A Better Chance (Part 2)

By Suzanne Wilson
Staff Writer

Published on July 11, 2008

Part 2 of a two-part series
The Amherst ABC program, which enrolls entering students at Amherst Regional High School, began in 1968. Nationwide ABC accepts both boys and girls at more than 300 participating schools; in Amherst, the small residential program has stayed all-male.

The first part of this story described the adjustment of three students who came to Amherst last fall. Two were brothers, Anthony Dominguez, a freshman, and Randy, a junior. The boys grew up in the Bronx, N.Y.,where their parents, Antero and Carmen Dominguez, still live. The third new student was Jorge Colon, a freshman from Elizabeth, N.J. Like the Dominguezes, Nereida Colon, Jorge's mother, wanted her son to attend a school that would strengthen his chances to succeed in college.

The three newcomers shared the ABC house with four other returning students -- Jamar Ross, Adem Abraham, Michael Brown and Zakharii Willetts -- and resident directors Heather and Josh Lord-Arond.

This week's story looks at some difficult moments in the household, one senior's graduation, and the students' uncertainties as the year comes to a close.

******

Four large picture frames hang on a wall inside the entry way at the front door of the ABC house on North Prospect Street. Inside each are rows of small yearbook photos of young men from the program who graduated from Amherst Regional High School. The earliest date from the 1970s, the most recent from 2007.

Underneath the photo of Kenneth Clark, Class of '91, is a note: "To my ABC brothers. Remember that luck is when preparation meets opportunity."

Jermaine Walker, Class of '93, looks out from behind the glass, chin resting on his hand. "I am proud to be an ABC graduate," his message reads, "and thankful for the opportunities they gave me."

It may well be that the transition from home to Amherst was hard for every one of the nearly 100 students who have passed through this sprawling, dorm-like house.

"I would be lying if I said there weren't times when I just wanted to go home," recalls Kleaver Cruz, who graduated last year and now attends Vassar College in New York. "But then I would think about my mother who was willing to let me go." ABC had made him grow up, he says, had pushed him out of his comfort zone, had given him a four-year "heads-up" on adjusting to college.

It was worth it, he says, but adds that the real question is why programs like it are still needed, why, 40 years after Amherst ABC began, glaring educational inequality persists. "Hopefully it won't be necessary someday," he said. "But I don't see that happening anytime soon."

At the outset of the school year, there are two seniors in the ABC house poised to have their photos added to the remaining spaces inside the fourth frame.

Michael Brown, starting his fourth and final year in Amherst, knows that the older students are expected to set an example for the younger ones. He knows he is supposed to keep an eye on the younger students and offer encouragement and advice -- or a nudge if he sees chores not done, or homework neglected.

It is a role that doesn't come naturally. "Sometimes I feel like the bully of the house," he says.

With Michael's parents several hours away in the Bronx, Susan Haight, an ABC board member who teaches at the Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter Public School in South Hadley, has offered to help him navigate the college application process. As she's done with previous ABC students, Haight sat down with Michael in the fall to go over deadlines and paperwork. Along with her husband, Charles, Susan was with Michael when he sent his completed applications off via email. After an exchange of high-fives and a phone call home to share the moment with his parents, the waiting began.

Michael's applications include three to schools in his home state of New York -- Hobart College in the Finger Lakes region, the State University of New York at Stony Brook, 60 miles from the city, and St. Lawrence University in Canton. His parents are rooting for Hobart, believing that their son will get the most out of that college's smaller size and more home-like campus life. For Michael, though, Stony Brook's proximity to the big city beckons. Amherst has been great during high school, he says, "but I've been out in the woods for so long."

The other senior in the house, Zakharii Willetts, is also applying to colleges, but in other ways is grappling with different issues. And by the end of the year, the two ABC seniors will have chosen different paths.

******

For their part, Heather and Josh Lord-Arond, the resident directors who live in an apartment upstairs with their young daughter, Khalila, are beginning their second year in the positions that offer room and board but no pay.

Hired by ABC in 2006, Heather was a 1989 graduate of ARHS, who had gone on to earn a master's degree in education at the University of Massachusetts. Her husband, Josh, after working as an aide at Amherst Regional, had also earned his master's in education, with plans for a teaching career.

Heather and Josh's first year, beginning in the fall of '06, wasn't easy. The discovery of lead paint in the house had abruptly forced all of them to pack up and move to another house in town for several months, and then back. They had been lucky, Heather says, that three of the students that year -- Tommie Lark, and twin brothers Walter and Kleaver Cruz -- were seniors whose maturity and focus helped keep everyone on track.

But not long after the start of this, their second year, there are signs that the even keel and family atmosphere Heather and Josh are hoping for aren't coming to pass.

