A Better Chance: For the inner-city students who come to Amherst Regional High, it's not that simple (Part 1)

By Suzanne Wilson
Staff Writer

Published on July 11, 2008

Part 1 of a two-part series
The big white house at 74 North Prospect St. in Amherst is starting to empty out. The young men who lived there during the past school year will soon scatter for the summer.

It was a hard year -- no one involved really disputes that. In different ways, and to different degrees, it was hard for the seven high school boys who arrived last August, hard for the parents who brought them there, and hard for the resident directors responsible for supervising them.

What follows is a two-part story that looks at that year inside the ABC house. The initials stand for A Better Chance, a national program that prepares academically talented African-American, Hispanic/Latino, Asian-American and Native American students for college and future leadership roles. ABC students leave their home school districts and attend either academically rigorous public high schools or private boarding schools.

Since 1968, when Amherst welcomed its first ABC students, about 100 boys, many from hundreds of miles away, have graduated from Amherst Regional High School through the program.

Throughout this school year, photographer Carol Lollis and I checked in from time to time with several of the students. Though we asked countless questions, there were a few recurring themes. What was it like to adjust to a new place? Was the possibility of long-term success worth being uprooted from family, moving in with strangers, losing ties with old friends and struggling academically?

******

By the end of October, after two months in rural, small-town Amherst, Anthony Dominguez of New York City is homesick.

He misses his neighborhood on Tibbett Avenue in the Bronx. "Just the vibe you get and the energy," he says.

Tibbett Avenue is a densely populated street a few blocks from a business district where lumbering buses roll by delis, insurance offices, barber shops, pizza places, newsstands and nail salons.

Anthony, a 13-year-old with dark eyes and dark hair cut straight across his forehead, has come to Amherst as an ABC scholar for the 2007-2008 school year.

His first weeks at Amherst Regional High School have been a blur of changes. In the life he left behind, Anthony had a room to himself at home, and was one of just 23 eighth-graders at a Catholic school. Now, living away from his parents for the first time in his life, he's staying in a supervised, dormitory-style household. He's adjusting to a roommate. And he's one of more than 300 ninth-graders in a school of 1,209 students.

He's handled much of the transition with aplomb. Laundry, for instance. He's gotten the hang of "what goes with what," he says, and, except for the time he sent his wallet through the wash cycle, the system is working well.

But other things are hard. Everything sort of builds up, he says, "and you realize you really do miss your family."

At first Anthony was so busy that he called home only once or twice a week. Now he often walks the half-mile from school to the house on North Prospect Street holding his cell phone to his ear, checking in with his mother or father.

He misses their faces and their hugs. "But I'm here for a good reason," he says, "so I shouldn't be sad if I'm here for a good reason."

******

That good reason is to get the best education he can.

Founded in 1963 with a grant from the Charles E. Merrill Foundation, ABC has its roots in an era of idealism and hope, when the nation seemed galvanized to attack, if not eradicate, racism, poverty and educational inequality. The original grant was made to support bringing talented students of color to 23 schools with high-quality college preparatory programs; today, more than 300 schools around the country have ABC students.

The first 50 scholars, all boys, spent the summer of 1964 at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., where they completed a study program before being placed in the selected college prep schools.

Since then, through ABC, nearly 12,000 middle and high school students from areas with poor schools have entered private or public schools that have more resources. More than 96 percent of the program's graduating seniors have gone on to four-year colleges. Though that first group in 1964 was made up of African-American boys, ABC has for many years accepted girls as well. Its demographic profile has shifted over time from almost all black to a mix of black, Latino, Asian American and Native American.

In Amherst, ABC has remained a males-only program, in part because of the prohibitive expense of adding a second house, and because board members agree that keeping the program small makes it more manageable. An ABC program for girls that at one time operated in South Hadley closed in 1983 when community interest, commitment and financial support waned.

ABC in Amherst has an annual budget of about $110,000. The money, raised from grants and private donations, is used to run the house and pay the boys' expenses; ABC receives no government funds. The local program is also supported by its own version of the village it takes to raise a child: There's a 34-person board of directors, many of whom befriend the students. There are volunteer mentors who troubleshoot academic problems. There are host families who open their homes to students for weekend visits. There are teachers and staff at Amherst Regional who give the boys extra attention, and volunteer tutors from Amherst College who come to the house in the afternoons and evenings.

