Early start for some eager Young Scholars

IT'S AUGUST. It's hot. And for most Philadelphia school students, summer vacation days are dwindling down to a precious few.

But at the Young Scholars Charter School, in North Philadelphia, summer vacation is over.

Yesterday, the school's 225 students entered a newly renovated building, on Marshall Street near Poplar, with classrooms and hallways painted in bright colors. Until this year, Young Scholars, which serves grades six through eight, had been situated in smaller rented space at Broad and Master streets.

Kerrivah Heard, an eighth- grader, was eager to return, even though it was sooner than the district schools.

"I was so excited, I couldn't sleep last night," Heard said yesterday during her lunch period. "I even got to the bus stop early."

And that means that she got there before 7:20 a.m., her usual time.

Heard said that she would rather be in school than sitting around the house waiting for September.

District schools open for the 2009-2010 school year on Sept. 8

Young Scholars starts earlier than all but two of the city's 67 charter schools - First Philadelphia and the KIPP charter schools.

The longer school year and longer school day - from 7:50 a.m. to 4:15 p.m., with after-school activities or homework help available until 5:30 p.m. - is intended to help close the disparity in achievement levels between white students from middle- and upper-income families and low-income and minority students, said the school's chief executive, Lars Beck.

"We're pretty aggressive in our effort to closely work with our students and their families to close the achievement gap," he said.

"In order to do so, we feel that in addition to great teaching and a great academic program, we need more time."

For the first week of school, students at Young Scholars attend what school officials call "Conduct College," in which teachers team up to educate students about the school's "core values and expectations for student behavior."

They're taught that behaving properly and engaging in their schoolwork will boost their success in middle school and help them follow former students into the best high schools and colleges.

In one room, teachers Shakira Smith and A.J. Ernst worked together. When one sixth-grader slouched and talked with classmates, Smith ignored him at first. But a little later, she quietly approached him, put her arm around his shoulder and whispered that she expected him to "sit up straight and stop talking."

He slouched maybe once or twice more, but corrected himself when she reminded the whole class about the sit-up-straight rule.

By the end of the class, the boy Smith had corrected earned her praise after eagerly answering her questions by looking at the school's guiding principles, listed on posters in the classroom.

Smith smiled at him and said: "I'm really pleased at how some of you are using the resources to give your answers."