Sunday, October 17, 1999
Life Skills Center opening on hold
Charter school has 200 recruits
BY DANA DiFILIPPO
The Cincinnati Enquirer
As if persuading dropouts to come back to school isn't hard enough, the Life Skills Center has taken on another challenge: Opening its doors this school year.
The Ohio Department of Education approved the charter school — along with three others — to open this fall in Cincinnati. While the other three opened already, Life Skills Center developers have had problems securing a site and told their more than 200 recruits to hang on “until further notice.”
This month, they expect to sign a lease for a building on Gilbert Avenue in Walnut Hills. Their new problem is getting the University of Cincinnati — now using the building for storage — to move its property.
If UC moves out soon, renovations could take two weeks. The center then could open in November. UC paid to lease the building through February but will move if another site is secured and payment issues are resolved, UC Spokesman Greg Hand said.
If more delays arise, the school would open in January because December's holiday hubbub would doom attendance, said John Morris, chief operating officer of White Hat Management Co., which will operate the school. The firm, owned by Akron industrialist David Brennan, runs 10 schools statewide.
“We'll definitely open soon — we just don't know exactly when,” said Dennis Matthews, the school's principal, who retired from Cincinnati Public Schools last summer after 31 years.
Year-round instruction
The school will offer a year-round, computer-based program that requires students to do five hours a week of community service and maintain part-time jobs. It targets dropouts age 16 to 22.
Another school geared to dropouts — Trade and Technology Prep — is negotiating with the Cincinnati Board of Education to open in Cincinnati next fall. Ann Higdon, the school's developer, runs a similar vocational program in Dayton, in which students receive stipends for renovating abandoned homes.
The Life Skills Center won't offer financial incentives. Teachers seek students for whom a degree is enough reward, Mr. Matthews said.
Second chance
“A lot of dropouts who will come to this school want a second chance. Then there are some who will just want to play games,” Mr. Matthews said. “Life Skills is a second chance. If you're not serious, you're out. There are thousands of dropouts in this city who want a second chance.”
Nearly 4,500 students dropped out of Cincinnati schools in 1997-98.
Antwana Harrison is eager for a second chance. The 19-year-old Avondale woman was kicked out of Woodward High School in April 1998 — a month shy of graduation — because she skipped school so much.
Now pregnant, she plans to seek a degree at the Life Skills Center.
“My daughter is due in two months,” she said. “The last thing I want her growing up and saying is: "Mama didn't go to school, so why should I go to school?'”
Better pay
She also yearns for bigger paychecks. Her second-shift job as a security guard pays $7.25 an hour.
Rosalee Johnson of Bond Hill wants to enroll her son Cordell, 17, a Woodward sophomore, at the Life Skills Center.
“Woodward is just too big. Cordell hasn't passed none of his proficiency tests because he's a class clown and he gets very distracted,” Ms. Johnson said. “He knows Life Skills is strictly business.”
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