But the students here are all unemployed adults who dropped out of high school, and are taking a class through the Educational Opportunity Center, a federally funded program to help adults without high school diplomas get the equivalency certificates necessary to enter college and land jobs.

They’re taking the General Education Development (GED) exam, a rigorous seven-hour test of reading, writing, and math skills.  It’s equivalent to a high school diploma, though “the GED is much harder,” says David Perez, director of the Harlem Center for Education, which has prepared students for the GED since 2002. These students still have seven weeks till the exam, according to the countdown written on the whiteboard at the front of the classroom. Considering the obstacles GED takers uptown face, these students are going to have to make the most of this time.

Employed New York City residents depending on educational attainment (American Community Survey, 2005-07)

People without a high school diploma are less likely to find jobs, a recent study by the Community Service Society shows, and when they do, they often work fewer hours for lower pay.

Median annual income of New York City residents depending on educational attainment (American Community Survey, 2005-07)

The study documents how the city suffers too.

Undereducated and unemployed adults place a great burden on public coffers; over their lifetimes, they cost the city $135,000 more than they pay in taxes, for expenses from incarceration to shelters. Those who complete high school or pass the GED contribute over $190,000 more, on average, to the city treasury.

One way out of poverty is to study for the GED exam which offers a faster track towards a job. “It’s code for people.  The GED is a code used to explain that I need to return to education to improve myself,” says Bruce Carmel, deputy executive director at Turning Point in Brooklyn, which provides adult education services.

Net fiscal contributions of New York City residents (American Community Survey, 2005-2007)

But local GED test-takers may have more to reckon with than those elsewhere.

New York State has very low GED pass rates; with only 60 percent passing, the state ranks 48th in the country. New York City does even worse, with only 47.5 percent passing. Despite the fact that 1.1 million city residents are eligible for the GED, only 28,000 took the test in 2007, just under 3 percent of the eligible population, according to the American Council on Education.

The CSS study indicated even worse results for uptown Manhattan, where 30 to 40 percent of working-age adults lack a high school diploma or its equivalent, a higher proportion than any city neighborhood except the South Bronx. GED pass rates here are low, and lack of information about the test and a badly functioning school system are to blame, Perez says.

The GED was not the Harlem Center for Education’s primary focus when it opened, Perez says.  The center started offering the GED only seven years ago. “But we need it because this is East Harlem,” he says. “Students come in with a lack of skills and a lot of it is foundational – they just don’t know how to read and write.”  So GED programs uptown have more work to do than those elsewhere, Perez says, because they have to start with the basics.

Maritza Ptsos, the program director at HANAC, a state-funded GED testing center that’s free for welfare recipients, agrees. “Many of them barely have the skills to start studying for the GED, forget passing it,” she says.

The problems are also personal. “There is so much baggage, and the big problem is a lack of self esteem,” Ptsos finds. “One year ago we had a student who was involved in a gang, in prostitution, when she joined our program. How can anyone be expected to study under such circumstances?”

Often, personal problems lead to high levels of absenteeism and attrition. At the Harlem Center for Education, the attrition rate is almost 70 percent, Perez says. To combat this, the Center and other test programs uptown like HANAC offer students counseling for their personal problems.

“Most of our students are from the Bronx and upper Manhattan,” says Glykeria Manis, a counselor at HANAC. “Many live in shelters. And when they go home at night, are they going to be concerned about feeding themselves and their kids, or about doing their math homework?”

However, the problems also lie within the system.  Reduced funding has led to a lack of seats at testing sites like SUNY. “GED sites are overwhelmed,” says Perez. “Sometimes people just don’t get to take the test, even if they’ve prepared for it.”

Manis agrees that funding cuts have made it much harder for her students. Since HANAC lost all its November and December funding, it is offering fewer testing dates. “What we need is a change in policy perspective,” she says.

Ever since welfare reforms during the Clinton administration, students at centers like HANAC must work at jobs three days a week and come to class only two days. In order to take the GED for free, they have to work 35 hours a week. “They complain that if we want them to get the GED, then how come we expect them to work more than they study?” Manis says.

The study shows that the State Education Department allocates $3.9 million per year for GED examinations — not enough to cover even administration costs, according to Jacque Cook, author of the recently published education book, “Our Chance for Change.” Providing information to test-takers about how the GED is structured, and why it is useful, is the first step towards achieving better results for students, she argues, but the state offers little help.  According to the Community Service Society study the city’s Department of Education spends about $1000 per GED student taking the test in New York  — definitely not enough, Perez agrees.

Information seems another key factor in explaining abysmal test scores. “There is no one place where students can get all the information they need, and the state needs to provide one,” says Ptsos, who fields hundreds of questions from prospective students every day. “People put in three different applications in three different sites, and then there are seats left vacant, and people still can’t get a seat.” Her message is clear: the state needs to create a comprehensive information system to clear up such confusion.

Moreover, the study reveals a distinct lack of standardization in instruction. Some GED teachers work for the city’s education department, which generally pays them better, while others work for private testing centers. There are no standards for what qualifies them to become GED instructors; usually, a bachelor’s degree in any subject is sufficient.

“I think they need to be certified teachers and expert in a specific subject matter,” says Perez. At his center, the instructor, wizened and friendly, has a master’s degree and a decade of teaching experience under her belt. “There is no set criteria that is disseminated by the state or the city on what these programs need to cover,” Perez adds. Does his staff just take a shot in the dark, then? “We try our best, we look at preparation materials, but this could all be so much easier.”