As RD's, they had replaced Bryant and Irasema Lewis, both of whom had worked at Amherst Regional High School, Bryant as a dean and Irasema as an office worker, jobs that had kept them close to the ABC students in their charge.

But Heather and Josh are finding it hard to forge that kind of connection. As RDs, they are expected to keep abreast of the boys' progress in school, stay in touch with parents and teachers, make sure chores get done, enforce house rules, do the grocery shopping, handle doctors' visits, attend school events -- on top of their own jobs and parenting responsibilities.

With Josh immersed in a new teaching job in Holyoke, and Heather involved in theater projects at UMass, occasional work as a personal care attendant, and shifts at a local fast-food to earn extra cash, the couple is not as available as the Lewises had been -- or as they themselves had been their first year.

By late fall, school officials are reporting that some of the students are showing up late, Heather says, and breaking school rules. At the house, chores are sometimes going half-done or undone, dishes piling up in the sink.

The grades of some of the students are dropping, and problems with the volunteer tutoring program staffed by Amherst College students are cropping up. Scheduling is one. At some points when they are needed the most, the college students are away on school vacation breaks. It isn't always easy for the ABC students to ask for help -- and some tutors, discouraged, wonder if they should keep coming.

To buttress the students' academic performance, the board in February resurrects a position they'd once had, a resident tutor to oversee study hours, match students with other tutors, and keep tabs on everyone. Zardon Richardson, a 2007 graduate of Hampshire College who had been helped by a mentoring program himself while growing up in Chicago, is hired in exchange for room and board.

"It's so tough," he says one evening in early spring, as he watches some of the boys shooting hoops out in the driveway. Tough to know when to push and when to ease up, he says, when to demand more and when to back off. It is obvious, he says, that these kids are "smart, smart, smart" -- and it is also obvious that some of them "don't want to be here for study hours, and don't want to be told what to do."

Heather, meanwhile, is being pulled in different directions. Sometimes at night, she sits and works at length with a student who is struggling with homework, or lends an ear, if that's what's needed. But, she says, she realizes she isn't keeping up with everybody equally, nor is she regularly contacting the boys' parents or teachers.

Still, she and Josh are taken aback when, in March, Michael Hawkins tells them that they won't be asked back for a third year. The reason, according to Heather, boils down to lax supervision. In the end, she says, the board decided their style was "not boot camp enough."

Though there had been some back and forth with Hawkins along the way, the dismissal comes as a blow. "This wasn't our choice," Josh says soon afterward. For the boys, the decision is upsetting. "You could talk to Heather no matter what," says Anthony Dominguez. "I trusted her."

News that the couple won't be back comes at a time when Anthony is veering off course academically, having fallen behind in science class.

On a Wednesday night in March, with only two days left before he has a slew of back assignments due, he is in the computer room trying to get focused. "I feel bad, extremely bad," he says.

Nearby, a student is on the phone to his mother. Anthony's brother, Randy, and a tutor are discussing a paper on the Spike Lee movie "Do the Right Thing."

A fourth student, sophomore Adem Abraham, who is doing homework and listening to music, offers to help Anthony, who says thanks, but no. 'm here for you," says Adem.

Anthony can't shake the feeling that maybe he just doesn't belong in Amherst, that maybe a boarding school or a school closer to home would be better.

"I always knew I could do the work," he says, "but I didn't feel like I was in the right place, so why should I try? I forgot a few homeworks and it just got worse and worse..." He likes English class, he says, he likes writing, he likes art, but science and math are torture. "The hardest part was telling my parents that I wasn't doing so great... "

Anthony's parents are worried. While Antero Dominguez is holding firm to his deep conviction that education is everything, he doesn't want his son to suffer. "You got to be happy wherever you are," he says to a reporter. "If you're not, it's no good."

Antero confers with Hawkins, who counsels patience.

"I've always said, you can go home, but don't make that decision now," Hawkins recalls telling the father. "I know this can work, but Anthony's got to want to stay."

One bright spot for Anthony is visits with Jennifer and Scott Kaplan and their two daughters, Anthea, 3ﾽ, and Annika, 20 months. Each ABC student is matched with a local family and spends one weekend every month or so in their home.

Anthony and the Kaplans have gone out for Sunday brunch together, shopped in Northampton, celebrated Anthony's birthday at a Chinese restaurant, trekked around a Hadley farm to choose a Christmas tree. As Anthony's social life has expanded, the couple occasionally has shuttled him to get-togethers with friends. And as Scott and Jeni and Anthony have become more relaxed with one another, they've enjoyed unplanned activities, like just talking around the kitchen table.