This year, seven students, three new ones -- Anthony, his older brother, Randy, and another freshman, Jorge Colon -- joined four returning scholars, seniors Michael Brown and Zakharii Willetts and sophomores Jamar Ross and Adem Abraham.

Each in his own way would explore that notion of what Anthony Dominguez called "the good reason" that he was there.

******

Anthony came to the Amherst ABC program with his older brother, Randy, 16, who entered ARHS as a junior. Tall and athletic-looking, with sparkly earrings in both ears, Randy is also feeling the pull of home.

"I wanted to stay," he says after his first visit back to New York over Columbus Day weekend.

It isn't that people in his new school aren't friendly, he says. They are. Still, he wonders if coming to Amherst is really about his own future. Sometimes, he says, it seems that wanting to do well is "more for my father than for me."

Antero Dominguez, Randy and Anthony's father, came to New York from Mexico when he was 16 and got his first job in the city working the late shift washing dishes and pots in a small, busy restaurant. "I had to do something to get money," he says. Five days a week, he went to a class to learn English, before heading to work.

He stayed at that job for about six months before looking for a position where he'd be able to learn to cook. He found one, eventually becoming a full-time chef at Ecco, an Italian restaurant on Chambers Street in lower Manhattan, where he works now. Though it can be hot and grueling, Antero says it's been a good job that has enabled him to support his family. Still, he notes, after finishing ninth grade in Mexico, he'd never had the chance to continue his education in this country.

The family lives in one half of a two-family house that Antero and his wife, Carmen, bought 16 years ago. On the living-room walls are family photos, including wedding pictures of Antero and Carmen. School pictures of the couple's four children stand atop the TV cabinet. Besides Randy and Anthony, there is Irving, who's 19, and Yadira, 15, the only daughter.

"I work hard for them," says Antero, "so they can be better. This country has a lot of opportunity to do great things."

In the kitchen, coffee, a pitcher of lemonade and a plate of neatly cut sandwiches are set out on a lacy tablecloth for the reporter and photographer from Massachusetts.

Antero does most of the talking, as Carmen has a limited command of English and the visitors don't speak Spanish. Carmen is a homemaker who also does some baby-sitting and housecleaning. Antero's mother, visiting from Mexico, sits in a chair at the edge of the gathering, watching, hands folded in her lap.

It's a Thursday in late August. Antero and Carmen are a few days away from driving Randy and Anthony to Amherst. Downstairs in the boys' bedrooms, open suitcases lie spread out on the beds and packing is well underway.

To get into ABC, students submit report cards and recommendations, write essays and go through an interview process. Those who are accepted are students who have done well academically, and Randy and Anthony were no exceptions. Like their older brother and their sister, they went to St. John's Catholic School, just a block away from home, beginning as preschoolers. But as they grew up, their parents started to worry about their children's options for high school.

St. John's wasn't a bad school, says Irving, but it didn't offer much in the way of extras, such as after-school activities. "At 2:30, everything finished," says Antero. "That's it, you go home."

A cousin had been accepted into a program that places talented Latino and African-American students from New York into boarding schools in the Northeast and pays their expenses. Antero began making phone calls, inquiring about that program and others that might be good for his children.

Irving was accepted into the Oliver Program, the same one his cousin had entered. In the fall of 2003, he made the leap to Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, N.H., one of the nation's most prestigious prep schools.

"I was quiet and shy when I got there," says Irving, who now comes across as self-assured, friendly and confident. He'd rarely been out of New York City. He'd never been around students from such wealthy, well-traveled families, or been exposed to people of diverse religious faiths and backgrounds. And, he says, he was behind his classmates academically. But with effort and the extra help he sought from teachers and classmates, Irving persisted and thrived. He became an active participant in classes that encouraged a constant exchange of ideas. He made friends and got involved in basketball and tennis. "I liked Exeter a lot," he says.

Irving set his sights on Harvard University, where he was accepted and awarded generous financial assistance. In two weeks, he's leaving for Cambridge. "I'm really excited," he says.

