SEED School: Harvesting success

About seven years ago, her mother died from an accidental fall in her home.

Tierra grows quiet at the memory and drops her face into her arms. That’s a lot of pain for a little girl to shoulder.

But Jones is resilient. She acts like a typical 12-year-old, who is just beginning to notice boys, likes listening to rapper Lil’ Wayne and will talk as long as anyone will listen. She dreams of becoming an FBI agent, but with the life she’s had, that goal — for the longest time — seemed way out of reach.

Today, however, her life is full of possibilities.

This past summer, Jones was among 80 students admitted to the state’s first public boarding school, the SEED School of Maryland.

The school’s aim is to give disadvantaged students an opportunity to reach their potential, plucking them from the chaos surrounding their lives and placing them — for free — in a safe, supportive environment, where they can grow socially and academically.

Nearly every graduate of the school’s sister campus in Washington, D.C., gains admission to college, and for Jones and many other children, this is the opportunity of a lifetime.

““The SEED School is a godsend for her,” said Alega Penn, 37, the wife of Jones’ cousin Gregory Penn who took Jones in about three months ago. “They’re able to give her an education, where she’ll be nurtured; They’ll give her the love and care she needs.”

‘He’s got to be Superman to make it’

As a first-year teacher at St. Paul’s School in Brooklandville, Eric Adler met one student he couldn’t help.

“I had 14 ninth-grade boys in my homeroom — 13 of them white and one of them African American,” said Adler, 44, a physics teacher. “I just naturally assumed that the African-American kid was upper-middle class. But that assumption turned out to be wrong.”

The student constantly showed up late to school — and usually in violation of the dress code. Adler did what he was supposed to do: He gave the student a “hard time.”

But as the school year progressed, Adler discovered the student lived so far away that he had to take several buses  just to get out to Brooklandville, and when he finally got home at night, he had to cook dinner for his alcoholic mother. If he wore his school clothes in his neighborhood, he was harassed.  

Adler felt helpless. The ways in which he could help students who needed him most, he realized, were limited.

“He’s got to be Superman to make it,” Adler recalled thinking. “What are we supposed to do to make it possible for a mere mortal kid to succeed under these circumstances? What he really needs is a boarding school.”

Planting the seed

Adler taught eight years at St. Paul’s, becoming dean of students before attending graduate school, where he earned his MBA and took a job as a management consultant. He was far from satisfied.

“It was a great experience, but pretty soon, I was finding myself thinking, ‘I want to build something. What am I going to build?’ And what I found myself coming back to was this idea I got at St. Paul’s about a college-prep boarding school for urban students.”

A friend told Adler about Rajiv Vinnakota, 37, an associate at another consulting firm who had been toying with a similar idea. The day after the two met, their lives as businessmen ended.

For Adler, the move marked a merger of his two loves: entrepreneurship and education.

“Had we really started being realistic and practical, it might have been tough,” said Adler, who attended the prestigious Sidwell Friends School in Washington. “But because the idea of failure never crossed our minds, it was bliss.”

From February 1997 to July 1998, Adler and Vinnakota lived off savings while working to raise $2 million in donations for the school, and the SEED School of Washington, D.C., opened in 1998 at a temporary site as a public charter school with 40 seventh-grade students.

As the students advanced each year and another grade was added, the school won national acclaim. In 2002, “The Oprah Winfrey Show” featured the school, and Winfrey’s charity honored Adler and Vinnakota with the “Use your Life Award.”

The school then gained financial contributors that spanned political and social views including former Secretary of State Colin Powell, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and former Ravens owner Art Modell.

Then-Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley heard about the successful education experiment, took a tour of the school and then asked Adler, “What do I have to do to get one in Baltimore?”

With the support of State Superintendent of Schools Nancy Grasmick and Gov. Robert Ehrlich Jr., the General Assembly in 2005 passed a bill providing state funds each year for a public boarding school in Maryland. The state provided about $2 million this fiscal year, but more private donations were used to start the school. As the school grows, it will use fewer donations and more public money. 

This past August, SEED opened on the 52-acre campus of the former Southwestern High School. Unlike the Washington school, Baltimore’s is not a charter school.

Nearly 700 students from across the state applied, but only 80 would be selected through a lottery, and for many, SEED represented their best or only shot at success.

Thinking like college students

Kim Worth attends funerals of students she couldn’t save. Many others she visits in jail.

