Sennatra Priester woke up later than usual. She dressed slowly, took her time doing her hair and makeup. It was her first day of high school, but she wasn’t concerned with looking good for her classmates.
She was afraid.
Hands clasped in her lap, Priester shifts slightly on the brown couch in her family room. The 18-year-old tells stories about middle school. The group of girls who tried to choke her. The daily threats. The physical abuse.
She didn’t understand why.
During the first week of high school, Priester found any excuse to miss the bus. It worked. She never stepped foot in Gibbs High School. That was almost four years ago.
Today, she is three days away from graduating from the Life Skills Center, an alternative charter school in downtown St. Petersburg, Fla. With her credits fulfilled, Priester has more pressing matters on her mind.
“I don’t have an outfit for graduation,” Priester says with arms crossed, mugging a pout before she laughs. “I’m trying to get one, but I’m a little on the broke side right now.”
She might not have her dress yet, but she has a vision.
Elegant. Classy. Polka dots.
***
Priester is one of 33 graduates who walked across the stage at the Palladium Theater this week. The Life Skills Center, one of 37 nationwide, provides an alternative education for students ages 16 through 21 who have not excelled in traditional public school settings. Like any public school, the Life Skills Center is state-funded and free. But as a charter school, it has greater freedom its structure and classroom approach. June’s graduation marks the greatest number of students to earn diplomas since the Life Skills Center of Pinellas County opened in 2005.
Life Skills will undergo an expansion this summer, adding enough computer stations to accommodate 250 additional students by the fall. Right now Life Skills is at full capacity with 400 students.
The expansion reflects the growing popularity of charter schools amid widespread disenchantment with the traditional public school system. The Florida Department of Education reports that the number of charter schools in Florida has grown from five to more 356 since 1996, with over 40 new charter schools opening in the past year alone.
Since the charter school movement is still young, however, there is debate surrounding the effectiveness of these nontraditional settings.
But for Priester, the Life Skills Center was the answer.
***
Priester sits poised on the couch with legs crossed. The family room is dim. Beneath the window lies a twin-sized mattress with a rumpled sleeping bag and several neatly folded blankets. Her voice is calm as she recounts her experiences at Tyrone Middle School. Deflated by the bullies and problems at home, Priester drew inward. She didn’t stand up for herself. She got pushed around.
As a result, her grades suffered. In sixth grade, she started off with mostly C’s. By the end of the year she was making F’s. “My mind wasn’t on education at all,” she said. “I was trying to fix the things that was going on in my life.”
By eighth grade, Priester had started to rebel. “I just didn’t care anymore,” she says. “I was like, maybe if I act out or be rebellious then they’ll pay attention to me.”
Her parents, Robbie Reid and Loneryl “Dee” Reid, met repeatedly with teachers and school administrators to address the situation, but to no avail. Robbie Reid said he lost faith in the public school system.
“We don’t really think they were serious about educating our kids,” he said.