Antero is proud: "This is a big deal to us."

For Randy, the move to Amherst will be his second relocation in as many years. Last year, he went to the Carson Long Military Academy in Pennsylvania, where his parents hoped the regimented discipline would help him concentrate on schoolwork. Though his grades went up, his parents decided a year there was enough.

With all three sons away, Carmen and Antero will have just Yadira at home. So far, she has said she isn't interested in going away to school.

Asked if it will be hard to see Randy and Anthony leave, Antero takes the long view. "This is the most important thing me and my wife can do for them now. Later, it will be up to them."

******

The next Saturday, the family SUV is parked at the ABC house in Amherst.

Everyone -- two parents, three children -- pitches in, lugging suitcases and bags inside, through the kitchen, down the hallway, past the washer and dryer, to the double room Anthony will share with a roommate who is arriving tomorrow.

In come brand-new sneakers, clothes, desk lamps, duffel bags, neatly folded blankets and bedding, stacks of notebooks and pens.

As her youngest son's belongings begin filling up the room, Carmen, armed with spray cleaner and paper towels, busies herself dusting the bureau and desk. Dressed in an orange and white striped polo and jeans, Anthony carefully arranges five pairs of sneakers, a pair of sandals and a pair of dress shoes into a straight line near his bed.

Randy is settling into his single upstairs -- tradition has it that older students get their own rooms. His collection of free weights is on the floor; a framed copy of the Ten Commandments is propped up on the dresser near a bottle of nutritional supplements. He sweeps the floor, hangs all his shirts in one closet and all his pants in the other, and smooths out every wrinkle in the sheets as he makes the bed with military precision. You don't have to be so exact here, Antero tells him reassuringly.

Down the hall from Randy, Valerie Brown is unpacking some of her son Michael's belongings. Michael will be a senior at ARHS and this is the fourth time Valerie and her husband, Michael Sr., have gone through this back-to-school ritual.

"It's very hard," she says. "My first time, I cried and cried."

Michael remembers going to an elementary school in the Bronx with overcrowded classrooms and too few teachers, a place where he learned early on that he could get easy A's. "You know the kid whose homework you wanted to borrow if you didn't do yours? I was that kid," he says. "I knew there wasn't much there for me."

As her son neared high school, Valerie says, she grew increasingly worried that he'd lose focus if he wasn't challenged academically. After she heard about ABC from a friend, she decided it would be a good option. Her husband, though, ached at the thought of sending his first-born away. And it bothered him to think that, in new surroundings, his son would be influenced by other people's values, not necessarily those of his own parents.

One Sunday morning, the couple argued about it for so long in the car on their way to church that they never got to the service. "It's for his own good," Valerie said, pressing her case, and in the end, she prevailed.

When Michael was offered a placement in Amherst, he faced criticism and ridicule from some of his friends. "People said I must think I was too good for where I grew up," he says. "I was called 'white boy.' A lot of people said that, a lot -- and it hurt."

After her son left, Valerie had moments when her conviction was an empty consolation. The tears would start, she says, whenever she'd walk into his empty room, sit down on the bed and look around. To ease things, she and her husband and their younger son made frequent weekend trips to Amherst.

That fall of 2004 was tough for Michael, too. Socially, he was quiet and lacked confidence. Honors algebra "was a complete disaster," he recalls, and in other classes he was getting C's instead of his usual A's. After a rocky first trimester, his grades started ticking upward.

******

"My goal is .... "

One by one, they go around the table, each student reading from a statement he's been asked to prepare. It is Sunday, orientation day, the day after arrival.

"My goal is to maintain a B-plus average and get into college ... My goal is to have nothing less than a B-plus average, and to be a more responsible person ... I want to be a better leader, to help the younger ones with their homework, to stay out of arguments... To get higher grades, work to my potential, do my chores, try to run the 400-meter dash, and make the basketball team ... To manage my time wisely ... To be more active in clubs and sports ... To improve in history, to give back to the community... To get an A average and not to procrastinate..."

They are seated in the room that doubles as the dining room and study hall. A small framed black-and-white photo of a pensive Martin Luther King Jr.hangs on one wall, near a sideboard laden with coffee and bagels.

