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.”

Kappa IV students warm up before their first match. (Photo by Nate Rawlings)

In Harlem, basketball and football are the most popular sports. But at Kappa IV, a public middle school at St. Nicholas and 135th Street, wrestling is gaining traction. The afterschool classes started a month ago, when an organization called Beat the Streets teamed up with Jets of Harlem, the youth football league. Sonal Shah reports from Kappa IV. (Click play below to hear more.)

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.”

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.”