Melissa Bailey Photo
George Cunningham joined mentors who talked to Hillhouse boys.
At Hillhouse High’s graduation this month, 97 girls and 75 boys will get diplomas. Two-thirds of the boys who entered the school freshman year didn’t make it.
Principal Kermit Carolina, a former basketball coach who took over the school last fall, summoned the boys on the morning after prom to send a message: Under his watch, he vowed, “This will not happen again.”
Carolina said he didn’t want to waste the day after prom (this past Friday), when attendance is often thin. So he held a first-ever summit of all the males in the school.
In what one observer called an “audacious” show of straight talk, Carolina shared grim numbers — and dispatched a team of black male mentors to start turning those numbers around.
Principal Carolina (left) and former Hillhouse teacher Ed Joyner.
Carolina split up the high school’s 900-plus students by gender for the entire day. While the young women attended workshops with female mentors, the boys got a dose of reality in the auditorium of the school on Sherman Parkway.
“The group that’s performing at the lowest level in the United States,” he told them, “is black men.” Over three quarters of the young men before him were African-American; most of the others were Hispanic.
Carolina rattled off statistics aimed to “put the mirror up” to the crowd: Black men are 7 times more likely to be incarcerated, and twice as likely to be unemployed, as white men.
The principal flipped through his presentation with a sense of urgency, calling out “Go!” between each slide.
“This is about your life,” Carolina said. Then he turned to the “state of males at Hillhouse High.”
Male sophomores at Hillhouse lagged behind their female peers on every subject in last year’s state standardized tests, Carolina said: 32 percent of male students scored “proficient” or higher in reading, compared to 58 percent of females. Young men lagged 7 percentage points behind in math, 17 in science, and 31 in writing.
“The females are outpacing you.”
The gaps between Hillhouse males and their statewide peers were even more dramatic: Hillhouse males fell 51 points behind the state average in reading, and 55 points behind their white male peers. The data elicited some laughter in the audience.
“This reflects you,” Carolina warned. “This is as bad as seeing your mother in a compromising situation. This is serious.”
Of the 185 male students who joined the school as freshmen in 2007, 63 percent failed to graduate in four years, Carolina reported. Another 24 percent is heading to two-year colleges, and 12 percent to four-year colleges.
The gender gap in Hillhouse graduates has persisted for the last five years, most noticeably in 2008, when 69 males and 112 females graduated.
Nationwide, 78 percent of black males fail to graduate from high school, Carolina reported.
“Where are the male students going?” Carolina asked. He showed a slide that read: “Black Boys: Will we lose another generation?”
“Time To Set Goals”
Carolina brought 20 black men to answer that question. In small group settings in classrooms Friday morning, they told their own stories, and urged kids to take responsibility for their lives and “become men.”
George Cunningham (pictured) walked into a room with 15 black and Hispanic young men. First he handed out his business cards — two sets, for the two companies he owns. Then he recounted how he got there.
Like the students before him, Cunningham attended Hillhouse High. He said he didn’t listen to his teachers. “I was the class clown.”
“I dropped out in the 9th grade and took to the streets,” he said. “It was the dumbest decision I ever made.”
Cunningham, who’s 41, said when his family moved from the projects at Rockview Circle in West Rock to Franklin Street in Fair Haven, he quickly learned how to fight. By a stroke of luck, he “whupped the number-one guy” in his new housing projects. Then he rose to the top, selling marijuana, cocaine, guns, and bullet-proof vests.
Life at the top wasn’t safe, he said. “I was a marked man.”
On April 15, 1985, just after his 15th birthday, “I got blasted” with a shotgun. He lifted his shirt to show the kids his scar. He spent six months in a hospital on life support. But, he said, he didn’t learn from the near-death experience. It wasn’t until 20 years later, after spending time in “every prison in the State of Connecticut,” that he changed his ways.
He got out of federal prison the final time in 2005, he said.
“I was homeless,” Cunningham said. “I was at a point where I was going to take my life.”