Joining the group is Anthony's roommate, Jorge Colon, 13, who has just arrived from Elizabeth, N.J., with his mother, Nereida Colon. Jorge is wearing jeans and a T-shirt proclaiming Knowledge is Power on the front and the words ALL OF US WILL LEAD on the back.

The Knowledge is Power Program, started in 1994 by two young elementary school teachers in Texas, is a network of public charter schools serving poor and minority students in 17 states. KIPP schools are characterized by a longer school day, a strong culture of achievement, and close, almost daily contact among teachers, parents and students. The program now sends more than 80 percent of its students to college, according to the KIPP Web site. Jorge went to a KIPP school in the Bronx for grades five through eight before his family's move to New Jersey.

At one end of the table are Josh and Heather Lord-Arond, 32 and 34 years old respectively. They live in an apartment upstairs with their 4-year-old daughter, Khalila, and are returning for their second year as the household's resident directors. Josh is about to start a new job as an eighth-grade teacher in Holyoke; Heather, who has a master's degree in education from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, is planning to divide her time among her family, her ABC responsibilities and part-time stints working as a personal care attendant and helping out on theater productions at UMass.

"It's wonderful to have the house full," says Josh as he welcomes everyone. He talks about establishing a tone of cooperation, communication and personal responsibility. "Even if it's not your dirty dish that got left out, pick it up and take it to the kitchen." They'll share assigned chores -- such as loading the dishwasher, doing the pots and pans, taking out the trash -- which will rotate and be posted weekly in the kitchen.

******

Michael Hawkins, president of the ABC board of directors, has watched this scene unfold many times. The new students, eager, still shy, so polite. Their parents, so full of hope. He's watched the older scholars, as they've pushed boundaries, tested limits, and, more often than not, grown and matured.

Hawkins, 46, is associate dean of admission at Amherst College and a former ABC scholar. He was an eighth-grader at a public school in Washington, D.C., when a counselor and his parents encouraged him to apply to ABC. Hawkins wound up at St. Mark's School in Southborough, and then went on to Williams College in Williamstown, where he became the first member of his family to graduate from college.

ABC changed his life, he says, and shows what can happen when someone believes in you, "reaches out and pulls you along." This is about more than getting good grades to go to college, he says. It's about putting these students in environments where they can figure out who they are and who they want to be -- where, in short, they can choose their own futures.

Hawkins has spent many hours interviewing kids, looking for what he calls "the intangibles" beyond good grades -- adaptability, persistence, focus.

"It takes a special kid to adjust," he had said in an interview the previous spring. As ABC students, they'll be living with the pressure of their parents' expectations, their teachers' requirements, the scrutiny of the ABC board members, and the influence of other kids, both inside and outside the house. Hawkins knows that, unlike their counterparts 20 or 30 years ago, these boys no longer stand out in Amherst as the only students of color in school. But he knows that they'll still be known as ABC kids, who are expected to be smart, and good role models. And he knows, if history is a guide, that some of them will face the prospect of academic failure for the first time in their young lives.

Hawkins, who says he's not afraid to be "the bad cop" when necessary, outlines what he hopes -- make that expects -- to see this year. The honor roll, he tells the group, is not a lofty, abstract notion, but an achievement within reach of every student here. "We're really going to push that this year." As for personal behavior, "we will not ever have any physical violence, no drugs, no hazing. We can't tolerate anything like that."

He urges the parents to contact him, anytime. In their absence, he says, he will try "to love your sons the same way you do. I'm looking forward to an amazing year with lots to celebrate."

******

From the kitchen comes the rapid-fire chop-chop-chop of vegetables being cut up for salad. The rice is steaming on the stove, and the chicken is cooking.

It is a late-fall afternoon and Luis Tapia, the cook who works at the ABC house five nights a week, is making dinner. Luis is a favorite with Anthony and Randy, who like to hang out with him, bantering back and forth in Spanish while he works.

A walk-through pantry connects the kitchen to the dining room/study hall, which at the moment is cluttered with backpacks, books, calculators and papers. When they have homework, the students are expected to work on it for a couple of hours every afternoon, between 4 and 6, and again after dinner, from 7:30 to 9:30. Extra help, if needed, comes from volunteer tutors. Some are Amherst College students, others are members of ABC's local board of directors.

