City touts justice reform, other Young Men's Initiative outcomes

More than 4,000 black and Latino young men have already been affected by the constellation of programs and services in the city’s Young Men’s Initiative, Mayor Bloomberg announced today.

Over one thousand young black and Latino men found jobs through expanded training and placement programs, according to a city report about the initiative’s first year. Hundreds of men between the ages of 17 and 24 received special instruction aimed at boosting their reading skills. And dozens fewer students were suspended at 20 schools that piloted a less punitive approach to discipline.

But it was a change that has so far involved just 50 young men that dominated Bloomberg’s attention at a press conference to tout the progress.

When the Young Men’s Initiative kicked off in August 2011, Bloomberg said the city would lobby for juvenile justice reform to stop young offenders in New York City from being sent to private detention centers upstate. The “Close to Home” law that does just that passed in March.

Already, 50 juvenile offenders have been relocated from upstate facilities to residential treatment centers in the city. As many as 250 will arrive before the end of the year, city officials said.

Joined at a press conference by Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs and Deputy Schools Chancellor Dorita Gibson at Passages Academy, one of five alternative schools expected to enroll the new arrivals, Bloomberg said the shift would give court-involved students a better chance of graduating from high school. For the first time this year, the credits the students earn during their time at the centers will count towards their high school graduation requirements.

“If these kids don’t get an education, what’s their future? They’re going to at some point get out of the prison system and aren’t going to be able to make a living,” Bloomberg said. “Even if they got an education [upstate] they got back to the city and it wasn’t accredited, so they fell behind.”

Passages Academy and the other “alternative learning centers” that will enroll the teens relocated under Close to Home serve students who have been convicted of non-violent crimes or are awaiting trials, and some who are undergoing long-term suspensions from their high schools.

Principal Stephen Wilder said the ratio of teachers to students is 10 to one, and all teachers are licensed employees of the Department of Education.

“The curriculum is aligned to the Common Core and we’re offering same high level of expectations you find at a typical school in the community,” Wilder said.

Jim St. Germain, a 23 year-old Brooklyn native who attended Passages between 2005 and 2008 after he broke the law as a teen, said the program gave him the motivation he needed to graduate from high school and college. He is now a student at Albany Law School.

“I was able to step away from an environment that promotes negativity to an environment that promotes positivity,” he said of Passages and Boys Town, the residential center with which it is affiliated. He added, “Most of the kids know that this is a chance they won’t get again in life.”

In many ways, St. Germain epitomizes the New Yorkers the Young Men’s Initiative is trying to help: Raised by his grandmother, St. Germain, who is black, said he felt he “was not cut out for school,” and thought his future was to play professional football until he broke his hand at 14. He said the city’s programs targeting youth in the justice system and providing mentors to boys of color could inspire more to make smarter life decisions.

“It’s really easy to give up on our kids who are on the streets committing crime, but it is hard to do something for them, to help them pay taxes, have jobs and go to school,” he said.

Close to Home and other juvenile justice reforms comprise only one prong of the Young Men’s Initiative. The initiative is also aimed at improving educational outcomes for male students of color.

Already, the Department of Education has begun giving high schools extra credit on their annual assessments when those students make academic progress. Schools have also started to benefit from a literacy program and a middle school mentoring initiative administered by other city agencies. And after seeing suspension rates drop by 38 percent in 20 schools that piloted changes to discipline policies, the department has tweaked the discipline code for all students.

But the main education initiative, the $24 million Expanded Success Initiative, is only now getting into full swing. This spring, the city picked 40 schools that have a track record of success with black and Latino students to receive extra funds for services geared toward college readiness. In exchange, researchers will study the schools’ practices with the goal of sharing the best ones with other schools.