News & Press

They quit or were expelled, but now it’s graduation

By John Tuohy
Posted: May 15, 2010

Elizabeth Acevedo speaks Japanese and two other languages but wants to learn nine.

So her class graduation lunch at a Japanese steakhouse was as good a place as any to get started on her new curriculum.

Acevedo and 44 classmates are the second class to graduate in a program at Tech High School, called Diploma Plus. A year ago, 13 graduated. The two-year-old program was designed to get dropouts and expelled students back into school.

“I pick up languages really quick,” Acevedo, 20, said. “I’m hoping to continue my education to be an international translator.”

It’s an ambitious goal compared to where she was four years ago, speaking only the language of the street with “the wrong crowd,” Acevedo said.

“I was just hanging out and not getting the leadership from teachers,” she said.

Sarah Endicott, a social worker at the Tech and Arlington high schools, said 120 students, who come by referral, are in the program. It was funded by a federal grant but will be reduced and merged next year with a concurrent program at Arlington, which has 100 students this year. The students have all fallen behind, and most are older than their contemporizes(sic) in the standard curriculum.

“Several factors bring the students here,” Endicott said. “Some failed classes and couldn’t catch up or had truancy problems. Others became parents and couldn’t get childcare. There are those who made poor decisions and others who had parenting issues at home.”

In January, Acevedo took an accelerated schedule of classes, including science, English and algebra. Friday, she was celebrating on the Far Northside with sushi and miso soup at Taki Japanese Restaurant, which donated students’ meals.

“I work there part time, and when I told the owner about the school, he thought it would be a nice thing to host,” Endicott said.

Arsenal student Nathan Currie, 19, said he was expelled from school in May 2009 when police stopped a car he was in and found drugs.

He enrolled in Diploma Plus in August and found the four instructors attentive, offering him the encouragement he needed to graduate.

“They help you as long as you are willing to put in the work to help yourself,” he said.
Currie said he wants to go to Ivy Tech Community College to study business or nursing to support his first child, Kayden, born April 26.

“I have to find a way to support him,” he said.

Call Star reporter John Tuohy at (317) 444-6303.