Paul Bass Photo
Instead of getting in trouble this summer, Eddy Garcia brushed up on his math and reading.
Instead of getting in trouble after school this fall, Garcia is learning how to operate factory machinery.
Before the summer, Garcia (pictured) was getting in trouble. So much so that he was one of the New Haven students targeted by the new YouthStat program, in which principals, teachers, cops, social workers, and parole and probation officers identify the most at-risk kids and work to keep them from landing in jail or being expelled.
Thirty of those YouthStat kids spent four weeks this summer at a voluntary program at Hillhouse High School in which they received remedial math and reading help, talked out emotional problems, received preliminary OSHA and CPR certificates for future employment, and visited Six Flags and the Yale University Art Gallery. (Click here to read a previous article about the summer program.)
Monday afternoon Mayor Toni Harp invited Garcia and the four other top performers in the summer program to City Hall to congratulate them and give them donated Apple Watches.
“In my mind there’s a lesson” in how the five students excelled after having run into trouble, Mayor Toni Harp told them. “With a little extra care and individual attention, there is hope for every child in New Haven and reason to continue our work to help them.”
Student Alejandro Leon, Bartlett, administrator Malcolm Welfare, student Patrick Moye, Mayor Harp, student Jonathan Escobar, Garcia.
City youth services chief Jason Bartlett, who put together the school, called it part of a broader strategy to steer at-risk young people to productive lives. He cited last year’s launch of “Career Pathways TECH Collaborative”: an after-school vocational training program at Eli Whitney Technical School to enable high-schoolers to obtain certificates that enable them to enter carpentry, manufacturing, plumbing, or culinary jobs after graduation.
Garcia starts that program Tuesday. He plans to learn how to operate machinery in order to seek a manufacturing job.
Thirty students began the summer YouthStat program; 24 completed it. All 30 were either on probation or failing out of school, according to Bartlett. Some kids dropped out of the summer program because it turned out it was dangerous to have them in the same school building as some of the other participants, Bartlett said. He said the goal is to have at least two YouthStat programs at two different sites next summer.
I certainly commend Mayor Toni Harp, Jason Bartlett, The City of New Haven Youth Services Department, Board of Education & Career Pathways TECH Collaborative.
The Harp Administration has managed to keep youth at the forefront of the agenda. Amidst political backlash, governmental melodramas, and severed ties between policy & reality, they have still found ways to create EXPERIENCES for YOUNG PEOPLE.
How refreshing is it to see something so simple as an iWatch spark the light of a fuse whose ending has no time?
Kudos to the Harp Administration for finding some way to let kids know to keep their stride in some of the worst of times. I applaud these efforts because the reward is two fold. By two fold I mean the community wins. Just saving one life is a victory within its own and the New New Haven reflects these types of principles.