His center tries to teach students more than just how to pass the GED. “We are trying to build a framework, to encourage good habits.” The wall of the classroom is covered with motivational quotes. “You want to pass the GED or not?!” says one poster. “If you don’t have time to study, then you don’t have time to pass,” says another.

Though the GED provides a route out of unemployment and towards a career for those without a high school education, Perez thinks that in the long term, that’s not enough. Five years down the line, he said, a non-GED holder’s income catches up. “If the GED holder does not move forward and get at least a year of post graduate education, then the non-GED holder will gain job experience, and it will all be same,” he says. “What we need is to foster a sense of momentum.”

Daniel Rodriguez, who structures the program at Perez’s center, agrees. “I keep trying to tell the students that this is just the beginning. I start them off and get them to pass, and then I pass them along to Marlene, who gets them into college.”

Marlene Flax works with the college portion of the center’s comprehensive program. “We get them into good colleges, anywhere that they want to go, but mostly within the CUNY system. The GED is just a starting point,” she explains. “We get them financial aid, and we do all this within the community, by putting up flyers and banners.”

New York’s poor performance has a lot to do with its government’s attitude, according to Perez. “This city does a good job of absorbing these people, under lots of money poured into welfare programs,” he says. He notices better results in other states like Oregon and Michigan, whose GED programs coexist with courses for college credits. Students there can study for the GED and take college level classes at the same time, making them better equipped to handle the job market. In New York, no such system exists. “[Government authorities] don’t feel the need to develop the homegrown workforce like others do. They don’t care about these people,” Perez says.

“Where are these people going? If this was anywhere else, we’d have outrage on the streets. Here, it’s all quiet.”

Harlem Renaissance High School, a transfer school in East Harlem, offers programs tailored to the needs of students previously off-track from graduating. (Photo by Rachael Horowitz)

Dashawn Gadsen left John F. Kennedy High School in the Bronx without a diploma after four years of poor attendance. Overage and under-credited, he entered Harlem Renaissance High School in 2008, at the age of 17, in the hopes of turning around his academic record. “A real person will admit to their mistakes,” he said of his years at JFK, where his problems had less to do with his classes and more to do with his not showing up. “I had to break out of it.”

The Department of Education does not freely offer public records of overage students like Gadsen in the system, but it does offer a definition of overage as being two or more years older than the standard age for a grade. Gadsen is at risk for dropping out due to his age and his lack of credits, but unlike him, many at-risk students are already overage by the time they leave middle school, if not earlier. About 65 percent of the students in the city who drop out of high school were overage when they began ninth grade, according to a 2008 study from the department’s Office of Accountability.

Students become overage when they repeat grades, either because they don’t meet the promotional criteria or because of interruptions in their schooling, like foster care or frequent family relocation. “They’re overage because they’ve gone through a series of systems that haven’t met their needs,” said Shadia Alvarez, an aspiring principal at Harlem Renaissance High School, from which Gadsen hopes to graduate in August. “By the time we get them, they come in fighting us. We have to break down that wall in order to gain access to help and support them.”

Alvarez is training to become a principal through the New York City Leadership Academy and has been at Harlem Renaissance – a transfer school that accepts only students who have already been in ninth grade and are considered off-track for graduation – since August. The students are part of a group categorized by the Department of Education as under-credited, and as a result, more than 1 in 4 is also overage – older than the typical student in his or her grade.

The number of overage students in the city is significant and extends to all five boroughs, according to Christie Hill, a staff attorney for Advocates for Children of New York, an education access advocacy group, but disproportionate numbers are non-native English speakers, students with special needs and students of color. Ninety-eight percent of students at Harlem Renaissance Academy are African-American or Latino.

Advocates for Children is in the process of analyzing the Department of Education’s data on overage students to make recommendations and raise awareness, “so people know that a 16- or 17-year-old in eighth grade is not all that uncommon in New York City,” Hill said.

The issue of overage students is tied to promotion and retention policies in school – when students are allowed to pass from one grade to the next. Because overage students are less likely to graduate from high school, some people equate leaving back a student with giving him or her a dropout sentence.

However, the Department of Education released a report in October detailing the success of the latest fifth-grade retention and promotion policy, requiring students to earn a level 2 out of 4 in both math and English language arts proficiency tests before they advance to sixth grade. A level 2 generally indicates that the student is approaching grade level standards in the subject. The department began implementing the policy with third graders in 2003 and extended it to include fifth graders in 2004 and commissioned the RAND Corporation to conduct a study of its effectiveness.

Very few fifth graders – approximately 600 – were retained during the first three years of the policy, according to Jennifer McCombs a co-author of the study, which followed three cohorts of fifth graders from 2005 to 2007. A small number of those students were multiple holdovers, meaning they had already been retained once before: 126 in the first year and 56 in the third year.

“The majority of overage fifth graders end up being promoted,” McCombs said, supporting the conclusion that the impact of the fifth grade promotion policy on the number of overage students already in the system is minimal, and that it has increased student performance overall.

