SOUTH BEND — The Crossing alternative school has won federal funding to help up to 50 high school dropouts from St. Joseph County — ages 17 to 21 — to finish their degree and get training in a new career.

Dexter Harper and Amanda Heritz hope to be among them. Both stopped coming to Adams High School last year, both juniors who’d felt out of place.

They were in their third day of studies today at The Crossing, looking no different than the peers next to them who’d suggested they finish their high school degrees here. They focused quietly on math and biology exercises over the computer — all part of The Crossing’s self-paced curriculum.

“It’s very calm and chilled,” Dexter said.

If accepted, they’ll spend part of their day learning vocational skills. Dexter, 18, might pursue welding or construction. Amanda, 17, is interested in nursing.

The new funding would allow them to learn those skills at either The Apprentice Academy or Ivy Tech Community College.

The idea is to fill needed jobs in the region.

First, the students must meet criteria that aren’t required of other students at The Crossing. The funding from the federal Workforce Investment Act requires that the students be low income and show other kinds of barriers, like coming out of foster care or having been involved in the courts.

But most of the students here would qualify anyway, said Kathleen Randolph, president and CEO of Partners for Workforce Solutions, which has the contract to run the local WorkOne program.

Students cannot drop out of another school just to join this program. They must already be dropouts, said The Crossing’s director, Rob Staley, who said he’ll be out recruiting young people at community centers.

“The traditional schools have not served them well,” he said. “This is a second-chance opportunity. We don’t want to pull them out of public schools.”

The students would spend three hours a day in The Crossing’s South Bend campus at Southgate Church.

One of the school’s unique twists is its “family time,” where students sink into couches and talk about their lives and dreams. They sit below a sign that reads, “We love God, love people, love life.” They pray. But, said teacher Stacy Handschu, they can opt out of that if it make them feel uncomfortable. Students usually have no problem with it, she said.

WorkOne funding is for one year and provides $3,000 per student per semester. That means free tuition for the students. Most of The Crossing’s students pay $25 to $50 a month, which is kept low because of scholarships, Staley said.

He said The Crossing will still have to raise about $2,000 in scholarship money for the WorkOne students. That’s less than half of what it raises for other students.

Staley said the new money will allow the student body to grow. The school already teaches 50 to 60 students per year from St. Joseph County, a generally younger group between ages 14 and 20.

The students can earn either a high school diploma or a GED. After that, WorkOne will help the students to pay for extra education toward any kind of college degree or vocational certificate. Randolph said it will have to be in field that’s considered a growth area for WorkOne’s Region 2, which covers St. Joseph, Elkhart, Fulton, Kosciusko and Marshall counties.

That includes advanced manufacturing, where computer technology is used to run factory machines. It includes the field of health information technicians, but it doesn’t include nursing because there already are enough nurses in the education pipeline, Randolph said.

“We do career advising to help the students understand where the jobs are and what the salaries are,” she said.

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Staff writer Joseph Dits:
jdits@sbtinfo.com
(574) 235-6158

At the Crossing we dare to care, and we dare to express that concern—to drive to Oklahoma on a moment’s notice or to take time to speak praise and say with words the things God wishes every child could hear. We say openly and without reservation, “I love you,” and we mean it. Our kids don’t always make the most beautiful sounds, they don’t all smell like “Euphoria Cologne,” and they sometimes touch us a bit roughly to demonstrate their strength, but we choose to love them unconditionally anyway.

Returning from Oklahoma with Carrie’s mom, my co-worker, and our prize, Carrie, we were all very sure we had gone after something infinitely precious, and we were all so relieved to have found her. Carrie is just one of the many complicated lives we work with at the Crossing, but we would do it all for just that one. We make every effort to attend to each of our students with the same high level of concern.

