By Dalia Díaz
Phoenix Academy Lawrence is giving disengaged students in Lawrence a second shot at getting a good education and a ticket to college. Entering into its third year, the school serves 150 students who have struggled to find success in traditional educational environments.
Beth Anderson, the Founder and CEO of Phoenix, was initially approached to open the school after Lawrence Public Schools was placed into state receivership by the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. “When Jeff Riley was appointed Receiver in 2012 and looked at a dropout rate of well over 50% in Lawrence Public Schools, he knew he needed a way to reach students who were no longer in school,” Anderson says.
That’s where Phoenix came in.
At the request of Lawrence Public Schools, Phoenix, a charter public school network that operates two other high schools in Chelsea and Springfield, designed and built a school for the district to serve out-of-school and disengaged students. And over the past three years, the results have been significant.
Take Phoenix student Elizabeth Rodriguez, for example. Rodriguez is a third-year student at Phoenix. Prior to attending Phoenix, Rodriguez was struggling to make it at Lawrence High School. “I was skipping all the time. I didn’t care about school,” she says. On the recommendation of a teacher, Rodriguez decided to transfer to Phoenix. “I feel like the environment and the staff is way different,” she reports. At her former school, she says, “I’d walk out [of class], and my teachers wouldn’t notice or wouldn’t care. But here, if I walked out, they would try to stop me or look for me. Over here, they try to reach out to you and try to help.”
In fact, Phoenix Academy is known to mobilize teachers, staff, and classmates to text, call, and even pay home visits to students who don’t show up for class. If a student doesn’t show up in the morning, they are tracked down and encouraged to make it back to school for the afternoon periods.
At Phoenix, Rodriguez found herself in an environment where she was able to make the positive choices that would lead her to academic success. Her goal is to eventually attend college to pursue a degree in Criminal Justice.
Phoenix has been helping students like Rodriguez since 2006, when Anderson founded her first charter school in Chelsea, MA. Since its founding, Phoenix Chelsea Academy Charter School has achieved notable success: MCAS scores have risen significantly and Phoenix graduates enroll in college at impressive rates. This past fall, a third Phoenix charter school opened its doors in Springfield, MA.
“What we’re discovering,” says Anderson, “is that there are many communities in Massachusetts where the kids are smart, the kids are ambitious, but they are not being pushed hard enough to succeed and they are not in a position where they are going to be successful. It’s our duty to take these talented kids and get them back into a classroom and headed towards college.”
Phoenix serves students from many different backgrounds. Some students are older, some students dropped out for several years, and a number of students hail from other countries. Many students simply struggled at a big high school and needed the close attention that a small school like Phoenix can provide.
Jeanette Jimenez, a social worker at the school, describes Phoenix students as “students who don’t quite fit into the prescribed educational system that we have in this community. They are students who need a reparative experience, who need to believe they can make it in school.”
In order to help these students succeed, Phoenix employs a unique model. The school is small and has a high adult to student ratio. Staff members are friendly and engaging, seeking to build strong and personal relationships with students. Twelve AmeriCorps Fellows offer one-on-one tutoring to help students catch up on their academic work. The school employs three social workers, a high number for the small student body, and a Student Support Team helps students to process and address negative behaviors. All of these services allow the school to hold students to high academic standards while also making sure that they have the individual support they need to stay motivated.
A major focus of the Phoenix model is to hold students accountable for their own decisions and behaviors. If a Phoenix student is late in the morning, they won’t be let into the building until the afternoon, when the doors open again at lunchtime. Students are required to wear a uniform (a Phoenix t-shirt tucked into khaki pants) every day. The school also uses merits to encourage and reward positive choices and a demerit system to hold students accountable for behavior that disrupts their academics.
Though the rules may sound rigid to an outsider, the faculty and students swear by it.
“At Phoenix, we take very seriously the idea that we are preparing students for the real world,” says Jimenez. “We prepare them academically, and that is critical, but we are also preparing them to have the social transactions they will need to succeed at their jobs, to get along with their college professors. To succeed, you need to arrive on time.”
Elizabeth Rodriguez says that she struggled at first with the strict rules. “At another school, I could do whatever I wanted – listen to music, whatever. Here it is different. Don’t have your phone out, don’t listen to music, get in dress code.” These rules, she explains, “are helping us mature and grow.”
The real testament to the Phoenix model can be seen from last year’s senior class. In 2014, five students formed Phoenix’s first graduating class, and all five students were accepted to and enrolled in college. Seniors at Phoenix Academy Lawrence regularly have dual enrollment with Northern Essex Community College and next year the school is planning on adding AP courses to the curriculum.
“When students buy into the Phoenix community,” says Jimenez, “there is this sense of confidence and achievement – feelings they may have never experienced before at school. There is a sense of accomplishment.”
The Phoenix community has a shared vision for its students to not only graduate but to successfully integrate into the workforce and community.
“Our goal is to prepare our students to join the middle class – and if we don’t hold them to these standards for punctuality and appropriate behavior, we are letting them down by not teaching them what they need to know in order to succeed, “says Anderson. “It’s a reality that our students have a tougher road to travel – that’s what poverty and race means in the United States – but if we don’t give them the tools to overcome this reality, if we allow them to make excuses, we only damage their future.”