Despite RAND’s results, critics of retention still point to longstanding research correlating retention and lower graduation rates. “Retaining a student even one time puts them on a track to drop out at an exponential rate,” Hill said. She is particularly critical of the way retention is implemented in the city, where students who don’t meet promotional criteria in one area must repeat the entire year’s curriculum. “It keeps them off track,” she said, adding that if the Department of Education wants to use retention, it needs to “be smarter,” about it.

Concerns about overage students are frequently expressed in high-need schools where students are more likely to be retained, said McCombs. But researchers at RAND believe that as performance continues to increase in schools, over time the number of overage students will drop off. “It’s a very small population, but there’s grave concerns around these kids,” McCombs said.

The department has acknowledged the challenges of the overage population, a major, but less often discussed subset of the dropout population, and as a result is targeting it specifically at the high school level with the Office of Multiple Pathways to Graduation. The office allows schools like Harlem Renaissance to tailor to the needs of students who’ve fallen off the traditional time line for high school graduation. “We recognize that it’s not just ‘Brand X,’ ” said Tom Pendleton, the director of learning to work initiatives at the Office of Multiple Pathways to Graduation, one of the programs available to the overage, under-credited high school population, which according to Alvarez has offered a lot of support to Harlem Renaissance. “There’s not just one student who falls behind in high school,” Pendleton said.

Elisia Burrows likes to go by the name “Star.” In 10th grade, she took a yearlong break from school after the birth of her son, Sincere. When she returned to school, she chose Harlem Renaissance because it offers on-site daycare for her son. Now 20 years old, she can’t imagine herself at a “regular” high school. “It’s embarrassing,” she said. Burrows plans to graduate in June.

At Harlem Renaissance High School, students are not divided by grade level, but rather, by how many credits they’ve earned in an effort to target the specific needs of each student. In early December, the school’s credit recovery week gave students the opportunity to “recover” hours of missed coursework. Students flowed in and out of Alvarez’s office, eager to make up the credits they need in order to stay on track for graduation. This year the school implemented a computer-assisted program for credit recovery and students had questions about login information, passwords and assignments.

During this time, students at Harlem Renaissance worked busily on laptops in each classroom for a singular purpose: catch up. While this wasn’t what a typical day looks like at the school, it reflected the atmosphere there: one that encourages students who are off-track to take control of their academic future. Alvarez explained, “We’re trying to create an environment where people don’t see that as a negative, but as a possibility.”

“The work going on at the high school level is needed,” Hill said. “But we do need to do the work earlier.” She is optimistic about the Office of Multiple Pathways to Graduation’s efforts and recommends that middle schools follow suit. “A 16-year-old in eighth grade has different needs than a 13-year old,” Hill said. She explained that middle schools should be authorized to be “flexible” to meet the needs of these students and keep them invested with half-day programs, midyear promotion to high school, or increased access to high school curriculum to earn credits even if they’ve been retained.

This year the Office of Multiple Pathways to Graduation also opened the High School for Excellence and Innovation, designated for students who turned 16 in the eighth grade, and according to Pendleton, the city is opening more transfer schools each year. While these interventions show promise for an under-served population, some worry that it’s not enough. “The resources do not meet the demand,” Hill said, noting the long waiting lists for many of these new schools.

Alvarez is also concerned about the large numbers of students requiring the type of specialized academic setting offered at Harlem Renaissance, which serves 230 students and has increased its class sizes. “The DOE will send you everyone if they think you have a supportive environment,” she said. “But they’re not taking into account what happens when you overpopulate a classroom.”

Though the resources may not yet meet the need, acknowledging the unique needs of overage students is a step for the Department of Education in reining in the number of high school dropouts. “New York is one of our leading cities in terms of addressing the dropout crisis,” said Chris Sturgis, former consultant to the U.S. Department of Education on secondary school strategies, and co-founder of the Youth Transition Funders Group, a network of grant organizations focusing on young adults in need of extra support.

Hill also acknowledged the work of advocacy groups and non-profits in supporting the overage population in New York. “There’s lots of good work going on across the city,” she said, “but they’re in their own silos not communicating.”

Parents at P.S. 123, the Mahalia Jackson Academy, have protested sharing space with the Harlem Success Academy since the charter moved into the building last year. (Photo by Sarah Butrymowicz)

When Harlem Success Academy 2 returned for its second year at 301 W 140th St., it added grades – a typical practice for charter schools, Jenny Sadlis, director of Success Charter Network’s external communications, said via email. With a growing student body, though, the school needed more classrooms and moved into some previously used by P.S. 123, with which it shares the building. The action further strained the relationship between the schools and in the surrounding community.

Parents and advocates for P.S. 123, the Mahalia Jackson Academy, have complained that the charter is taking away space without concern for the public school students. William Hargraves, whose niece attends P.S. 123, charged that the Department of Education favors charters over regular public schools.

Harlem Success Academy, whose current enrollment is 361, serves kindergarten through second grade; it eventually plans to expand to eighth grade. P.S. 123 has an enrollment of 630 students this year in pre-kindergarten through seventh grade.

The tensions began when the charter school first moved into the building, but increased this year when P.S. 123 lost its computer room to the charter school, as well as part of its teachers’ lounge and half its library, now devoted to Harlem Success Academy office space, said Hargraves.

P.S. 123 was offered basement rooms to replace some of the space Harlem Success Academy has commandeered, but “there’s no way a kid can learn in that environment,” Hargraves said, describing the basement as “no more than a storage area.” The school squeezed in classes elsewhere in the building.

