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My Name is Brian Scully and I’m the Program Director for the 2010 Stimulus funded program
called Summer Reboot Camp here at Whitman Hansen High School. Essentially what we do
is take kids who are at risk who are eligible, who will meet multiple barriers: academic
credits, problems that they may face with the law or with the school, students who may
just have had trouble succeeding at a high school level. We give them a chance to attend
school, on scholarship or at night school to make some credits up, and in addition,
we give them a chance to work. So the course of the day is an eight-hour day, so in the
morning they go to workplace, they work within, around the school district buildings, landscaping,
clerical work, whatever needs to be done for the day, and then at night they attend night
school from 5 to 9. And we have a program that is really trying to address the problems
that face these types of kids in terms of job training and success in the academic world.
We take them and provide two counselors and two certified teachers, as well as two college-aged
overseers. And what we have – it’s the type of situation where we can allow a kid
to make a mistake in the job place that might have gotten him fired from his real job –
the teacher takes that student and hands it the discipline of bringing them back to
the school to home base, but instead of firing them, they go into the counseling session,
and the counselor breaks down what had led them to that point, what the problems were,
what the triggers were, and the goal is to get that kid back out there to the workplace.
It’s been successful on a number of levels: we’ve had some graduates who have really
used the program, along with their own sort of survival instincts to make some progress
as to where they were and kind of start to work their way out of problem credit areas,
or, you know, like some choices that might not be correct for them. From the school’s
perspective, the ability to have extra hands on deck, when needed, to do the kind of things
that just are tougher to get done. You know, maintenance, things of that idea, in terms
of, we wouldn’t be able to mulch, we wouldn’t be able to weed, but instead this kid has
a meaningful thing that allows them to see success, that unifies the school and they
can point to that as something tangible that they’ve done. And, it’s just been a lot
of fun to work with, we’ve got a great staff, a great relationship with the Brockton area
WIB, and it’s just been a very successful program for us.