recruited by word-of-mouth through ministers, community leaders and former summer school students. Staff members also have gone door to door in the Garfield and Friendship neighborhoods to introduce themselves and the school.
Tuition will be set on a sliding scale based on family income, but each family will pay at least $50 per month.
The academic environment will be intense, the directors said, but nurturing. Both students and their families must be willing to invest not only their resources but also their time and energy in the school.
Students, for example, must agree to attend school for 12 hours each day. During those 12 hours, they will attend classes and a worship service, and participate in extracurricular activities sponsored by other educational and cultural groups. A 90-minute study hall also is required.
Separated by gender into groups of 10, the students will be organized by skills rather than age or grade. That distinction will allow a student who is reading at one level but doing math at another to receive appropriate instruction, Johnson said.
All traditional subjects will be taught. Teachers will give both letter grades and extended written evaluations of classroom performance, academic improvement and attitude.
While the faith-based but nonsectarian school hopes to create students who can compete in the academic marketplace, scholastic achievement is just one aspect of the academy's holistic goal.
"We absolutely believe in a rigorous academic training, but other things are as important as students' academic prowess," Johnson said. " We're also concerned about the students' development and maturation, with their emotional, psychological and spiritual well-being."
To that end, students will be required to participate in community service projects throughout the year and will complete courses in "moral and ethical reflection," civility and manners. Life skills courses also will be offered to examine some of the issues -- drugs, violence and premarital sex, for example -- that children encounter in their lives.
"We want to be a school where kids and families are nurtured," Johnson said. "We want to be a school where people grow in every sense of the word, not just in their fullness of stature but in their appreciation of being a child of God."
Parents are required to volunteer at the school in some capacity and must attend parent support group meetings twice a month. They will talk not only about the children, Johnson said, but about themselves and problems they are facing in their lives.
"Being a parent lends itself to becoming isolated," he said. "We all think, 'I'm the only person whose child is driving me crazy,' but we all struggle with the same things."
The idea for The Neighborhood Academy began almost 10 years ago, after Moore recruited Johnson to volunteer at the Larimer Avenue Youth Club. As the pair became advocates for the children and their families in the public schools, it became clear to them, Johnson said, that "school was a place where kids were going to fail."
As the academy idea took shape, Moore and Johnson decided to open a summer school pilot program. The program just ended its eighth year.
The summer school, along with a feasibility study conducted two years ago, convinced the pair that opening a full-time school was possible.
The school has raised about $1.6 million, about 65 percent of its three-year goal, which the organizers hope to reach by January.
Having developed close ties with several foundations and religious organizations through the summer school, the academy relied on grants and donations from these groups for initial financial backing. Contributors to the school's general operating fund include the Hansen Foundation, the Thomas Phillips and Jane Moore Johnson Foundation and the R.K. Mellon Foundation. The Staunton Farm Foundation donated money to establish the school's counseling program.
The staff also has begun an individual giving campaign and hopes to expand its reach.
Administrators estimate the school will spend $18,000 per child in the first year, $12,000 in the school's second year and $9,000 in its third year. Expenses will be high at first because the school is starting virtually from scratch, said spokeswoman Melissa Krebs.
The staff purchased all new textbooks and more books for the library, along with office furniture, computers and desks.
Administrators also plan to hire fund-raising and financial consultants to help ensure the school's fiscal health. These consultants will help procure city, county and state money as well as plan for any future fund-raising campaigns.
Krebs said the school hopes to have developed such close relationships with its sponsors that a loss of funding will not be a problem.
"The people who are involved with The Neighborhood Academy at this moment are very intimately involved," Krebs said.
"We hope that they're not only concerned with writing their $100 check but feel that in some way that they have been a part of making this school."
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