By Erik Ortiz
Points South Staff Writer

FRUITLAND/CROMWELL HEIGHTS-During the school year, Andrew Williams trades Florida breezes for Delaware snowstorms. He trades his white T-shirt, visor and sneakers for a crisp button-down shirt, tie and dress shoes. He trades his family for his new friends. And he doesn’t mind, because his middle school gave him a chance.

He is waiting for his mother to pick him up from his former middle school, Academy Prep Center for Education. Wearing his favorite blue visor and neatly pressed jeans, the 16-year-old chats with classmates about finding a summer job. But he must juggle any work he may find with classes. Despite being a junior in high school, he must still take summer classes as part of Academy Prep’s graduate support program.

"They gave me an opportunity to learn and experience new things that I would never have known from another school," said Williams, sitting hunched-over on a wooden bench. "I don’t know where I’d be without them."

Students at Academy Prep Center for Education, the middle school Andrew Williams attended, line up for the afternoon's activities.
Williams’ experience is unique in a neighborhood where fewer than 26 percent of students finish high school. The school makes an eight-year promise: "Help our graduates earn full scholarships to the secondary and college programs best suited to each individual." In the fall, Williams will be a junior at St. Andrews, a private high school in Delaware.

Academy Prep, nestled inside a chain-link fence on 2301 22nd Ave. S., is a private school for children grades five through eight. The school is 95 percent black and, to attend, a child must qualify for the Federal Lunch Program. Their $9,800-a-year tuition is paid by scholarships generated by businesses and private donations. (PHOTO BY ANNIE WOODEN)

Most of the students who go to St. Andrews, a 2,000-acre Episcopal institution, are white and affluent. Their parents can afford the $24,000-a-year tuition. Many times, Williams said, the student has a legacy because a male family member attended.

"I was scared about going to a mostly white school," said Williams, who is black. "But I like to meet new people and I learned not to worry about that."

Williams entered Academy Prep in the sixth grade in 1997, the year the school opened. He attended public school in the fifth grade, but his mother, Tonya Mathis, feared he would "get mixed up with the wrong kind of boys." After talking with school officials, she decided that her son would be given structure and guidance at Academy Prep.

"I was also looking at another school, but if Andrew didn’t get accepted to either, he’d have to go to public school," Mathis said, a case manager for the Department of Children and Families. "It was a gamble that I never regretted."

Although Mathis is not opposed to public school education, she said the larger class sizes would have left her son lost in the crowd. According to the Pinellas County School Board, the teacher to student ratio is 1-to-30 for middle schools. At Academy Prep, it is 1-to-6.

Mathis was grateful that the school admitted her son. He would have a place to go on Saturdays and during the summer, since attendance is mandatory then.

"It kept him out of trouble and gave him something to do, instead of hanging out with the boys in the streets," Mathis said.

The school also offered male role models who could impart discipline and structure. Mathis never married Williams’ father, a security guard. Although Williams said his father has always been in his life, Mathis said she took on most of the family’s financial responsibility.

According to Academy Prep officials, 80 percent of the students come from single-parent homes or are raised by grandparents.

Williams felt forced to attend the middle school. He said he didn’t want to be there his first year. He didn’t like the uniforms--polo shirts and khakis. And he didn’t like the schedule--nearly 12 hours a day, six days a week.

But by his first summer session, he was hooked. Although his mother said he had always been a good student, getting A’s and B’s and making the honor roll, she noticed he had a work ethic and good grades that would help him get into a good high school.

In 2000, Williams was one of the original nine who graduated from Academy Prep the first year there was an eighth-grade class. By then, the faculty noticed a role model in him.

"(Andrew) is a kid that parents would be proud to have and that a school would be proud to teach," said John Erik Savitsky, regional director of development for Academy Prep. "Grades five to eight are impressionable years for children and the latest time teachers can make an impact on their lives. In Andrew’s case, the impact was made."

During the summer, Williams will attend an organizational skills class at Academy Prep and an SAT prep course at University of South Florida twice a week--requirements of the graduate support program. He will finish his summer reading and do what 16-year-olds dread and dream of--get a job at the mall.

Williams said he learned to value his education. Although he enjoys being home for the summer, he would not trade the opportunities his middle school gave him for anything.

© Copyright 2002 The Poynter Institute