With home visits, mentorship and sneakers, Baltimore City schools program aims to bring students back to class

When Da’Quane Gilliam started thinking about dropping out of high school in 2019, Roger Shaw of the Baltimore City Public School System started showing up at his house to try to change his mind.

The two first met when Shaw saw Gilliam walking across the street from Patterson High after school. Shaw had heard from teachers that he should keep an eye on the teenage ninth grader. Talking on the street that day, Gilliam told Shaw that school wasn’t for him. Shaw replied that he wasn’t going to give up.

As part of several home visits, Shaw invited Gilliam to the BCPSS Re-Engagement Center and arranged for him to be placed in different schools until he found the perfect fit: Career Academy, an alternative school that has a smaller community that Gilliam felt he could better handle. There, the people felt like family, Gilliam said. He became president of the student government association and got to explore the region through monthly field trips.

Today, Gilliam is a high school graduate of the Class of 2023, preparing to attend the Community College of Baltimore County this fall.

“It don’t seem real because I never thought I would graduate,” Gilliam said. “But I am proud of myself.”

Absenteeism has been a long-standing issue for the school district, which has a dropout rate of 17.8%,according to the state education department. And the coronavirus pandemic only worsened the problem.

Yet over the past year, the Re-Engagement Center has nearly doubled the number of students it’s helped bring back to school, with the total rising from 661 last year to 1,083 this year, said Shaw, who is the executive director of reengagement for city schools and has spent the bulk of his career in Baltimore.He credits the success to the resources allocated to the program and word-of-mouth endorsements about how the school system can help in various situations.Shaw said his ultimate goal is to engage every student who needs resources in the city, thus allowing the center to expand and adapt its mission of serving students and families.

“This has the possibility to change the trajectory of Baltimore,” he said. “You’re working with some of the most vulnerable students in Baltimore. If you can engage them and get them on a path of success, it will change Baltimore City because students will begin to make the connection of school to life, and they begin to identify their purpose.”The Re-Engagement Center came together in the 2016-17 school year, when Shaw and a colleague interviewed about 1,000 students asking what it would take to connect with those who are at risk of dropping out, have dropped out or are transitioning back to school following incarceration.They learned that life circumstances outside school, such as employment or lack of child care, were the main reason people dropped out. Shaw also found that students were what he described as “emotionally incarcerated,” meaning that they needed help releasing and unpacking their individual experiences.With that groundwork, the center has grown to offer a multitude of services and resources, and this academic year, the system invested $2 million of its budget to the center.

Based in the BCPSS administrative building on North Avenue in Barclay, the center hosts a team of social workers, a homelessness specialist, a Hispanic population specialist, a substance abuse partner and other professionals working to help students and families. Within the center, there are intake rooms dedicated to bringing in students to talk and fill out paperwork, meeting rooms and a resource room packed with everything from backpacks to clothes to diapers. Student seven can pick out a pair of brand-name shoes at no cost — an idea that all started with a forgotten pair of Air Jordans.Shaw shared a recollection of a student who said a few years ago that he couldn’t to go back to school. The student kicked up his feet on top of the conference table, showing Shaw and reengagement specialist Ernest Miles the holes in his shoes. Remembering a pair of unused Jordans he purchased in the wrong size, Miles found the shoes and gifted them to the student.

The moment led Shaw to add a shoe store to the center.

Thanks to a partnership with DTLR, students can now stop by for new shoes with style. Sometimes, there are even the popular Nike Air Force 1 sneakers for the taking, Shaw said. The shoes now also function as an incentive — if students keep their attendance up, they can add another pair to their collections, Shaw said.Come September, the center will be adding two new services: a transition center for previously incarcerated students and in-person evening school classes.The transition center will help students who need more of an eased introduction back into the routine of school. The centeroffers evening classes online, but the in-person option will help supplement that for students who need classroom instruction. Outside partners, like Concentric Educational Solutions, help the school system reengage students.

The Baltimore-based non profit has partnered with more than 300 schools in 20 states with the goal of reaching students early and delivering the necessary resources. The organization also offers mental health services in-house to ease access for students who need them. Concentric employs student advocates, like Daryl Hylton, who work in schools as tutors and mentors and conduct home visits to check on students who have been identified as in need of support by their schools. Hylton said he hasn’t missed a day of work in two years to show his students that he will be there for the no matter what. Last year, he conducted 179 home visits.

“It truly takes a village to raise these kids,” Hylton said.Through these home visits, Hylton checks in to see how students are doing and what they need. All the collected information gets sent back to the student’s school, so administrators can see what the student requires to help them succeed, be it home internet, homework packets or mental health services.Hylton said schools usually identify cohorts of 100 students, which works out to about 20 home visits a day. On Aug. 3, Hylton conducted six visits, traveling around and outside Baltimore. Some of the students don’t live near their schools and use the addresses of family members who live within the city. Hylton said he understands why attendance would be an issue with them living so far from school.

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