Left Behind: The unintended consequences of school choice
Kids with toughest hurdles stuck in gutted schools
The first bell rings in 10 minutes, but no cars line the road outside to drop off students. While other schools clog major thoroughfares with traffic, a lone car pulls up to North Charleston High every few minutes for a drowsy teen to roll out. Two park in the entire student lot.
The rest ride school buses or walk. Several arrive on public CARTA buses. They don’t have cars. Most of their families don’t either. Virtually all qualify for the free and reduced-price breakfast being cooked inside, with its aroma of warm eggs wafting from the cafeteria doors, a homey hello.
Anthony Ludwig’s door swings shut for first-period psychology class. It’s just past the winter break and into the chilly slog toward spring. A young guy from Philly, Ludwig grabs a thermos of coffee to begin laps around the perimeter of the classroom, bullhorn voice explaining life’s stages.
“Memory and intelligence are affected by age. That’s why you’re in school right now!” Ludwig booms. Unless they fry their brains with weed, booze or crack, he adds, those mental faculties should remain just as strong until their 60s.
A dozen teens, each embodying what this school now faces, sit rapt. Or asleep.
Up front, senior Noah Johnson pens precise notes. He used to transfer out to West Ashley High under No Child Left Behind, a federal law that let students flee “failing” schools. But when that busing ended a few years ago, his single mom had no car to drive him. So he came here, not wanting to.
Romulus Townes sits in the middle. A 6-foot, 3-inch sophomore, his future hangs on a bitter custody battle involving his mother, father, grandmother and the state Department of Social Services. He could be sent away from here at any time.
Senior Chenelle Perry doodles in back. Her best friend died in a drive-by shooting. Another friend was riding with the shooter. The first anniversary approaches.
Off to one side, freshman Maurice Williams takes notes, empty backpack on, a fresh 3-inch incision in his skull hinting at his own near death a few weeks ago. He just moved in with a half-sister barely out of high school with two kids of her own.
Ludwig talks about assessing one’s life before death. A girl raises her hand.
“So what’s PTSD?” she says, out of nowhere.
Post-traumatic stress disorder, Ludwig explains. People who experience traumas, violent ones, are most at risk.
Students ‘left behind’
Many students at North Charleston High have faced near homelessness, street violence, severe family instability or other major upheavals in their young lives.
Although the campus sits right off Park Circle, one of the region’s trendiest spots, Spruill Avenue has become the main street for many left here. It’s a high-crime stretch beyond the reach of gentrification where windows hide behind boards and bars, porches sag and generations live mired in minimum-wage poverty.
That’s because the school, which should house a diverse group of 1,141 students from across its attendance zone, instead enrolled just 450 this year — and shrinking. Nearly 90 percent of its students are black in an area that’s more than a quarter white, and virtually all left are poor.
Casey Trauger sees their struggles daily. She’s the longest-serving special-education teacher in what has become the school’s biggest department.Left behind | The Post and Courier: