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Photo by Jon Anderson.
Emma Joines, an 18-year-old senior at Spain Park High School, had a troubled childhood. The New Beginnings program at the Crossroads alternative school helped save her life, she said, but she and others say the program has taken a turn for the worse since being moved from the former Berry High School campus.
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Photo by Jon Anderson.
Hoover High School teacher Dale Windle talks with students in the New Beginnings classroom at Hoover as they work on their computers while sitting on the floor. There typically are no more than 11 students in the classroom at any given time. Some students attend some mainstream classes, while others stay in the New Beginnings classroom pretty much the whole school day.
Emma Joines was 10 years old when her parents divorced, and she felt forced to choose a side.
Her two sisters chose to live with her mother, but she went to live with her dad initially so he wouldn’t be alone, she said.
A custody battle began that would last seven years and involve lengthy trials, nine judges in two counties and a lot of family drama, Joines said.
Her grades at school plummeted. Anxiety and depression controlled her days, and insomnia ruled her nights.
“If I could get to sleep, nightmares would often wake me up,” she said.
Joines began struggling with anorexia and bulimia in seventh grade, and she started hurting herself in eighth grade, she said.
“I believed I wasn’t worth anything,” Joines said.
She was hospitalized for suicidal thoughts and tendencies for a while and then turned to drugs in the ninth grade. She was sent to the Second Chance program in the Hoover school system’s Crossroads alternative school.
“I wouldn’t have admitted it then, but it truly did help me a lot,” Joines said. “The faculty really was so supportive. … Second Chance was a punishment, yes, but it really was more of a point of redirection.”
Joines was able to return to Spain Park High School, but not long into her sophomore year, her mother took her to court for domestic violence. Joines claims the accusations were false, but she was put on probation.
She went to juvenile detention four times in Columbiana for probation violations and the last time spent four months there after failing her entry drug test, she said. She then spent five months in a behavior modification/rehab facility in Enterprise.
“This is where I began my healing process,” Joines said.
But when she was released, she couldn’t go back to Spain Park, she said. She felt like she had lost all her friends and wasn’t welcome there, and her drug dealers, party friends and people who had abused her were there, she said.
So Joines applied for the New Beginnings program at the Crossroads School, which at the time was at the former Berry High School campus off Columbiana Road.
The New Beginnings program is not a disciplinary program. It’s designed for students with special challenges who need a smaller, more focused environment to succeed academically — for a variety of reasons.
The program took a dramatic turn this school year when the Crossroads School was closed as a separate school and the old Berry campus sold to the Vestavia Hills Board of Education. The Second Chance program was moved back to the Hoover High School campus, but the New Beginnings students were sent back to the schools for which they were zoned.
For Joines, that meant going back to Spain Park.
The New Beginnings students were not forced to go back into regular classes. However, the program has been much different this year than in past years.
Joines, now a senior, and two sophomores went to the Hoover school board in November to express dissatisfaction and said the program is no longer working or meeting students’ needs.
Instead of having small classes for different subjects, New Beginnings students of all grades go into the same room and receive most of their instruction online. They primarily watch videos and take multiple-choice tests on the computers, they said.
“It’s a huge downgrade from what we had at the old Berry. It doesn’t provide you with the education that you need for graduating from high school and going into college. You can cheat on it extremely easily,” sophomore Jonathan Chunn said. “It doesn’t work for me and a lot of people.”
Trace Grayson, another sophomore, said students have lost the caring and supportive environment they previously had.
“They had actual teachers for support and an actual learning environment,” Grayson said. “When we moved to Spain Park and Hoover, we all got online and basically we just got sent to a classroom with one teacher, and we were told to do our work pretty much.”
On top of that, the whole reason some students enter New Beginnings is because they can’t deal with their base school environment, and now they’ve been thrown back into it, Joines said.
“You can’t get your schoolwork done if you’re mentally not there,” she said.
Going back to Spain Park sends her anxiety through the roof, Joines said.
“It’s just horrible to have to go back there,” she said.