A nationally certified teacher who taught advanced-placement courses for 12 years in Prince George’s and Baltimore counties, Worth says only about 50 of her students ever made it to college. She applied to work at the SEED School of Maryland to change that.

“For some of these kids, it’s either this or death or drugs or jail,” she said, adding, “These kids can achieve the same things anyone else can, given the respect and the love.”

Most of the SEED School’s students — 84 percent — come from single-parent households, and about 45 percent have had a relative incarcerated, according to data from the school.

About 95 percent are black, with nearly half from Baltimore City, although school officials want to recruit a more diverse population as the school grows. The student population now represents nine counties, including Wicomico County on the Eastern Shore.

“Our target students are those for whom SEED’s 24-hour environment is likely to make all the difference,” Adler said. “As our students demonstrate year after year, they can and do thrive if provided with a secure and nurturing environment that is built around learning.”

Students at the school follow a rigorous daily schedule.

They live in dormitories, with each “house” made up of 10 students and five rooms. Each group is named after a college or university attended by a SEED employee. One student-life counselor works with each cluster to help students with homework, clubs, homesickness or any conflict that might arise, and an assistant lives on each floor to supervise during the night.

At 6:30 a.m., students wake up to prepare for their day. They attend class until about 5 in the evening, when they get help with homework and work with counselors and resident assistants on character-value programs. They also have clubs for activities such as gardening and cooking. Their bedroom lights must be turned out by 9:30.

By moving kids into dorms at a young age, officials at the SEED School hope to make students’ transition to college easier and more realistic.

“College students can think like college students. Wouldn’t it be nice to have high-schoolers thinking like college students?” said teacher Jesse Stovall. “That’s the idea.”

Counselors and teachers e-mail each other daily to give individualized attention to students, and with one teacher for every 13 students, instructors become mentors to the youngsters, Stovall said.

The school community is a second — or in some cases, a first — family for these students. Once in, they maintain enrollment through the 12th grade. So far this year, only a few have left, mostly because they were uncomfortable living away from home. Students on the waiting list have filled the vacant slots, officials said.

“They don’t miss home,” Stovall said of students. “They miss what home could be.”

The sixth-graders aren’t allowed to have cell phones, but they can use the house phone twice a week during assigned time slots of 10 to 15 minutes, and they go home on weekends. Except for movie nights, which are rewards for good behavior, the kids hardly have time to watch the one television in each cluster’s community area.

For some, such as 12-year-old Shamar Mister, who grew accustomed in his Baltimore City home to staying up all night watching TV, the move has been a difficult adjustment.

“We even get homework on the weekends,” said Mister, who concedes he waits until Sunday night when he arrives back at school to complete his assignments. If he didn’t, he said, he could get into trouble with teachers. And trouble is something he’d rather stay away from.

Tierra’s come a long way

The switch to SEED was difficult for Jones.

Just after the school year began, her Edmondson Village house burned down. She had been living there with her grandmother, and the September blaze destroyed everything.

Still, she has thrived at her new school, taking pride in her work, earning better grades than ever before and showing maturity.

“She knows she’s cared about, and that’s what matters,” said Anna Williams, the school’s director of student life. “This is home to her during the week.”

When Jones returned to school after the fire, students, teachers and administrators held a community meeting to talk about what happened and collect donations to help her family recover.

Jones now lives with the family of her 35-year-old cousin, Gregory Penn, a psychiatric counselor, in Essex. She stays there during weekends, holidays and summers, when she is not at school.

“The SEED School gives children a better environment to learn. I’ve seen Tierra come a long way,” said Penn, recalling Jones’ poor report cards from Lyndhurst Elementary.

Things are different now. “I do all my work,” Jones said proudly. “If I need help, I’ll ask.”

On her most recent report card from SEED, Jones earned five A’s and three B’s, and since moving in with the Penns, she helps clean the house and look after her cousin’s children, Gregory and Alira.

“She’s even talking about what college she wants to go to,” Alega Penn said.

The next step

Officials have not started recruiting efforts for next school year, but more than 60 requests for applications already have come to the school, which will eventually serve 400 students in grades six through 12.

SEED hopes to expand, and Adler said the organization is looking at Cincinnati, Milwaukee, where Vinnakota grew up, and Newark, N.J.

The possibility could create a whole new life for many more children like Jones, whose new family soon could be made official. The Penns plan to adopt her.

“I always told my husband I saw fortitude in her,” Alega Penn said of Jones. “I saw something special in her.”

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