Article

State's SEEDS sprouts high achievers from ranks of the underprivileged

Friday, April 27, 2007• BY JOHN MOONEY • Star-Ledger Staff

In the mid-1990s, when Natalia Torres was a middle-school stu dent in Newark's North Ward, she wasn't even thinking about her chances at an upscale private school.

Going against her were the high drop-out rates and lagging test scores that shut too many poor urban kids out from the best educational opportunities and the fastest-growing segments of the job market.

But a guidance counselor no ticed she was something special and steered Torres to an unusual program that marries private capital, high expectations and generous private-school scholarships.

Today, she and 1,000 other poor, urban youth have defied their sur roundings thanks to New Jersey SEEDS.

With the help of the program, which provides a year of intensive Saturday and summer math and English classes, low-income graduates are given a good shot at seats -- and full scholarships -- at some of America's top private schools.

Torres went onto Montclair Kimberley Academy and Pace University. Today, she is a broker with Goldman Sachs.

"SEEDS was the catalyst in my life, made me what I am today," Torres said recently. "It was just such a great relief to go to a school that had trees and not metal detec tors."

Fifteen years and more than 1,000 graduates later, the program is enjoying robust success as it graduates its newest class and ac cepts its next one.

With an annual budget of $2.5 million and staff of 20, SEEDS serves 110 students a year, placing almost all in the 100-plus schools that have joined the partnership. They range from New Jersey schools like Pingry, Peddie and Dwight-Englewood to New England landmarks of Phillips An dover, Exeter and St. Paul's.

The social adjustment can often be the hardest part, so the organization tries to place more than one SEEDS student in a given school at a time. Overall, SEEDS numbers speak for themselves: 99 percent graduate from the high school, 95 percent move onto college, and 90 percent of college-age graduates are either still in school or have graduated, according to the organization.

In 2002, with the goal of reaching students earlier, SEEDS expanded its work to prepare 20 fifth- graders each year for private middle schools.

And in perhaps its boldest step yet, the program will start a pilot program within the public schools, providing 30 high school students from Orange and Englewood with four years of their own Saturday and summer classes in hopes of catapulting them into competitive colleges.

With space limited in the private schools but unwavering demand in the public ones, leaders said the new program was a natural, if risky, progression.

"It's a big experiment," said Blair MacInnes, one of the early founders of the program. "But we do experiments well."

Wife of former state Sen. Gor don MacInnes -- who just finished up a five-year stint heading state oversight of the state's poorest urban districts -- MacInnes made an unsuccessful run for the state Senate in 2003. But back in the early 1990s, she was a mother and former inner-city school teacher who wanted more opportunities for the bright students she'd seen.

She teamed up with John Hanly, then-headmaster of the Pingry School, and a few others like William Engel, a Pingry trustee and prominent Somerset County lawyer.

"It's not a complicated system," explained MacInnes, who with Engel remain on the organization's board. "You take very smart and motivated kids, and match them with great teachers. And guess what? They succeed, and they suc ceed magnificently."

New Jersey SEEDS -- "Scholars, Educators, Excellence, Dedication, and Success" -- won outside recognition this winter with the prestigious Mutual of America's Community Partnership Award, a national prize for non- profits.

Touted as the only statewide program of its kind, SEEDS now runs classes in a half-dozen New Jersey private schools. In addition to weekend courses in literature, math and science, there are workshops and a six-week summer program stressing leadership, team- building and study skills.

At Montclair Kimberley Academy one recent Saturday morning, the chattering from two SEEDS classrooms was the only sound.

In one, students mapped a science experiment in volume and mass of oil and water. The other fo cused on the drama "Raisin in the Sun."

Giselle Reinoso, an eight-grader from the William Brown School in Newark, talked of Bantu influence in the language. Another brought in her saxophone to punctuate a report on musical roots.

Heady stuff for eighth-graders, but these are heady eighth-graders -- even if they don't realize it right off.

"I said, 'No way I'd do this, too hard,'" said McHerdy Saint Ger maine, an eighth-grader at the St. Rose of Lima School in East Orange who is among the 2007 graduates. "But I figured I would at least try it out."

With a ready smile, McHerdy said it meant harder school work, certainly lost sleep on Saturday mornings, and maybe a few less parties. "But it showed me what I can do," he said. "I gained a confi dence that I could try anything."

Next year, he will attend Seton Hall Preparatory School.

Debbie Rivera spoke of the mix of students she has met. "Not just the Dominican kids," she said, like at her middle school in Passaic. "Here I have a Chinese friend, all types."

Next year, she'll attend Dwight Englewood School.

"I was always called a nerd in school, but here they are all smart," said Chiamaka Anonyuo, an eighth grader at the Mount Vernon School in Newark. "It's like finding your own people, and of all different races."

Next year, she'll attend Taft, a boarding school in Connecticut that's a two-hour drive and world away from Newark. Chiamaka said she's not nervous.

"My dream has always been to go to a boarding school, to be independent," she said.

Academic success is taking root

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