BY KRISTA RAMSEY
The Cincinnati Enquirer

This is not an obituary for Peter H. Clark Academy. A death watch, perhaps, but not a death notice. As Cincinnati school officials are quick to point out, the school still has a name, a site and a heart beat. But its vital signs are failing.

Clark Academy exists, but not in the robust, restless, ground-breaking way I knew it a few years ago. Next year, it will have 20 students and one teacher. At its peak in 1992, the school served 276 of the district's most challenging students.

One always had to be careful how to describe them. Although many had previously quit school, "dropout" was not the right term because - as they were quick to point out - these kids had dropped back in. Others never left but attended casually for years. They were young, but they had old souls. And police records. And children of their own or families in turmoil. They had keen minds and hearts of gold, but they also had a history.

Cincinnati Schools hoped an alternative school like Clark could offer them success, or at least stave off certain failure. It was, as it sounds, a very small school with a very big job. The odds were never in Clark's favor.

Off the beaten path

Which made it all the more surprising that this tiny, offbeat school hidden along the Ohio River, was a delight to enter.

Not fun in a shiny, we're-all-bound-for-college way. There was an unmistakeable toughness to Clark. Tempers flared from time to time. Old habits of unreliability and impetuosity died hard. Disaster lurked, as close as one family quarrel or one unplanned pregnancy. But so did a hunger that most people had previously overlooked in these kids, a hunger for belonging and a different kind of life. At Clark, in its best days, there existed an uncommon courage. It took guts to sign up for this small place, where you were so visible. Before Clark, many kids had made a career of anonymity. And it took guts to teach at Clark. You had to fight for every kid. You risked having your heart broken every day.

Clark did things differently because it had to. It had smaller classes, more remediation, more individual attention and support. Most striking, teachers relentlessly stuck their noses into their students' lives and never once apologized for it.

If you didn't show up for school one morning, your phone was ringing by 9 o'clock. You sick? How sick? Do you want me to bring by your make-up work tonight? Will we see you tomorrow?

Child care, a pair of shoes, a parent's illness - it was all the staff's concern because it could lead a kid out of school.

Shelley Hamler, who was Ohio Principal of the Year while at Clark, regularly took her students to fashion shows and cultural events. She told them what a favorite aunt would tell them, that it matters how you walk, dress, speak and eat.

And that those things matter because you matter.

Some kids never knew what it was like to matter before.

Costs were high

It costs a lot to care like that. From its beginning - with start-up paid by a U.S. Department of Labor grant - Clark was seen as an expensive school. The building, the old Highlands School, was heavily renovated. Class size was very small, generally fewer than 15 students. Clark had new textbooks and computers while other high schools went begging.

And Clark teachers and administrators say they were never allowed to forget it. They felt resentment across the district. Many say, from the start, they knew Clark was a brief and shining moment, that it would not go on for years.

Now, although district officials don't seem to have the courage to say it, it looks as if Clark is about to expire. It has been a slow, wasting death, starved rather than killed off, perhaps so that people like me won't write columns demanding its resuscitation. I'm not. Clark has been allowed to deteriorate too far. So let the district do what it seems determined to do. Its death is no reflection on Clark.

But let the district, and more importantly the community, appreciate Clark's lessons. That saving high-risk students takes a different kind of caring. That the price is high, emotionally and financially. And that success has less to do with current research, and more to do with the good sense of listening to the heart.

Krista Ramsey's column appears in The Enquirer on Saturdays. Write her at 312 Elm St., Cincinnati 45202 or fax at 768-8340.

RAMSEY ARCHIVE