He ran into Shirley Love Joyner, a guidance counselor and assistant principal at Hillhouse High. She paid him to paint her house. Later that year, on July 22, 2005, Cunningham went into business himself. He painted five houses and made enough money to “go legit” with a license, insurance and uniforms for his workers.
Six years later, he’s in business as a general contractor, with two companies in New Haven and Bridgeport. Cunningham credited a city training program with helping him get to where he is today. When Mayor John DeStefano launched his latest reelection bid, he called Cunningham to introduce him at the podium.
“I used to be a thug,” Cunningham said. Now he’s starting a program to help people get trained in the construction trades. And at Joyner’s urging, Cunningham went back to school. Last year, he earned his GED from Adult Education, and walked across the stage at Wilbur Cross High with fellow graduates.
“School is the place, brothers!” he remarked.
Cunningham made an offer to the kids in the room: If you call me, he said, I’ll guarantee I can help you find a job — if not with his company, then with one of his associates. He encouraged kids to think about what they’re good at and make it into a career.
“It’s time to set goals for yourself,” he advised.
He asked one kid where he sees himself in five years.
“Making money,” the student replied. Cunningham encouraged him to get serious with his life plan.
“I’ll be honest — some of you won’t make it,” he said.
He got handshakes and hugs from the kids in the room, a couple of whom asked about summer jobs.
Cunningham walked down the hall with junior Dewey Browder (pictured). Dewey said the message hit home: “My dad says the same thing.” He said it’s time to start planning for the rest of his life.
Dewey is already on his way: He’s working two jobs this summer, at Taco Bell and at Youth@Work, as well as continuing to take classes at Southern Connecticut State University. He aims to study media communications with a focus in broadcast production.
“I’m definitely going to college,” he said. “I haven’t decided where.”
“Why Are We Failing?”
Back in the auditorium, Carolina assembled the 20 mentors onstage. He said his goal is to show kids strong black male role models. A crew of black male deans, who have already been setting a new tone at the school this year, watched over kids from the audience.
Carolina said he grew up without a father in his household, so he ended up learning a lot about life from his peers. The result was “the blind leading the blind.”
“A lot of you have strong male figures in the house,” he told the boys Friday morning. But a lot don’t.
“My father wasn’t there,” said Lee High alum Gary Highsmith. Now the principal of Hamden High, Highsmith took time Friday to slip back to his native New Haven and mentor Hillhouse kids. He said despite all the challenges kids face, “there’s no excuse” not to do well in school.
Criminal defense attorney Mike Jefferson professed faith in Carolina’s leadership — enough to send his own son, Malcolm, to the school. He told kids they’re lucky to have a principal who is “audacious and caring enough to come at you like this.”
Allan Appel Photo
Jefferson (pictured) sat onstage at a table draped with a blanket that read: “War On Ignorance.” It’s a message of Jefferson’s Kiyama Movement, a black male leadership initiative gaining momentum in town.
Kids at the school are participating in the “Kiyama” movement, which stands for resurrection. Part of the Kiyama pledge is to “refuse to be consumed by the myths of black inferiority or white superiority.”
A question and answer session brought more straight talk.
“What’s the top reason we’re, I don’t want to say, failing?”
“You can say it,” replied one of the men on stage.
Jefferson said the black community no longer has an “education culture.” “We had that once, coming out of slavery. The slavemaster knew what it meant — that’s why it was a crime for a slave to read or write.”
“We don’t take education seriously,” Jefferson told the room.
He later said he believes the city’s school reform drive puts too much focus on reforming teachers’ behavior — and “too little on the responsibility that students and parents have to take for their own educations.”
Another student asked what action the principal is taking to “have a higher quality of education” and reverse the alarming trends.
The answer will come in working hard, learning from positive role models, changing expectations, and “changing the culture,” the principal replied.
“It’s starting here right now,” he declared.
Fantastic reporting. This message should be shared with all Connecticut schools.