Charter school gets perfect mark with senior class

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DENVER -- Kamaria Hakeem still gets mad when she tells the story, a flash of anger crossing her face at a memory now four years old:"You know black kids don't do good in schools like that."Schools like that would be the Denver School of Science and Technology, where Hakeem enrolled as a member of the school's first freshmen class in 2004.She was excited about the charter school, and she told that to a girl who is most definitely not a friend now, Hakeem says."You know black kids don't do good in schools like that," the girl said then, leaving Hakeem momentarily speechless."Those boxes that society creates for some of us," Hakeem said Thursday -- a little older, a little wiser and far from silent -- "we're pushing the limits on those boxes."Hakeem carried a T-shirt bearing the emblem of Howard University, where she'll enroll this fall, as DSST celebrated the fact that all 79 seniors in its first graduating class have been accepted to four- year colleges and universities.To promote the College in Colorado campaign -- when adults are encouraged to wear shirts proclaiming the college they attended -- the 79 seniors put on their future college shirts and posed for pictures.The idea of the campaign is to raise awareness of the importance of higher education in a state where only one in five ninth-graders will earn a college degree, said Corrie Houck, the initiative's marketing director.DSST's feat of perfect four-year college acceptance, unique for a metro-area public school, is intended to highlight that college can be a goal for everyone. Though Hakeem and classmates Lyness Hill and Ben Wilkerson -- headed for Colorado College and Stanford, respectively -- will be the first to say that it was hard. "I was considered in middle school to be academically advanced," Hill said. "I had to work to be considered average here."Not every student persevered. Of the 131 students in DSST's first freshmen class, only 79 are seniors. Bill Kurtz, head of school, said 30 students were held back because they didn't demonstrate the skills necessary to go to the next grade level.Of those 30, five are still at DSST as 11th-graders. Five more in the original class moved from Denver and 15 students left because the school wasn't a great fit, Kurtz said.Such declines between grades nine and 12 aren't unusual. Denver's East High School, for example, had 633 freshmen in fall 2004 and 476 seniors in fall 2007. Hakeem, Wilkerson and Hill represent the spectrum at DSST, where the senior class is 60 percent minority, 50 percent will be the first in their families to go to college and 40 percent are low-income.Wilkerson is white, both parents are college-educated and his older brother is at Stanford. But even he struggled initially at DSST.Hill describes herself as a "poster child" of the disadvantaged -- poor, black, one parent at home, no college experience in her family. "Just because you've been in a cycle, you don't have to stay in it," she said. "If your mind-set is one of defeat, that's what you're going to get. DPS is not doing anything to change that mind-set."And Hakeem, who once wanted to smack the girl who told her "black kids don't do good," has done something better. She's got an A+ in precalculus.(Contact Nancy Mitchell at mitchelln@RockyMountainNews.com.)(Nancy Mitchell writes for the Rocky Mountain News.)