Upstairs is a small room outfitted with computers donated by Amherst College, one for each student. Outside that room, a large map of the world hangs in the hallway, near bookshelves lined with dictionaries, SAT study guides and other resource texts.

On this afternoon, Anthony is tackling math, a subject that's tough going for him. As he struggles through the x's and y's, he's being helped by Meg Hart, an ABC board member. Part math whiz, part cheerleader, part motherly influence, Hart prompts Anthony through the rough spots. "Now it's hopeless, right?" she asks him. "Wrong!" she says, answering her own question.

Randy, currently immersed in Spanish, chemistry, U.S. history and algebra, is finding that he has more work than he did last year, and that he'll need to be "more self-motivated" to get it done than he was at the military school, where every move was watched. Though he'd been warned Amherst would be a tough transition, deep down he hadn't really believed that.

"I thought it would be a piece of cake," he says, "but it's not."

Outside of class, he's found the offerings limited for teenagers. The local mall is "pretty whack," he reports. Interestingly, though, he's surprised to find that Amherst is in its own small way more diverse than the city he left behind. He's discovered that instead of being all-white, its mix includes African-Americans, Cambodians, Chinese, Vietnamese and others, who seem to mingle and interact. In New York, he says, blacks, Hispanics and whites "did their own thing."

Randy has already broken away from the regimentation of military school. He's sporting a mohawk and a tongue piercing. Though his closets are still organized, his room is fast becoming a jumble, and that neatly made bed is a thing of the past. He's been working out at the gym and with his free weights -- lifting is his way of dealing with stress and emotions. "It keeps my mind off everyday life," he says.

Jorge says he, too, is feeling academic pressure in Amherst. He misses the closeness of his KIPP school, where students were given their teachers' phone numbers and encouraged to call with questions or problems. "KIPP was a family to me," he says.

He's also missing his real family. He's missing spending time with his 4-year-old sister, missing being able to be the influential big brother, and worries that she is growing up without him. He misses his mother's cooking, particularly her pies and strawberry upside-down cake.

"My mom misses me," he says, "but she wants me to be independent."

******

On a Saturday night in January, Anthony and Jorge are in their room, passing time after dinner. Though the place is a mess, they seem unfazed.

"When I start losing stuff, I start to clean," Anthony explains.

But if the state of their room doesn't bother them, they're both feeling other anxieties. They've each already gotten some C's in their classes, lower marks than they're used to, and both have transferred out of some of the hardest classes they were taking. Anthony says he's worried about letting his parents down, especially his father. Jorge is feeling some of the same. "She doesn't expect less than a B from me," he says of his mother.

The boys head to the kitchen. It's Anthony's turn to clean up, and Jorge comes along to help. As he attacks the pots and pans and Anthony loads glasses into the dishwasher, they joke about the fact that they're doing way more kitchen work than they ever did at home.

They've made friends at school, and their social networks are growing. After school, they can often be found in the room at the high school where fans of Pitchnut -- a game played on a wooden board -- meet. In fast-paced matches each player tries to outdo the other at flicking plastic pieces into corner pockets.

But some of their friends, says Anthony, live in places like Leverett and Shutesbury, so it's hard to see them on weekends: "Getting there takes forever." As for just going to downtown Amherst, Jorge says they're pacing themselves, for fear of getting too sick of it, too soon.

Jorge likes U.S. history and follows politics. Just about every morning, he checks out the headlines using his phone's Internet connection. He's intrigued by the presidential candidates, especially Sens. Clinton and Obama. "I have my eyes on them," he says. At the moment he's pulling for Hillary, mostly because "the males already had their turn. And I'm hoping she would stop the Iraq war."

Now that they've made a couple of visits home, they've experienced some of the changes in their old friendships that just about every ABC student encounters. It's hard to pick up where you left off when you don't see kids every day, says Jorge, and you've missed out on things. "I feel left out," he says. "It's like, what are they talking about?" Anthony likens it to seeing the sequel of a movie before you see the first part. "By the time you figure it out, it's finished!"

In Part 2: Turmoil in the house and uncertainty as the school year draws to a close.

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