Spain Park Principal Larry Giangrosso and the staff have tried to make the New Beginnings students feel comfortable, but “he can’t change the fact that we’re back in a place that we don’t feel safe and secure,” Joines said.
Some New Beginnings students have dropped out of school as a result, she said.
Hoover school board member Earl Cooper commended the students for having the courage to come to the board to share their concerns. He said he understands that having a nurturing environment is important, but at some point, their educational experience has to prepare them for real life.
“Once you walk out, it’s a tough one,” Cooper said.
Shannon Barron, an instructional support aide who led the New Beginnings program at Spain Park when it first moved back there but left the school system in March, said the program isn’t working like it should anymore.
These are teenagers with special needs, and while they do need social interaction with their peers, they don’t need it in a mass setting like Hoover and Spain Park high schools, Barron said.
And the online instruction isn’t working well for them, she said. “Seven to 10 hours a day staring at a computer — it just isn’t the right learning environment for them.”
Some of the students feel like they’re just an afterthought, Barron said.
She thinks the solution is finding a setting similar to what the students had before, but said she was told the school system can no longer afford teachers for small-group settings like they had at the old Berry campus.
Hoover schools Superintendent Kathy Murphy said one of the reasons the New Beginnings students were sent back to their base schools is because some of them were missing out on high-level classes and electives that weren’t available at the Crossroads School. They’re able to take those classes at their base schools, she said.
Special accommodations have been made to separate New Beginnings students from the rest of the school population as much as needed, Murphy said. “They have a special place to park, and they don’t have to make their way through the big halls with everybody,” she said. “It’s designed to give them as much support as we can.”
At least one teacher from each of the four core subjects goes into the New Beginnings room to offer help as needed, and intervention coaches still support the students and give them an opportunity to talk about issues they are facing, she said.
“It really is a great effort, I think, on our part,” Murphy said.
Students even have the option to take their courses online from home, she said.
However, the goal of the New Beginnings program is not to exclude them from the rest of the student body, but to rather support them as they reintegrate into the larger population, she said.
Even so, Murphy formed a committee to explore if there are ways to improve the New Beginnings program. It’s being led by Simmons Middle School Principal Brian Cain, who was principal of the Crossroads School years ago, and current Crossroads School Principal Anna Whitney.
Cain said the committee has met several times and is trying to be sensitive to the needs of students. They have gathered some data about the number of students who returned to New Beginnings this year and how many of them chose to return to some mainstream classes, Murphy said.
She declined to release that information until it is presented to the school board at its May 8 meeting.
School officials also have been talking with students about their experiences this year and were planning to do more surveys with students, Murphy said. She understands some students don’t like the new arrangement, but “for some of the students, it has worked really well,” she said.
Some students like being back at their base school, but others don’t, Murphy said. Some like the online instruction, but others say it doesn’t work for them, she said. “It’s such a mixed bag.”
Murphy said it’s too early to tell whether any changes will be made to the New Beginnings program. School officials are concerned about whether they have had the new approach in place long enough to properly gauge its effectiveness, she said.
Regardless, Murphy said school officials never take it lightly when students bring forward serious concerns. They want to keep troubled kids in school and encouraged, she said.
“Hopefully, we’ll continue to find ways to support those students,” she said. “If there’s a better way to do it, I’m all in.”
Joines said her anxiety at Spain Park got so bad that she quit going to school in January. Her father worked it out so she could take classes online from home and go to the school only to take tests, she said. It’s not ideal, but she just couldn’t handle it anymore, she said.
She plans to graduate in May and has applied for admission to the University of Montevallo. If accepted, she plans to major in something like nursing or psychology and get a double major or minor in music, which is her passion.
She hopes that, by sharing her story, she can help bring something like the old New Beginnings program back, she said.
“It’s not just about me. It’s about the future of the program,” Joines said. “I’m trying to figure out how it’s going to work for other kids I know and other kids who will need it in the future … New Beginnings did save my life, and I’m not the only person like that.”