Space is allocated in all schools across the city based on “a footprint” the Department of Education determines, said spokesperson William Havemann. While the footprint allocates the number of each type of classroom a school should have, based on its enrollment, “it does not determine which particular rooms in a building go to each school,” he said. The school officials decide that themselves.

“A lot of work went into the agreement between P.S. 123 and Harlem Success, and both schools participated in discussions,” said Havemann in a follow-up email.

But Hargraves still feels that the Harlem Success Academy “has the choice of the best rooms.”

The charter school, however, maintains that it has divided space fairly. “We treat all of our roommates with the utmost respect,” Sadlis said.

But Dianne Johnson, president of Community Education Council 5, said the Academy sometimes demonstrates a “disrespectful” attitude toward its public school neighbors. “If we have to be in the same building, then we all need to learn how to get along,” she said.

Parents, teachers and students have held rallies opposing the charter school since last year. At the most recent, held last month before the Academy’s annual parent appreciation event at the Roseland Ballroom, the chants ranged from “The people united will never be defeated” to “Eva Moskowitz must go” – a reference to Harlem Success’s founder. They plan to continue the rallies, Hargraves said at the time, but have not held once since then.

For Hargraves, the issue goes beyond the competition with the Harlem Success Academy. Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his administration have abandoned public schools and favor charter schools, charged Hargraves, who at the rally led chants of “Bloomberg lies while public schools die.”

Mabel Moody Washington, however, has two grandchildren in the Harlem Success Academy, primarily because it provided a better education than regular public schools, she said; she is unapologetic about that choice.

She sees the Harlem Success Academy as helping disadvantaged communities catch up to the more privileged. “For centuries, our children have lagged behind. Now they’re not,” she said. “You leave there with the academic skills you need to succeed.”

The charter was ranked number 32 out of 3,500 schools in the city, according to its website. One hundred percent of its third graders passed last year’s math exam. At all four Harlem Success schools, 95 percent of third graders passed the English Language Arts exam.

P.S. 123 is rated a successful school too. It received an A from the Department of Education last year, and a B each of the prior two years. But although 77 percent of its third graders passed the math exam, just 39 percent passed the English Language Arts exam.

While Johnson said she doesn’t oppose charter schools and thinks that parents deserve educational choices, she feels that regular public schools deserve more respect. “It’s like you’re picking, your children are better than my children,” she said. “It’s starting to cause a whole lot of controversy from neighbor to neighbor.”

Johnson said she has contacted Moscowitz about forming a committee, with representatives from both schools, to work together, but Moscowitz has not yet replied.

“We are not aware of any such request,” Sedlis said.

But Johnson said she planned to try again. “The only thing I can do is keep reaching out,” she said. “It’s up to her to respond.”

Mary Ann Preston gives students a counter-recruiting flier with information on career services. (Photo by Marvin Anderson)

Ann Smith couldn’t walk more than 50-feet to the front door of her son’s high school before counter-recruiting volunteers approached her.

With yellow and white fliers in hand, a volunteer walked backwards and quizzed Smith on new mandates restricting military recruiters while she headed to the school.

“Are you a parent of a student?” asked Mary Ann Preston, a volunteer with United for Peace’s counter-recruiting efforts. Smith nodded yes and mentioned her son, who attends the school for a law program.

“His information will be sent to military recruiters unless you sign the opt-out form,” the volunteer said.

But Smith already knew.

She filed forms with Louis Brandeis High at the beginning of the school year restricting the military recruiters from obtaining her son’s name, phone number and address; a privilege to which the armed services are entitled under the No Child Left Behind Act.

This school year is the first New York City schools have provided opt-out forms to forgo having student’s personal information sent to military recruiters. For years, counter-recruiters including the New York Civil Liberties Union, Grannies for Peace Brigade and other non-profits have galvanized uptown communities against military recruiters in schools.

Smith said she had heard about the forms from the school, but still felt a need for disseminating more information as military recruiters unfairly target minorities and youth in what they consider impoverished areas of uptown.

“They approach them first and talk about higher education,” she said. “That’s why I keep filling out the opt-out form.”

Juan Quiroz, a senior at Louis Brandeis High, reads a counter-recruiting flier at his school's parent-teacher night. (Photo by Marvin Anderson)

Military recruiters crossed boundaries as some began to pitch their services during classes and others began to call students more aggressively, Smith said, and that’s what caused people to speak out.

With the backing of local politicians, including Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein amended statutes to include the opt-out provision that restricted recruiter’s access to students in school and those who wanted privacy.

Although the statute was passed in May, organizations with United for Peace said that many high schools didn’t provide the opt-out forms to parents. The groups united and on Oct. 29, they attended parent-teacher nights at 45 New York City schools and delivered counter-recruiting pamphlets and information fliers about the new statute.

Louis Brandeis High was only one location of many where the organizations actively pushed counter-recruiting measures with Erica Braudy, a New York Civil Liberties Union lawyer as she spearheaded efforts early in the school year.

“We’re not against the Army and we’re not against the military,” she said of the continuing counter recruiting efforts. “It’s a good plan. But everything should be out in front.”

After delivering counter-recruiting information directly to high school students, Braudy said in years past numerous reports were filed stating that recruiters sponsored extracurricular activities to glamorize the armed forces.

