Bremen's Delta Academy Gives Students A Second Shot At A Diploma

OAK FOREST, IL — Martez Allen had a great time during his freshman year of high school — he hung out with his friends, cut a few classes, goofed around for laughs. Grades? With three years left of coursework, he could focus on those later.

By the middle of sophomore year, not much had changed, except that Allen began suffering from blinding headaches. He couldn't open his eyes it if was too bright outside. Sometimes, Allen could barely get out of bed. He began missing school. Still, he thought, there was time to make up his work.

But the headaches persisted, and an MRI showed why. Allen had a grape-sized tumor on his brain that was blocking the flow of his cerebral spinal fluid. Doctors couldn't remove the tumor, but they could create a new passageway for the fluid. It would take months, and the summer, for him to recover.

Fall came, and with it, junior year. Allen went back to Hillcrest High School with a new attitude. He'd had a scare, gotten a new lease on life and he was going to work hard and give school his all. But then a counselor pulled him aside and delivered news that hit him like bricks: Allen had missed so much school he didn't have enough credits to graduate with the rest of his class.

"I was like 'why didn't anybody tell me before?'" he said. The new attitude disappeared in a snap. He knew he couldn't control getting sick, but if he'd known he was in danger of not graduating earlier, he might have acted differently, he said. But in his mind, it was too late. Allen wanted to quit school.

Allen, however, had another option: Delta Academy, Bremen District 228's new alternative education program.

Allen's mother refused to let him leave without a diploma, so she worked with school administrators to enroll him in August at Delta, where Allen would be able to make up his missing credits at his own pace.

It was a tough sell. Allen was still crushed by the thought that he had "failed" high school. But then, he said, "I kept seeing progress and the teachers who barely even knew me were motivating me and that made me work harder than I ever did before."

That's the goal of Erin Collins, Delta's director. She is trying to give kids who don't thrive in a traditional setting another way to graduate with a high school diploma.

"My focus is to make sure our teachers spend time with the students one-to-one, being great role models and making relationships and connections with students so that they succeed," she said.

Delta is housed in six rooms on the Oak Forest campus of South Suburban College, space the college donated. It is designed to be a credit recovery program for students cannot earn the state-mandated 22 credits in time to graduate in four years.

"There are a hundred reasons why a student may not make it in a traditional setting," Collins said. "They may have trouble paying attention, have anxiety, have an IEP, be working or helping to take care of a family." Some, such as Allen, have medical reasons for falling behind in school.

Delta opened in August with 109 students, and because students can be referred by the district's four high schools at any time, it will have 161 pupils by the end of the school year, records showed. So far this year, most of the students come from Hillcrest and most are African American, but district officials said they are cautious about drawing conclusions from the data. All four district high schools received "commendable" ratings from the state — the second-highest available — and because enrollment is referral-based, the population shifts quickly and could look very different next year, they said.

Alternative education programs are not new. In Illinois, more than 33,000 of the 2 million students in public schools, or fewer than 1 percent, attend some form of alternative education program, state board of education records showed. In the past, many of these have been criticized for warehousing kids with behavior or academic problems. But Delta, Collins said, aims to be distinctly different from those types of programs.

Students attend classes Monday through Friday from from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. or from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. Some, such as Allen, will stay into the evening hours a few days each week to try to catch up. They make up their coursework through an online curriculum called Edgenuity, and through project-based learning. On a recent visit, for example, a visitor watched a student study sound waves through a common experiment that uses a string and a spoon to make the spoon ring.

There are no rows of desks or chalkboards in Delta's classrooms. In fact, there is little that is traditional about the learning spaces. Teachers act more like coaches or guides, reteaching lessons as needed, preferring to work alongside students rather than stand at the front of the room to lecture. Collins worked with a design firm to create spaces for youth who no longer would be moving from class-to-class or to a cafeteria for lunch. So students instead sit at cafe tables or in banquette seating much in a way they would do in college. The flexibility helps them to move and stretch when they need to stay focused, she explained.

Walking into Delta's space feels more like walking into a dorm or well-decorated community center. The rooms are painted in muted pastels and two teachers dim their lights and add soft lighting to the spaces. One teacher uses essential oils to scent her room. Because there is no high-school cafeteria, Sodexo, the district's food vendor, donates 50 sandwiches a day so that any Delta student who needs lunch can have it.

All of that is by design, too, Collins said. Her team of teachers and a counselor tries many approaches to reduce students' anxieties to make them feel safe and supported in an academic setting.

That has been a draw for Peyton Williams, 18. She said that she thought high school would be more like the movie High School Musical — maybe without the singing. Williams said she thought she'd have more time to hang out with her friends and didn't realize she wouldn't have the same structure and supports she had in middle school. So, disillusioned, she struggled with the demands of homework and due dates. The farther she fell behind, the more anxious she became. Sometimes she needed more time or more review, but she was too ashamed to ask teachers for help.

"Here, I can go back and do reviews and I can see the progress I've made," she said. "I'm not so afraid of messing up."

Bremen officials said that data shows that even in its first year, Delta may be working. Since August, 33 students have graduated with diplomas from their home schools and another 31 are on track to graduate by the end of the year. Graduates who did not think they would walk away with a diploma reported that they are now thinking about taking on trades, attending college or enlisting in the military.

A spokesman from South Suburban said the college has been happy with the Bremen partnership so far and plans to renew its contract after it expires next year.

"We think it's a great success," said spokesman Patrick Rush. "At this point, we look forward to continuing the relationship."

The biggest proof, officials said, is in the students. Allen, who entered Delta with seven credit hours, is on track to graduate by the end of the school year. And the teen who was so disgusted with the high-school credit system that he would thought he would quit is now thinking about going to college to become a teacher so he can work at school just like Delta.

"To those kids out there who want to give up, I thought that, too," he said. "But look at me now."