Growing Up Baltimore – Futures Works Program
“Welcome back! You guys did it. You did it, you did it, you did it. You made it to 10th grade, congratulations. Give yourselves a hand.” (Clapping…)
Youth counselor Stanley Smith is standing at the front of the auditorium at Frederick Douglass High School. He’s looking out at about three dozen students sitting in chairs. Smith is welcoming these kids back to a special program run by the city. It’s called Futures Works. These kids have been targeted by their school as being at risk to drop out. Futures will follow them through-out the year, and encourage them to work hard. But first. Smith acknowledges that not everyone has made it through from last year.
“I told you we might lose a few of you, and we certainly did. We lost about four of you. One of you guys got locked up, about to do three years. Two of you got transferred to new schools. Fortunately, we didn’t lose anybody–nobody got killed.”
Smith is an ex-Marine, ex-Division 1 baseball player. But he’s never taken on a battle like this. At least five days a week, he coaches, compliments and harasses students in to showing up for school. He’s their advocate, their tutor, their coach—basically, the parent they’re missing.
“I don’t say we don’t have some parents who really care, but it’s very difficult when an apathetic student is coming from a home where apathy is also residing…They’re just not accustomed to getting up, timeliness, deadlines, details, pens, pencils, paper. Homework. We have to work double-hard because often times they don’t have anybody else at home to motivate them.”
Students who participate in the Futures program have consistently ranked higher in attendance and graduation than the general student population. But achieving those kinds of results costs money—about 2,000 dollars-per-student for a year. Futures currently operates on two grants from the U.S. Department of Labor collectively worth $1.1 million. But the program is popular. Counselors’ caseloads have only grown over time.
“Must have been about five, six years ago, I think my first case load was thirty students. Thirty! Thirty. Now it’s sixty, you know, so you can only slice the pie so thin and still taste it. “
Smith is lucky. His students all attend the same school. Another counselor, Rose Dunn, follows 57 students… at 10 different schools. In September, one of the busiest times of the year, she had to find four kids who were missing, as well as keep track of her other students.
“Some of our kids are like gypsies. You have one address and even though you give them your information, they don’t necessarily call you and say, ‘I’m no longer on Bromin Avenue, I’m living here.’ And unfortunately because of the recession, a lot of our parents have had to move in with their parents.”
For Futures, the challenge goes back further than the current recession. Nine years ago, it lost federal funding for its summer job program. Brice Freeman is a spokesman for the city’s employment development office.
“At that point, many jurisdictions, many counties and cities across the country just stopped their summer job program. But not in Baltimore City. We continued to do it. The mayor and city council stepped in, offered money and funding for that over the last several years.”
Recently, federal stimulus money helped secure summer jobs for many Futures students. Still, funding for the 22-year-old program runs out next June. Back in his office, Smith, the counselor, looks at a series of articles on professional athletes he has hung up in his office. Futures’ budget pales in comparison to the salaries earned by those same professional athletes.
“Alex Rodriguez stands at 3rd base, he makes $3.1 million a month. Ben Roethlisberger, $28 million a year. Ray Lewis, $6-7-8 million, those kinda ball players. But then again, the priorities that are in the hands of those who control our destiny outweigh, I guess, the little people.”
Futures staff are applying for grants to keep the program running. They’re hopeful and confident they’ll find more funding. Still, they’ve informed the schools they work with that this may be their last year helping students, many of whom they’ve come to see as family.
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