As for Carrie, she is a bright little cookie, has almost all her coursework finished and is gliding through to graduation. She was a lost sheep for several days, and we worked hard to find her. Now she is a beautiful picture of Crossing success, the love of a staff who does not give up. I will miss the little chuckles, the individual mannerisms, and the sound of a child’s voice that we have come to love, but they are not ours to keep, just to help for a season.
At the Crossing, class is never dismissed…

Don Riley

*name has been changed to protect the student’s privacy

By Ashley Smith
of The News-Sentinel
Posted on Tue. Feb. 23, 2010 – 10:10 am EDT
Alisa Shepard just wasn’t cutting it in school. She had fallen behind, and admits she was more interested in socializing than homework.

Soon that falling behind became never catching up, and last May, she dropped out of Leo Junior-Senior High School.

Shepard, 18, got her GED, but wanted a better future – one that came with a high school diploma. A new program sponsored by East Allen County Schools is helping her on that path.

Shepard is one of 21 students attending the Crossing Educational Center in New Haven. It is a faith-based private school targeted at EACS district students who have been incarcerated, expelled, dropped out or who do not work well within the traditional school model.

The school meets in two, three-hour sessions each day in which students work mostly on computers at their own pace with the help of three instructors. Students are pulled out for 30-minute sessions each day for “family time,” which allows them to share issues in their lives or, as on Monday, do an exercise stressing how much certain personal values are important to them.

“We just get them to talk about some issues going on in their lives,” said Luke Caldwell, New Haven campus coordinator. The session ends with prayer requests.

The Crossing program began in Elkhart in 2003 as a state-accredited private school that works hand-in-hand with the public schools in the communities in which it serves. It has grown from five students to 350, with eight campuses around Indiana working with 11 school districts. EACS approved the partnership last year, and the Crossing began earlier this school year at 909 Main St. in New Haven.

Students in the program work at their own pace making up their needed credits. Upon completion, they receive a diploma from the Crossing, from the school they dropped out of or from the area in which they live.

Not every student at the Crossing is a dropout. In fact, 17-year-old Chris Thomas is a home-school student who was looking to add more structure to his day.

“It’s more of a close-knit thing,” Thomas said about the Crossing. The school is so close-knit, in fact, that just last week, the students gave a baby shower to two of the girls in the class who are expecting.

“I think it’s more of a family thing than a classroom,” Thomas said.

The Crossing represents students from every high school in the East Allen district. Students are recommended by their previous schools and then enroll to finish their high school careers. For Shepard, it means a diploma, a college degree and a brighter future.

“I realize that being social isn’t as important,” she said. “(I know now) I need to buckle down and be able to get things done.”

For more info on the Crossing, visit www. crossingeducation.com.

Students from The Crossing,” an Alternative school approved by the Board last year for EACS students, had an opportunity to speak directly to the board regarding their experiences at the school. Four students spoke and all students mentioned how The Crossing has changed their lives and each student thanked the Board for their approval of the school. All the students that spoke were on track to graduate during 2010. The Crossing’s mission is ‘transforming lives through education by focusing on the heart and mind’. For more information on The Crossing, go to http://www.crossingeducation.com.

Posted on www.eacs.k12.in.us

Don Riley, Butler Crossing

Jacob Grogg had a problem with authority.

The 18-year-old thought he was smarter than everybody, and anytime he was questioned by a teacher at Heritage Junior-Senior High School, Grogg would argue with the teacher. Before high school, Grogg said he was a straight-A student, never had to crack a book.

“High school rolled around, and things changed. And I wasn’t really willing to accept that change,” Grogg said.

Heritage staff eventually told Grogg he probably wouldn’t graduate from the Monroeville high school. He said his only option was to transfer to Ombudsman, an alternative program within East Allen County Schools.

The program, with its three-hour-a-day, work-at-your-own pace, proved beneficial for Grogg, who said he thrived in an environment with little distractions. Grogg is one of about 25 students who attend Ombudsman, in the Park Hill Center, a building next to New Haven Middle School owned by the district.

East Allen County Schools has contracted with the private company that runs Ombudsman for the past 11 years, but the district has to decide how to serve students who have a difficult time learning in a traditional classroom.