The events, she said, were in addition to using class time to make pitches and using private information to aggressively pursue students.

“Our job is to make sure there are good policies in the school so the military doesn’t have free range,” Braudy said after she spoke with members of the Granny Peace Brigade and divided pamphlets.

The Granny Peace Brigade also participated in a protest outside the Harlem Recruiting Office on 125 Street and Lenox after organizing demonstrations with the Civil Liberties Union.

More than five counter-recruiting volunteers speak with students and as they wait for their parent-teacher night. (Photo by Marvin Anderson)

Protesters, behind an iron gate at the recruiting office, yelled into bull horns as they handed out fliers to passersby. But the recruiting office was empty.

“When we see protests, we just leave,” said one Army recruiter, Sgt. Eric Richardson. “It’s not that serious.”

Richardson said he was accustomed to protests and other demonstrations, some of which begin peacefully but escalate into riots where he’s been called a “pimp” and “flesh-peddler.”

Although organizations have increased their counter-recruiting efforts, he said, most of the Army’s recruits aren’t high school students. In the past two years, five recruits in the uptown area were from high schools, he said.

Many students who even show interest in the military can’t pass the standardized test to be considered and don’t meet strict physical standards, Richardson said.

“The intent is not just to recruit seniors but anyone we feel could benefit the Army,” he said.

But to strengthen a positive presence in the community and hopefully increase a number of qualified recruits, Richardson said the Army has created afterschool tutoring programs and websites for uptown high schools. The programs and websites aren’t just for military purposes, but to also increase test scores and aid education, Richardson said.

Alicia Henderson, parent of a freshman at Brandeis High, said she would allow her son, Nikai, to consider the military even after reading counter-recruiting documents but only after he graduates from high school.

Nikai said he’s not considering the military as an option but hasn’t seen any recruiters in his school or classrooms.

Still, Henderson said the military shouldn’t approach students while they’re in high school.

“That’s the parents’ decision,” she said as she accepted counter-recruiting pamphlets. “He’s a minor.”

CCNY student veteran Aubrey Arcangel prepares to speak before a City Council hearing held by the higher education and veterans committees on Oct. 27 to determine how many New York City veterans have been affected by delayed GI Bill payments. (Photo by Lisa Waananen)

Delays in GI Bill payments from the Veterans Administration forced veterans enrolled at City College to borrow from parents, beg landlords for lenience and consider dropping out, junior Aubrey Arcangel testified at a City Council hearing last week.

“Student veterans were watching the situation develop day-to-day, trying to figure out how long they were able to hold on before they would have to drop out to pay the bills,” said Arcangel, who was among the veteran leaders who pushed for the new GI Bill in Washington last year.

Like many student veterans around the country, those at City College have waited since the beginning of the school year while the VA struggles to process an influx of applications for the Post-9/11 GI Bill, which went into effect Aug. 1.

The new GI Bill broadly improves education benefits for recent veterans. Meant to enable anyone who served on active duty since Sept. 11, 2001, to attend college full-time without struggling to pay for it, it increases maximum tuition and living stipends. Instead of a flat rate, it takes location into account for living expenses – a change particularly important in high-cost areas like New York City. A student veteran at City College eligible for maximum benefits should receive $500 each semester for books and $2,744 each month for living expenses, with tuition and fees covered by the VA and the state Veterans Tuition Award.

But delays in payments mean that reality has fallen short of the promise. Adjusting to life as a civilian and a student is a huge transition, Arcangel said, and the GI Bill is supposed to make it easier for new students, not add to their stress. “This is their first semester and they’re having to worry about their finances instead of their studies,” he said. “It’s ridiculous.”

CCNY student Livia Abreu got out of the military in August, and figured college was the logical option for a 22-year-old who doesn’t want to end up working at McDonald’s. She did everything she was supposed to and received certification for GI Bill benefits this summer, but then the checks didn’t arrive. “I’m counting on this money that I, you know, earned,” she said. “And I don’t have it. I can’t pay my phone bill, I can’t pay my car, I can’t pay my rent.”

Abreu hadn’t expected she’d need to ask her parents for help at this point in her life. She’d paid her own income taxes. She’d been to war.
“Then I come home,” she said, “and I have to be, ‘Hey Mom, can I get $2 for a sandwich?”

In response to similar stories around the country, the VA started handing out $3,000 advance checks on Oct. 2 to veterans awaiting payments. Abreu arrived at the regional office downtown by 7:45 a.m. that day, along with hundreds of other New York veterans. The whole process took a little more than two hours, she said.

“I walked out pretty happy,” she said afterward. “I’m not completely satisfied yet, but it’s progress.”

When the VA announced that emergency checks would be issued, its employees were working overtime to process more than 277,000 applications for the new GI Bill. At that point in late September, the VA had certified more than 200,000 of those veterans for the benefits, but made only 61,000 actual payments to schools and students.

As the VA lagged, City College stepped up. When the money for books didn’t arrive – forcing some veterans to consider dropping classes with expensive books – Associate Vice President of Student Affairs Robert Rodriguez arranged a loan program. The $3,000 emergency checks meant only a couple of veterans needed to take advantage of the offer, but Rodriguez said it’s still important as part of the college’s commitment. “I made it clear to the veterans that if they need the money, it is there for them,” he said.

