May 7, 2008 10:03 pm US/Eastern
Clayton Academy Gets Mixed Reviews
NORTH SIDE (KDKA) ―
Some people call it Pittsburgh's most dangerous school - a virtual student prison, while still others say it's a godsend that's turning young lives around.
Clayton Academy on the North Side is a new school where principals are sending the city's most disruptive students.
The school is for grades 6th through 12th and is designed to house and hopefully educate the district's most disruptive students.
About 250 students who had been chronic discipline problems in their original schools re now being busted to Clayton which is operated by a private company, CEP, under a five-year $28 million contract.
Students attend classes under the watchful eye of CEP's security guards and are required to wear the same green shirts and beige pants.
"Everybody's dressed the same. There's no competition about who's wearing what," Principal Georgia Vassilakis said.
Sheehan: "There's no gang colors."
Vassilakis: "There's no gang colors."
But neighborhood tensions still exist and to date city and school police have been called to Clayton more than 50 times for drugs, weapons violations and fights, including one large melee in December involving more than a dozen students.
Several teachers have left and the original principal quit.
Superintendent Mark Roosevelt says the district needed to remove these students from the other schools.
"The kids who were being chronically disruptive if you will were making it harder to educate the kids who were not," Roosevelt said.
The fact that most of the kids at Clayton are African-American has led School Board Member Mark Brentley to disparage the school as a prison where black students are warehoused.
"It is set up in a way where it's like a prison - color-coded, full searches," he said.
While some parents have complained, others have only praise.
The district transferred Lisa Frazier's 18-year-old son Joseph Drewery to Clayton after he got into multiple fights at Langley High School. But in his first year at Clayton, Joseph became an honor student, embracing Clayton's discipline and thinking of the future.
"If it wasn't for this school, I probably wouldn't be thinking about going to college, just being out," Drewery said.
"Now, he's talking about college, which I couldn't even get him to think about college before. I'm very happy," Frazier said.
Vassilakis says it's stories like Joseph's that make it worth the struggle.
"The challenges are there but the rewards are more," she said.
While acknowledging a rough start, Roosevelt says Clayton is making strides in both reducing fights and reaching students academically.
He says he wouldn't give Clayton an A, but would give it credit for improvement.
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