Youngstown boys school nets national award

By Harold Gwin

Alpha is being honored for its efforts in the area of character education.

YOUNGSTOWN — A city school’s practice of starting each day with a positive “launch” assembly has received state and national recognition.

Alpha: School of Excellence for Boys has been awarded an Ohio Partnership in Character Education Promising Practice Award for the program, and, later this month, school representatives will go to Washington, D.C., to receive a similar honor from the National Character Education Partnership.

Dawud Abdullah, manager of Youngstown City Schools’ Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools, said the award is for innovative and best practices in character education.

Each morning, everyone in the school gathers in the auditorium for a brief session that starts with the Pledge of Allegiance and the National Anthem, followed by reports of “good news” and an outline of the day’s and week’s agendas, said Jerome Harrell, Alpha’s principal.

An outside speaker is invited to address the assembly once each month, he said.

It’s a character-education trait program, Harrell said.

Abdullah said a representative of the Ohio Partnership in Character Education who visited the school last year and sat in on a morning launch nominated the school for the state award.

That was picked up by the national group, resulting in the honor, which will be presented during a national forum on character education Oct. 19.

The Alpha: School of Excellence for Boys and the Athena: School of Excellence for Girls were launched as seventh- and eighth-grade gender schools with a focus on intense academic and character intervention in the fall of 2005.

Both schools ran the morning launch session.

The two were in separate buildings until this fall, when Athena moved into the third floor of the Hillman Street building occupied by Alpha as the school district closed the Athena building in a cost-cutting move.

Both boys and girls have been participating in the same morning launch program this school year, Abdullah said.

Plans call for Alpha and Athena to continue sharing a building when the new Wilson Middle School is built on Gibson Street. It will be two schools within a school, as each will retain its gender classes.

gwin@vindy.com