Accommodating veterans has been a personal cause for Rodriguez, himself an Army veteran. Even before the national changes in benefits, Rodriguez was rallying support within the university administration for better veterans’ services on campus. About 75 veterans attended City College last year; now there are more than 200. More than a dozen are already planning to start spring semester. “It’s definitely increasing, and we just need to be prepared for it,” Rodriguez said.

These days, City College veterans can get information and help from Veterans Affairs Coordinator Welby Alcantara, hired in May, and spend time between classes at a new lounge space designated for veterans. They can join the City College Veterans Association, which Arcangel leads while the president is studying abroad. A year ago, none of those resources existed.

Alcantara said a few veterans did decide to drop classes like physics or calculus, which require books costing more than $100. He’s seen student veterans come into his office stressed to the point of dropping out, convinced they couldn’t stay in school if the bills kept stacking up with no sign of the VA payments. Alcantara said veterans able to get through to the VA to ask about their benefits received the same standard answer: “Four to six weeks.”

“The VA works just like the military: Hurry up and wait,” he said.

The long-anticipated checks started showing up soon after the VA began issuing emergency checks, and by the end of October most City College veterans were waiting nervously for midterm exam results instead of money.

So far, no City College veterans have dropped out.

It’s still frustrating to see veterans in the embarrassing position of asking for loans and favors because the VA wasn’t prepared to process the increase in applications, Arcangel said. He and other veterans who used the older version of the GI Bill learned to expect delays, he said, but the Post-9/11 GI Bill was supposed to change that.

“We served our country and this is a benefit that’s owed to us,” Arcangel said. “We’re not reaching for a handout; this is something that was promised to us.”

The Islamic Cultural Center of New York, at 96th Street and Third Avenue plans to open the first full-time Islamic school in Manhattan next fall. The school, financed by the government of Kuwait, will occupy two floors of an adjacent apartment building. It will begin with grades pre-K through 2 and eventually expand to include high school, said Imam Shamsi Ali, acting imam at the mosque.

“It’s like a dream for us,” said Raesa Algazali, who teaches at the mosque’s weekend school and has been hoping for an Islamic school for her children for the past six years. “If they learn about Islam here, I don’t have to go back home,” said Algazali, explaining that she returns to Yemen every three or four years so her children are exposed to Islam and to Arabic.

The center is trying to complete construction so it can apply for a certificate of occupancy, required to apply for a license.

“Though we call it Islamic school, we are going to teach everything else,” Ali said, “plus, of course, Islamic tradition.”

While a private institution, the school will conform to New York City requirements and follow a public school curriculum along with an Islamic one, Ali said. It will hire licensed teachers fluent in English. The medium of instruction will be English and Muslim students will be required to take courses in Islamic practices, Arabic and ethics. Non-Muslim students will have the choice to study the parallel curriculum, but will not be required to.

The school will be open to discussion regarding controversial subjects like evolution, Ali said, and the students will be free to choose their own stances on the subject.

While “cultural reasons” may prevent the school from continuing coeducation after grade 6, the imam said that will depend on facilities at the time. The imam, however, is a proponent of educating girls.

The school will recruit children of diplomats, United Nations representatives and other residents of Manhattan, Ali said. Students from outer boroughs may also attend.

Many worshippers, however, think the school would be too far for children outside Manhattan.

Samir Hoti, who is working on the construction of the school building, said he would be interested in his daughters attending, if it were not so far from their home. While he lives close by on 106th Street, the girls live with their mother in the Yonkers. His son, however, will be registered when the school opens next year.

Harlem resident Algazali said she would love to have her four children attend, but she thinks it will be too expensive. So, she will enroll only one child.

Fees and finances have not been discussed, Ali said, but a system of financial aid is being devised.

The school will be housed on the first two floors of a luxury condo building next to the mosque. Entrances are separate and acoustics will be dealt with so as to avoid noise and disturbance to tenants.

Tenants walking in and out of the building were unperturbed by the idea of the school and some were supportive.

“It’s a great thing,” said Brooke Connell, who entered with two little girls.

“A school is always good,” said Heijoon Chung, another tenant . “Religious school is always OK,” she said, adding that her son goes to a Catholic school. She said she often wonders whether the Islamic school will admit students of other faiths.

Jeremy Price feels there is no real interaction with the activities of the mosque except for crowds during Ramadan and on holidays which he does not feel are intrusive or disturbing.

Algazali, however, is excited. “I have another baby,” she said, patting her stomach. She would love for that baby to attend the Islamic school, “Inshah Allah,” she said — in Arabic, God willing.

Nancy Easton, co-founder of Wellness in the Schools, works with the Department of Education to get healthier food into school cafeterias. (Photo by Sarah Butrymowicz)

On a Wednesday afternoon, the yellow and green cafeteria at P.S. 161 was full of students talking and shouting. One sat down and pulled out a Lunchables, a prepackaged meal combination, but everyone else headed straight for the school kitchen. Most eagerly ate their sweet and sour roasted chicken, but didn’t touch the rice or collards with sweet tomato on their white Styrofoam trays.

Sometimes the school lunch is tasty, but “sometimes it’s disgusting,” said one fifth-grader, poking at her collards with a plastic utensil called a spork. “The vegetables are nasty.”

Her classmate agreed. “I like vegetables at home,” he said, but at school they just don’t taste good.