"I love them," says Anthony. "They treated me like a son and they've also treated me like an adult."

Though they know Anthony is wrestling with school, the Kaplans say they have tried not to add to the pressure by peppering him with questions. They let him know, Jeni says, that it's meant a lot to have him in their home.

Anthony isn't the only freshman struggling. His roommate, Jorge Colon, is having some tough times, too. "I almost freaked out," he says of getting his first C. He'd called his mother in a panic, he says, and she calmed him down. "Everyone gets their first C," she told him. Nereida Colon had been through this before, she said in a phone interview, so she knew a rough first year didn't necessarily mean disaster. She had sent her daughter away to a boarding school during high school and she, too, had had a difficult first year. But she rose to the challenge and is now doing well at Florida Southern University, said Nereida.

Jorge, who'd started the year with a goal of getting all A's, has dialed back his expectations. Now, he says, he is looking at this year as his time of transition -- and next year he'll be "on top of my game." If, that is, he comes back. Like Anthony, he isn't sure, he says, that he'll want to live three hours away from home again.

But there is good news on the academic front. Michael Brown has gone three for three. Hobart College, the State University of New York at Stony Brook and St. Lawrence University all accepted him.

Back in New York, his mother, Valerie Brown, had her fingers crossed for Hobart, but said she and her husband would respect their son's choice. Scarcely a week after saying he was all Stony Brook, Michael announced that Hobart was a done deal. He'd actually gone to visit the place, he said, smiling at his about-face. He'd sat in on classes and met some students. And it didn't hurt that one of last year's Amherst ABC grads, Walter Cruz, was there.

"I loved it," Michael said. "It was great -- I just connected with everything about it. And I got a really good [financial] package."

While Michael's days as an ABC student are winding down, Zakharii Willetts, the second senior in the house, has already left. After more than three years, Zakharii has moved out and is living with people he knows elsewhere in town. His departure follows disagreements about house rules, according to Heather Lord-Arond, who says Zakharii plans to finish his senior year at Amherst Regional, but not as part of ABC. Zakharii did not return calls when contacted for this story.

For Michael Hawkins, president of ABC's board of directors, the choice made by a student he has nurtured and watched over, is a painful disappointment.

"He wanted to get away," says Hawkins in early May. "And I still want him to graduate as an ABC scholar." Hawkins is hoping that Zakharii will think things over, and find his way back: "So I'm giving him an opportunity to decide what he wants to do."

Zakharii's departure from a program that prizes community is an added stress for Josh and Heather. A compassionate woman with an earth motherly warmth, Heather says she misses Zakharii's dynamic presence in the house, but thinks he'll be fine in the end, even without ABC. "He's still in my heart," she says.

As the Spring semester is drawing to an end, Michael Hawkins sweeps into the kitchen early one evening. "What's for dinner?" he asks, checking out the chicken alfredo on the stove. He greets one student with a pat on the shoulder, then moves on, asking this one what's new, reminding that one that he really needs to get down to work before finals, noticing a third one's new high-top fade haircut.

He wants to meet with all of them and with Heather and Josh.

They settle in around the table.

"So everybody's here," he begins, scanning their faces.

He goes over some routine matters and then gets down to business. The mood in the room turns sullen. It appears that an overhead pipe near the washer and dryer was damaged by someone swinging on it. Hawkins wants to know who did it, and no one is saying.

Hawkins is incredulous. The point isn't about getting someone to pay up, he says, it's about owning what you did.

"Whose house is this?" he asks.

Silence, then Randy: "ABC's."

Hawkins continues his questions, leading the boys to the notion that, at least for now, this is their home.

"Do any of you feel responsible for what happens here?"

Hands go up, slowly.

"If this happened at your home, who wouldn't tell your parents?"

No hands.

"So tell me why you wouldn't in this case."

By the end, Hawkins' message is clear. The boys need to urge whoever is responsible to come forward.

Finally, Hawkins asks for a show of hands from those who are sure they are coming back in the fall. Randy, Jamar and Adem raise their hands. Anthony and Jorge, both tentative, raise theirs halfway.

******

In May, there is tension in the house.

"We're fighting about basic things," Heather says one day, with a glance around the kitchen. "Now I have to ask three times to get things done."

Outside, several of the boys are playing basketball in the driveway, even though it is past time for the 4 to 6 p.m. study hours to start. Yes, they should be reading or studying, she says, though she sometimes wonders if those two hours, plus two hours after dinner, as set forth in the program handbook, are truly realistic. "Maybe I'm just too much of a humanitarian," she says.

She has made her peace with the fact that she and Josh are leaving. "It's been a tough year, but I think everything happens for a reason." The boys probably do need more routine and discipline, she says, "and I'm OK with the fact that this is not my strength. If they can find someone else to do a better job, then I'm happy."