A committee comprising school district administrators is determining how alternative education at the middle and high school level should look, where it should be housed and in what form students should be educated.

As East Allen contemplates changes in where to educate students with behavior and other problems, it is sending more students to a less expensive church-based program and fewer to its long-standing alternative school. The elimination of one program in favor of a less expensive one could make a dent in decreasing the district’s $10 million deficit in its 2010 budget.

This year, the superintendent at the time, Kay Novotny, proposed eliminating Ombudsman to save money and opt for a less expensive program that would ensure students who graduated from alternative programs would count toward the district’s graduation rate.

The majority of Ombudsman students receive an Illinois diploma, thus counting against the district’s graduation rate, which counts only students who graduate from Indiana high schools and receive Indiana diplomas.

As of this school year, East Allen students can also attend The Crossing, a faith-based private company headquartered in Elkhart. The company has a New Haven location that’s also contracting with the district to serve students who’ve already dropped out of high school or who aren’t succeeding in their home schools.

In theory, if it were the only option, Ombudsman students could transfer to The Crossing and graduate with an Indiana diploma, thus raising the district’s current graduation rate of 81 percent.

The religion portion of the program is something that doesn’t concern East Allen officials, but it’s a concept the executive director of the Indiana American Civil Liberties Union said could become a conflict if anyone were to complain.

“If they’re faith-based and the school is contracting with them, it would appear that the school is contracting with and spending tax dollars on a faith-based organization,” said Gilbert Holmes, executive director of the ACLU in Indiana. “If that’s the case, it could be a problem.”

Ombudsman
The Ombudsman program, started by a former Chicago Public Schools superintendent, has been around since the 1970s. Ombudsman Educational Services owns more than 100 schools in 13 states.

It’s considered a private school, but East Allen students don’t pay tuition, since the district picks up the cost. Students from outside the district who want to attend must pay, and some do, but EACS students are given priority.

This year, East Allen will spend $107,500 on Ombudsman – $4,300 per student per year for 25 slots, said Kirby Stahly, the district’s chief financial officer. East Allen officials reduced the number of students it would pay for by 20 this year, cutting the expense, he said.

Students can be referred to Ombudsman by their principals or they can choose to transfer there, said Deborah Petersen, local Ombudsman director. Some students are enrolled in Ombudsman’s homebound program because of extreme illness or they’re not allowed on East Allen property because of previous behavior problems, Petersen said.

Students spend the majority of their time working on individually tailored lessons on the computer, but any instruction they receive from a teacher is one-on-one, Petersen said. Most go for only three hours each day, choosing to work the rest of the day.

Some are parents who have a family to support, and others find it easier to work in an individual setting for a shorter period without the distraction of a large high school.

“It helps to come in and just work alone by myself and get my work done and leave,” said Andy Cheek, 17, who left Northrop High School in Fort Wayne Community Schools to attend Ombudsman.

Until recently, East Allen officials thought Ombudsman graduates could receive only an Illinois diploma because that’s where Ombudsman is headquartered. It doesn’t make a difference for students, who hold a high school diploma no matter what state it’s from, but it does count against the district’s graduation rate.

After Novotny recommended cutting ties with Ombudsman, partly for that reason, officials did more research and discovered that East Allen students could get an Indiana diploma from Ombudsman, if they passed ISTEP+.

East Allen students who graduate from Ombudsman “almost exclusively” receive an Illinois diploma, said Jeff Studebaker, the district’s school safety manager.

The Crossing
About a year ago, Maranda Smith, 19, was living with her boyfriend, who she said was selling “illegal stuff.” It was a bad situation she wanted out of, so she dropped out of New Haven High School and moved with her mom to North Carolina.

Smith wanted to get back to Indiana and heard about The Crossing, where she could pick up where she left off and get a high school diploma. She enrolled and is on track to graduate this year, with hopes of attending Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne or Brown Mackie College.

“I like that it’s a work-at-your-own pace (program), and I like that everybody’s honest with each other; nobody holds back anything,” Smith said.