For some children, whatever they think of school food, there aren’t many alternatives. In low-income neighborhoods, many students get free or reduced-price lunches at school, which become a primary source of nutrition for the day. At this school, 93 percent of the student body lives at or below the poverty level and can be eligible for free or reduced-priced meals.

But critics charge that the meals aren’t always that nutritious or tasty and contribute to larger health problems. Financial and logistical problems make it difficult for the Office of SchoolFood to improve the cuisine, and despites its efforts, change can be slow in coming, the advocates say.

Some students eat little of what the school gives them, said Nayvi Merino, whose son is a first grader at P.S. 161. Merino works as a restaurant hostess in midtown, and although she gets home as early as she can in the afternoon, she said, often her son is ravenous.

“It worries me,” Merino said. “He’s not eating well at school.”

For students who do eat their fill, school food advocates have cited unhealthy lunches as a contributing factor to New York’s childhood obesity rate. Forty-three percent of the city’s children are overweight and about half of those are obese, according to a 2004 study conducted by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Many of these children come from low-income communities.

School lunch programs are “horribly underfunded,” said James Subudhi of WE ACT for Environmental Justice, so schools are often forced to take short cuts to meet federal nutrition requirements, which limit fat content and mandate that school meals provide at least a third of the recommended daily allowances of protein, iron, calcium and Vitamins A and C.

The Office of SchoolFood’s budget allows about 90 cents per meal, limiting the amount of fresh ingredients it can buy, said Nancy Easton, co-founder of Wellness in the Schools, a grassroots organization that works to improve nutrition, health and fitness in public schools. A typical menu item is a “golden fish and cheese sandwich,” which Easton described as “mystery meat fish with mystery cheese on top wrapped in a breaded substance that has been frozen for a long time.”

By contrast, Harlem Children’s Zone schools, part of a nonprofit organization aimed at helping disadvantage families break the poverty cycle, spend about $6 on each meal, which normally contains organic vegetables and meat, Subudhi said.

But school food issues aren’t only budgetary; they’re also logistical. The Office of SchoolFood is charged with feeding about 860,000 students a day, Marge Feinberg, a Department of Education representative, said in an email.

At overcrowded schools where cafeteria time is precious, some students eat lunch at 10:30 a.m., Subudhi said. Many kitchens don’t have the necessary appliances to cook from scratch, forcing them to serve only reheated food, Merino added.

And almost all the kitchen staff lack formal culinary training, Easton said. When it comes to schools preparing nutritious, high-quality food, “all the odds are against them,” she said.

The Department of Education declined to comment on these obstacles.

Some problems are simply beyond the Office of SchoolFood’s control. Several students at P.S. 161 said they just didn’t like eating vegetables anywhere. But pizza, served every Friday, got rave reviews from nearly everyone.

And some students, like P.S. 161 fifth-grader Aaron Valdidia, don’t have problems with school meals. “I think they’re pretty good,” he said.

In the past five years, the Department of Education has taken steps like eliminating trans fats, replacing white bread with whole wheat and including more locally grown vegetables in its food, Feinberg said.

It has also put a salad bar in every high school, something Daniel James, an 18-year-old at Alfred E. Smith High School praised as “going the right way,” even though he usually skips the cafeteria lunch and grabs Subway after school.

But Merino would like to see a salad bar in every school, not just high schools. “Some of the stuff we want,” she said, “it’s not really that hard.”

The school, which opened in September, pays its teachers base salaries of $125,000 or more a year. “If you want talent you’ve got to pay for it,” said Zeke Vanderhoek, founder and principal, who spent months on a nationwide search for some of the country’s top educators. “If you believe, as I do, that compensating people is worth it, then you’ve got to do it.”

Average annual base salaries for New York City teachers (Source: National Center for Education Statistics)

Located in a one-time mansion at 549 Audubon Avenue in a largely low-income, Dominican neighborhood, the school pays teachers more than twice the national average, according to payscale.com. Teachers will also be able to earn bonuses of up to $25,000 next year, based on school-wide performance.

To pay top dollar, Vanderhoek, a 32-year-old Yale graduate, has economized elsewhere: the Equity Project has large classes of 30, and teachers take on more administrative duties. The New York City Education Department’s most recent report puts the city’s average class size at 25.

“In an ideal world, we would have smaller class sizes and great teachers,” argued Vanderhoek. “But there is a finite amount of dollars to go around and you’ve got to decide whether you will have two teachers for 30 kids and pay them half or pay one teacher double.”

However, Luis Huerta, a professor at Columbia University Teachers College who researches charter schools, disagrees with Vanderhoek’s strategy. “It’s a very rational and limited approach,” he argued. “It focuses on one indicator, squeezes everything you can out of it.”

Huerta adds that higher pay won’t compensate for the additional responsibilities teachers will shoulder.  At the Equity Project, teachers teach longer hours than the average city teacher: the school day runs from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., with an after school program 3 days a week.  They can be fired at will and have no retirement benefits. “Teachers do not want to be burdened with administrative duties,” Huerta said. “This is a counter-productive approach toward educational success.”

But Vanderhoek says with adequate support, teachers will not feel overworked. “When I taught 6th grade I taught four different subjects. Here, we make sure that every teacher is responsible for one subject across different grade levels,” he said. “We also try to build into teachers’ schedules time to do that extra administrative work.”

