Chartered course

ST. LOUIS -- The restrooms are wedged into a bank vault. Marbled teller booths have been turned into computer stations. Students do science experiments where tellers once counted out money for drive-through customers.

There's still an air of grandeur about the stone-columned, 87-year-old former Manufacturers Bank and Trust Co. building, with its spacious, high-ceiling lobby, highlighted by a large mural celebrating business and industry.

But the once-vacant building has been turned into a charter school in St. Louis -- one chartered through Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau.

The Lift for Life Academy opened in fall 2000 with 60 sixth-graders in a cramped, converted mechanic's garage at 1413 Cass in a blighted area of the city. The academy was named after Lift for Life Gym, an after-school weightlifting program set up by St. Louis businessman Marshall Cohen and his wife, Carla Scissors-Cohen. The Cohens founded the charter school -- as with the gym -- to serve failing students and keep them from dropping out.

Now, the academy has 240 sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders and room to spare.

Two years ago, the school moved into the recycled bank building at 1713 S. Broadway near Soulard Market, just south of downtown St. Louis. The academy, a nonprofit corporation, bought the building with a bank loan.

Students are bused to the school, which has expanded to include a neighboring building -- a former bingo hall -- for the school cafeteria and sixth-grade classes.

At Lift for Life Academy, the real struggle is in the classroom, where teachers seek to educate middle-school students who have lost out on learning in more traditional class settings.

Students who previously hated school say they like the charter school, with its relatively small classrooms and enthusiastic and caring teachers.

Charter schools are public schools operating with tax money based on enrollment -- the same as Missouri's school districts -- as well as any private money they raise. There's no tuition.

But unlike school districts, each charter school operates with its own board of directors. They don't answer to school district superintendents or an elected school board with the hope that they will feel free to try new, different methods to help failing students in the St. Louis and Kansas City school districts -- the only two districts in the state where charters are permitted.

Lift for Life operates on a $1.95 million annual budget. About $200,000 to $300,000 is generated through fund-raising efforts and private donations. The rest is tax money.

The academy's leaders are calling it a success, even though students there score poorly on standardized tests. Missouri Assessment Program test scores from last spring showed only 19 percent of Lift for Life Academy's eighth-graders were proficient in social studies. Over 96 percent of those students ranked in the lowest two categories in math skills.

Only 4.2 percent of the school's seventh-graders showed proficiency in communication arts last spring, but that was better than the 3.3 percent showing the previous year. None of the seventh-graders showed proficiency in science in 2002 and 2003, according to MAP scores.

"The MAP scores are very disappointing," said Jo Ann Perkins, a former St. Louis public school principal who ran the school for its first three years. She retired this summer, replaced by Anthony Taylor, a former assistant principal in the Pattonville School District in St. Louis County.

Perkins and current staff members of the Lift for Life Academy say tests don't tell the whole story.

Teachers say they deal with more than academic subjects at the middle school. They hand out hope and encouragement to children who have grown up in poverty and too often have seen the seedy side of life.

The students, most of them black, had little interest in school before they came to the academy. Some had discipline problems. Many, such as Kenneth Matthews, were in danger of dropping out.

He would often cut class at his former school in Cahokia, Ill. Now, he hates to miss school, said his grandmother, Mary McElroy of St. Louis. She is raising the 13-year-old.

"I am very impressed with this school," she said. She said the school teachers and staff are enthusiastic and have an "unquestioned commitment to the kids."

Kenneth, a quiet boy, said he gets more individual attention from teachers than he did in other schools. He and other students say classes are smaller here. They average about 19 students, which is small compared to classrooms of 30 or more at many of the St. Louis public schools.

The Cohens, the school's founders, say they won't take more students. They want to keep class sizes at a manageable level.

"We have a waiting list of 40 to 50 kids," said Taylor, the new principal.

Southeast Missouri State University officials praise Lift for Life Academy, but won't let the university's student teachers train there.

That's because Missouri law allows up to 20 percent of a charter school's teachers to work without a state certificate in the subject area they teach. Student teachers, Southeast educators said, need to train under properly certified teachers.

"I think it is critical to have a math teacher with a good background in math," said Robert Buchanan, a former Sikeston school superintendent and currently an associate professor of educational administration and counseling at Southeast. Buchanan heads up a university committee that regularly reviews the Lift for Life Academy operations.

In 2002, the latest year for which Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education statistics are available, nearly 73 percent of the Lift for Life staff had regular teaching certificates. Another 18 percent had temporary or special-assignment certificates.

The 25-member staff includes 12 classroom teachers, in addition to three teachers in art, music and physical education, two special education teachers, a reading teacher, a part-time writing coach, teacher's aide, a social worker, a principal, dean of students, and an assistant principal.

Math teacher Victoria Bub said she's taught the same group of children as they've progressed from sixth to seventh and now eighth grade. "You really get to know them," said Bub, who now teaches eighth-grade math.

Keeping the students focused on school work can be difficult at times. "There are, I think, more distractions. These are kids that didn't make it in a traditional school setting," she said.

Bub likes her classroom, where wooden safety deposit box booths line one wall. Some students concentrate better when they are sitting in the booths, she said.

Eighth-graders Ashley Polk, 13, and Javette Tellis, 13, like learning in the former bank. "We thought there was money stashed somewhere," said Javette with a smile.

Students and staff say things have gotten better at the school. Students like the lockers that have been installed. In past years there were no lockers. Students had to haul their backpacks, stuffed with all their textbooks and notebooks, to every class.

The charter school initially was short on supplies. The school used dictionaries and outdated textbooks from the St. Louis School District.

"You have to start somewhere," Scissors-Cohen said. "Each year we add more of the extra things."

The school operates 11 months of the year with one month off in the summer.

"It keeps you off the streets," Javette said.

Students have to dress in a school uniform: khaki slacks and white or blue shirts.

"Everyone is on the same page when they walk in," said Marshall Cohen, who, along with his board of directors, raises money for the school and serves in many ways as the school's business manager.

His wife said a school uniform helps keep the children focused on their school work and on learning more as a team.

Southeast Missouri State University's charter review committee has given high marks to the administration of the school.

"They have good management," said Buchanan, who chairs the committee.

"If you were a parent," asked Buchanan, "would you want your child to attend a large urban middle school or would you like your child to be in a smaller, better supervised environment?"

Perkins, the school's former principal, said charter schools aren't burdened by bureaucracy as is the case with traditional schools. That allows greater flexibility, but it also means more has to be done with a smaller staff, she said.

The school graduated its first class of 54 eighth-graders in July. Perkins said she and her staff filled out application forms and shepherded the graduates into various St. Louis city high schools where they could best succeed.

Social worker Jeanne Godar-Kriss works full time for the school, counseling students and addressing behavioral and emotional problems that often carry over from the home to the classroom.

"It's not an easy place to work," she said. "I haven't found a choirboy yet."

But she said it's rewarding to see students turned on to learning by the time they graduate.

Ed Newbern, sixth-grade language arts teacher, has taught at the school since it opened.

"This is not a job. It's a mission," said Newbern. "We are lifting young minds."