Before he enrolled in Urban Promise Academy (UPA), Pete Gaddis didn’t have a prayer of finishing high school.
“I failed 10th grade,” he says. “If I didn’t get it, nobody cared.”
Pete had spent time at both Thomas McKean and Alexis I. duPont High Schools, where he was an indifferent student. He didn’t do his homework. He felt lost, bored and ignored in class.
At UPA, there is no room to hide. Pete, 17, is one of three juniors in the fledgling Christian secondary school, which offers academic and spiritual guidance to teens on the brink of flunking out or dropping out of high school.
The school’s model is based on a plan by Mount Sophia Academy in Newark, Delaware, a faith-based diploma program for home-schooled high school students in Delaware and Maryland.
For Urban Promise Academy, “home” is a warren of small rooms on the third floor of First & Central Presbyterian Church, at 11th and Market streets.
The student body is small, 10 students in grades 9 through 12. All but one have flunked a course in public school. Most have failed at least one grade, missing as many as 40 days of school a year.
“All our students struggle with authority,” says Jeff Thompson, the school’s director.
Born on the mean streets of Camden, N.J. in 1988, UrbanPromise expanded to Wilmington’s East Side in 1998. Launched by Rob Prestowitz, then a chemist at Hercules, its mission is to equip disadvantaged children and young adults with the skills necessary for academic achievement, life management, spiritual growth and Christian leadership.
Over the years, the nonprofit, nondenominational group has employed teens as street leaders to serve as mentors and counselors to youths who are at risk for truancy, drugs or other problems. UrbanPromise also operates after-school programs and summer camps.
Still, it wasn’t until 2009 that the first UrbanPromise street leader, James Whitely, earned a college diploma.
Urban Promise Academy opened in 2010. The school’s strategy is to prepare kids for college, professional school or good jobs by giving them lots of individual attention in class. Foremost among their lessons is learning personal accountability. That translates into showing up on time, paying attention in class and doing homework.
“We are preparing them for the real world,” Thompson says. “If you choose not to buy into your job, you are going to get fired.”
For some kids, graduating from high school and getting a job seems unattainable.
Beverly Anderson’s daughter, Lanetta, and son, Mar-Keist, floundered in public school.
Lanetta was more focused on hanging out with friends from their Southbridge neighborhood, where only 40 percent of adults hold a high school diploma and 38 percent of householders scrape by beneath the poverty line, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Teachers said Mar-Keist didn’t pay attention in class, behavior they attributed to Attention Deficit Disorder.
“I never saw a good grade,” Anderson says. “They were always failing.”
She visited their middle school often, asking teachers and administrators if her kids could get a little extra attention.
“No one had the time,” she recalls.
The family’s home life unraveled when Anderson got sick. She spent four months in the hospital being treated for kidney disease.
“When I got home, my children were defiant, acting up and showing off,” she says.
Friends from Cornerstone Fellowship Baptist Church in Wilmington suggested she enroll the kids at Urban Promise Academy.
A year later, Lanetta is thriving in eighth grade at the group’s elementary school on Thatcher Street, founded in 2002. Mar-Keist is in his freshman year at the Academy, where his grades have earned him a spot on the honor roll.
“I used to have to go out and hunt for him after curfew,” Anderson says. “Now he is home at a reasonable hour, reading.”
So, what makes the difference?
Thompson attributes the school’s success to the transformative power of love. Students learn early on that their teachers love them and care for each one of them as individuals. Even more important, God loves them.
“Everything we do in this school comes from love,” he says.
Richard Kapolka, director of Connecting Generations, a mentoring group, says turning around teenagers is far more difficult than guiding younger children. He served as principal of Christiana and Seaford High Schools before coming out of retirement to lead the nonprofit organization, which places volunteers in schools.
“Everything gets more complicated the older a student gets,” he says. “It is easier to go over the multiplication tables with a young child than it is to teach algebra to a teenager who doesn’t have much of a foundation in math.”
He says UPA’s approach of love and discipline is an effective way to break down the barriers to learning.
“It benefits kids to know that a mentor is there for them unconditionally,” he says.
Still, good intentions don’t pay the bills. With only donations and a few small grants for support, UPA struggles financially. Tuition is $50 a month, which is waived if the family can’t afford it.
That means there are few frills. There is no driver’s ed, no special ed, no foreign language lab. To make up for the lack of organized sports, UPA formed a relationship with Concord Christian Academy, where Pete and another student play varsity basketball.
In addition to administering the school, Thompson teaches biology and math. A staffer from UrbanPromise headquarters comes in for economics class. A volunteer teaches chemistry. Barbara Duszak, the sole, full-time teacher, handles history and English for all four grades.
“There is a lot of preparation involved because I essentially do a lesson plan for each student,” she says.
That includes planning an Advance Placement English class for Raini Linton, 17, who will be the academy’s first graduate this spring.
“I cannot picture myself not graduating,” she says. “I have to graduate—and I will graduate.”
Raini came to UPA when she and her mother moved from Florida to live with a brother in Bear. Overwhelmed by the chaos that accompanied her mother’s painful divorce, she could not bear the thought of starting over in a new school. A cousin suggested Urban Promise Academy.
“I could not see putting myself out there in a big place where I was surrounded by people I didn’t know,” she says.
Raini rides a public bus each day to Wilmington. Every Tuesday, she takes a bus from Wilmington to Odessa after school, where she meets with a volunteer geometry tutor for two-and-a-half hours before her tutor drives her home. Every Wednesday, she mentors a 13-year-old girl in an after-school program.
Such dedication pays off. Raini has been accepted by half a dozen colleges. She plans to study international business. Her goal is to become a CEO.
Despite the school’s successes, new challenges arise each day.
One student stopped doing his work when his mother went to jail and the family lost their home.
“He is worried about having a place to live, having enough food to eat,” Thompson says.
A ninth-grader, age 18, didn’t work out.
“Admitting him was not a good decision,” Thompson says. “Who is going to stay in high school until he is 22?”
Absenteeism hovers at about 10 percent, a significant improvement from last year, when the rate was nearly 30 percent.
“It was the same four or so students, missing at least one day a week,” Thompson says.
Last year, two students were not invited to return because they missed too much school and disrupted class when they did attend.
“We are letting them live with their choices,” he says. “We tell them that they have chosen to reject this golden opportunity.”
So far, students have been referred to the school by word of mouth. The Academy is working with public schools to identify kids who might benefit from the program. But it is a complex dance.
“We do not want to be a dumping ground for troubled kids,” Thompson says.
Life already has dealt most students a difficult hand. Several are caregivers for ailing relatives. Most live in neighborhoods devastated by drugs. Only one lives in a household headed by an adult male, a grandfather.
Marcus Martin, a 17-year-old from Wilmington, came to UPA unwillingly. He says his mother had to drag him.
Now he expresses grudging pride in completing a homework assignment over the winter break. His grades have improved, from a string of Fs to Cs and Ds.
“I have learned to control myself more,” he says. “I learned that not doing something is a choice.”
As for Pete, he was one point shy of making the honor roll in the last marking period. The next time report cards come out, he is confident he will join the ranks of honor students.
“They push you here,” he says. “At this school, the teachers really want you to make it.”