Huerta doubts the school’s experiment will succeed in the long run. “This is an experiment, a very, very costly one, one that is simply not sustainable,” he said. “It’s not realistic, especially when we know through research that you can get more bang for your buck if you motivate teachers through intrinsic rewards, such as support from the administration, from families, and from communities.”

In a novel approach to budgeting, the school allocates all public money to its higher salaries, and relies on grants, fundraising, and private donations for its facility, located on a quiet side street off 193rd Street and St. Nicholas Avenue.

Judith LeFevre, who teaches science, told the New York Times that the school was “an experiment of sorts, in which I’m one of the subjects.” Education policymakers nationwide will closely watch the school to see whether this Wall Street model of higher pay will yield educational results.

“So far so good,” was Vanderhoek’s assessment last week.  “It’s a startup operation and we’re going to go through growing pains.”

Outside the gates of the Equity Project Charter School, the scene is much like any other New York City school on a Monday morning.  Students enter in groups for their breakfast. “I think it’s great,” said one mother. “My kids love it, and as long as I’m not paying for the teachers out of my own pocket, then I don’t really see the problem.”

Terran Delaney picks up her niece Toccara Chabos from P.S. 194. Had the school closed, Chabos would have started kindergarten elsewhere. (Photo by Tim Kiladze)

Students arriving at P.S. 194 in Harlem on the first day of school this year encountered an unusual banner hanging on the front fence: “Believe. Achieve. Succeed.”

Beside it, administrators welcomed eager students and spoke with parents who wondered what time the school day ended. Inside, newcomers and their parents gathered in the cafeteria to meet their teachers.

None of this was supposed to happen – not at P.S. 194. Last winter, the Department of Education announced the school’s closure, a result of failing grades on the previous two years’ progress reports: an F, then a D. The department told parents of incoming first graders to find new schools and advised students already enrolled that they would be transferred out over the next few years.

Plans were so advanced that Harlem Success Academy 2, a charter school, was poised to take over the lower-level floors P.S. 194 occupies in the expansive building they share on 144th Street, west of Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard.

Less than a year later, P.S. 194 is flourishing; it earned an A on its most recent progress report.

And its reputation has spread. Boubacar Dialo and his wife transferred their fourth and fifth grade daughters to P.S. 194 this fall. “My wife checked here and saw that this was the best school in Harlem,” he said after dropping the girls off.

Actions by families and by the United Federation of Teachers have kept the school alive. The union objected to the expected job cuts and filed a lawsuit in March in conjunction with the New York Civil Liberties Union, charging that the Department of Education was closing the school without proper approval from the community education council. The Department didn’t offer a “fair process to allow parental input into decision making,” said David Eisenberg, one of the Civil Liberties Union’s lead lawyers on the case.

The Department backed down in the spring. Had the lawsuit not been filed, Eisenberg firmly believes that P.S. 194 would not have gotten a second chance.

Parents were also outraged: they saw progress under principal Charyn Koppelson Cleary, who was only four months into the job, and thought she deserved more time. In protest, they wrote letters to Chancellor Joel Klein and turned out in droves for a public hearing in March.

“They brought the new principal and she was really running the school the way it is supposed to be,” said Samka Cekic, whose children are in the third and fifth grades at P.S. 194.

Cleary’s work was cut out for her – 13 percent of the school’s students were classified as English Language Learners last year, meaning English is not their native tongue, and P.S. 194 had four principals in five years – but she was intent on succeeding. “I didn’t come here to maintain status quo. I came here to turn a building upside down if necessary,” she said in an interview, adding, “If for whatever reason we just don’t get the job done, you ruin a kid’s life.”

Her plan started with staff training. So many teachers had come and gone over the past few years that she felt the staff lacked a cohesive vision and failed to follow curriculum guidelines.

For help, she hired Philomena Nortey from P.S. 111, whom Cleary describes as an expert in leadership and curriculum mapping. She also hired other teachers who have what she labeled “a level of tolerance and understanding.”

This staff started a mentoring program called the P.S. 194 Jewels, in which teachers provide help with homework after school; Cleary often contributes her time.

She also emphasized tracking student performance. Teachers and administrators have online access to student assessments going back to kindergarten, but parents rarely see the data. Cleary encouraged parents to follow their kids’ performance. To assist families without Internet access, P.S. 194’s parent coordinator, Clara Pena, sat outside the school with a laptop to catch parents walking by.

After a grueling year, Cleary was ecstatic at the results. “We let out such screams in this building when we saw that preliminary A that the people downstairs thought something had happened,” she said.

Parents noticed the changes. “Now you have teachers who go beyond the call of duty to do things for the kids,” said parent Shanequa Gadson, who attended P.S. 194 herself.

Dettering Hamilton, whose daughter transferred from P.S. 200 last January because he felt its teachers were ineffective, found that after a few weeks at P.S. 194, her attitude and performance turned around.

He fought the school’s scheduled close, feeling that Harlem Success Academy 2 was “pushing in and pitting parents against one another,” and he took offense at what he thought was a disregard for the public school system.

Despite its recent success, P.S. 194 faces an uphill battle. Like principals throughout the city this fall, Cleary had to cut her budget – by $450,000, enough to have hired several teachers or to start a music program, she said.

She also knows test results must continue to improve. “You’re only as good as this year’s scores,” she said.