The Crossing is owned by the Crossing Educational Center, a non-profit organization that owns seven schools in Indiana.

“For the most part, our focus is to give students who have dropped out a second chance … to graduate with a high school diploma,” said Luke Caldwell, campus coordinator for The Crossing in East Allen County Schools.

Students at The Crossing receive a high school diploma that coincides with their home public school, Caldwell said. There are currently 26 students enrolled, the majority hailing from East Allen high schools, but the district will pay for up to 35 students, said Studebaker, who sits on The Crossing’s local board.

Most of the students are 18 to 20 years old, have jobs and feel awkward re-enrolling in their former high school because they’re older and already dropped out, Studebaker said. They attend The Crossing for three hours in the morning or afternoon, he said.

East Allen County Schools will spend $150,000 on The Crossing this year, and the program is about $1,700 less per year than Ombudsman, Stahly said. The Crossing church, 909 Main St., New Haven, allows the company to use space in its building for free, said Rob Staley, executive director of the Crossing Educational Center.

The Crossing is unique because students have “family time” every day, where they talk with each other and their instructors about their day and their lives, with a religious component, Caldwell said.

“We like to deal with life first and then academics second,” Caldwell said. “We know that the students that come here … have had some tough issues and have been going through some difficult experiences, and we don’t want to just disregard or ignore those situations.”

ksoderlund@jg.net

I teach an evening elective class for our Butler students. We are building a 1958 Buick street rod. This will be a high horsepower street machine on a light ’94 extended Caprice chassis with a squeezed 455 dual quad power plant. The powerless among us embrace any opportunity to be empowered by any means possible which makes big horsepower cars a real hit! I wish you could all experience an evening with our young men getting dirty, busting knuckles, and turning wrenches! We all love the smell of axel grease and welding smoke and the growls that come with every successful accomplishment. We presently have the entire project disassembled to the last bolt! Sandblasting the frame, painting and reassembly are the next events in the process.

Our kids love adventure, activity, and hands-on life! We have discovered that when kids find acceptance and actually become an “innie” rather than an “outie,” everything else flows a whole lot smoother. When we do life with them in the “club,” they find it easier to do life with us in the day-to-day business of school. Another awesome perk in this whole relationship is that they become deeply loyal to those who chose to care enough to include them in the “fun” parts of their personal lives. We love our kids deeply and they love us deeply too. Did you catch that? They love us deeply, too. That is the work of God in their lives that occurs because we choose to behave with them as Jesus would. “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Don Riley

We visited two school systems in Central Indiana and, I’ve got to tell you, it was a beautiful thing to watch both Rob and the audiences of administrators and other school personnel as they explore the options for kids who desperately need the extra help. I witnessed superintendents who expressed their deep desire to help meet the needs of this growing population of truly needy kids. It was so refreshing to meet people who really care and are willing to work outside the box to find working solutions for today’s special problems. It was also fun to see the expressions on their faces when Rob said things like, “give us your druggies, your gun carriers, sex addicts, and vandals as well as struggling students who need another approach to learning, we want these kids”! Needless to say there was a strong acceptance to his plea! Rob said over and over that this is a “messy” business but it yields the greatest returns in terms of investment. Not only will we be offering these students a lifestyle other than prison or chains of addiction, but they will be trained in Career directions and life choices that will result in the development of tax-paying citizens rather than entitlement mentality consumers.

Listening to Rob as he addressed the listeners and absorbing his passion for the vision of the Crossing was enriching. The fervor for this work as Rob’s passion is shared is so very contagious. Rob is definitely the source of the Crossing H1N1 virus and anyone who spends any amount of time with him is bound to become infected and a future carrier of it. All the Crossing personnel agree, we love this work! We could not walk away from it without being greatly distressed. We have been forever changed ourselves!

Now, don’t you wish you could work at the Crossing? We have the opportunity to have the greatest impact for change for the select students who come through our doors. To us, and to God, they are precious beyond measure.
Thanks Rob.
–
Don Riley