The board's choice to replace them is a couple who have taught at a boys high school in Jamaica, where they also supervised a dorm. Erold Bailey, 42, is currently a field service coordinator for teacher training at the UMass School of Education, where he earned his doctorate. His wife, Carol Bailey, 41, has a doctorate in English and will teach post-colonial literature at Commonwealth College, the honors college at UMass. The couple has two daughters, ages 15 and 6.

"We thought about it long and hard," Carol says of their decision to join ABC. In the end, she says, the interests she and her husband share in education, in young people, in working together as a team, in promoting social justice, and in making a contribution to the Amherst community carried the day.

******

The Baileys are among the many crowding into the Cadigan Center for Religious Life at Amherst College on the night of June 6 to mark Michael Brown's graduation from Amherst Regional High School. Zakharii Willetts, said to be headed to Columbia College Chicago in Illinois, never came back into the ABC fold.

Nonetheless, an ABC graduation, even after a year in which one student left and the resident directors and the board parted ways, is still a celebration. The ABC house cook, Luis Tapia, is there, setting out a spread of food. Board members are arriving with dishes to add to the potluck. The congratulatory cake is ready. Michael's friends and classmates are there, along with his host parents, Shirley and Nathaniel Whitaker, Amherst Regional teachers and administrators, and Heather and Josh.

Tommie Lark and brothers Walter Cruz and Kleaver Cruz -- last year's ABC's grads -- have also arrived. With their first year of college finished, Tommie at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, Walter at Hobart and Kleaver at Vassar, the three have come back for a reunion with the latest addition to their ranks, to the same place where a year earlier they had wept at the ceremony marking their own milestone.

Michael's arrival sets off rounds of congratulations, hugs, greetings and laughter. Susan Haight, who had helped Michael with college applications, introduces herself to his beaming parents, Michael Sr. and Valerie. "He's such a great guy," she tells them.

With everyone gathered around, Michael Hawkins opens with words of thanks for live-in tutor Zardon Richardson and for resident directors Josh and Heather, "who have given their hearts to do the best job they could."

This year, he says, he watched Michael grow up, saw him develop "a sense that he knew where he was going. He really has come into his own."

When it is his turn, Michael Brown has plenty to say. Tears in his eyes, he thanks, hugs and kisses those who supported and mentored and loved him, his teachers and tutors, his ABC brothers past and present, his host parents, his girlfriend. He thanks the previous RDs, the strict Lewises, "because without them I wouldn't be here." He thanks Richardson, and folds Heather and Josh Lord-Arond into an embrace. "They've helped me a lot more than they know," he says.

Then he turns to his parents. "They always pushed me," he says, in a voice thick with emotion. "They taught me to strive for the best and to always have a book in my hand."

He looks at Randy, Jamar, Jorge, Adem and Anthony, sitting on the floor in front of him.

"Don't push away the people who want to help you," he advises. "They're all trying to help."

Shirley Whitaker presents him with a gift, a poster of Barack Obama that brings oohs and aahs as Michael unwraps it and holds it up. The word "hope" is written underneath the portrait.

"I love each and every one of you," Michael says. "Thank you so much."

******

As of this writing, Jamar and Adem say they'll definitely return to Amherst for their third ABC year.

Randy will be back as a senior, regardless of his brother Anthony's decision. "I love him whatever," he says. Randy hopes to volunteer at a veterinary practice during the school year to see if his lifelong love of animals is a career path.

He belongs to two worlds now, he says, and he thinks of that as a strength. When he left Amherst for spring vacation, he missed people here, he says, and when he boarded the bus in New York for the return trip, he found himself missing the city.

Jorge is still undecided about next year, torn, he says, between wanting to help his mother at home -- and coming back and being on his own.

Anthony hasn't made up his mind, either. He has applied to an ABC-affiliated boarding school in Connecticut that, he says, his parents might decide is a better environment for him. His other options are going to a school closer to home, or coming back to Amherst. On one of his last days in Amherst, Anthony is hanging out in the yard with several of his non-ABC friends. If he does leave, it seems it won't be for lack of friends. "That's what I would miss," he says.

He ended the year on a strong note, having started to turn things around in school. He says he's sure that he did some growing up this year. "Oh, definitely," he says. "I've learned to keep some things to myself, and let other stuff out. I know more how to speak up and tell people my opinions."

Whatever choices Anthony and Jorge make, the cycle will begin again at summer's end. Two new ABC students, one from Boston and the other from New Haven, Conn., are expected to join the house then for the upcoming school year.

Suzanne Wilson can be reached at swilson@gazettenet.com.