By Dustin Brown
A public high school based at LaGuardia Community College will soon offer students a chance to stay an extra year and add an associate’s degree to their diplomas as part of a $7.6 million grant awarded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Middle College High School National Consortium is among eight organizations around the country slated to receive more than $40 million to create 70 “middle colleges,” five-year high schools with associate’s degree programs that ease students’ transition into college.
“This is a testament to the power of a good idea,” said Middle College High School Principal Cecilia Cunningham at a news conference Tuesday in the high school’s cafeteria on Van Dam Street just south of Queens Boulevard.
The idea emerged 28 years ago in Long Island City with the creation of Middle College High School, a small learning community where students were able to get acclimated to the college environment with classes at LaGuardia.
Cunningham said the school targets so-called “at risk” students who might not otherwise be expected to finish high school yet still thrive at Middle College.
“It’s the environment that supports their work,” she said.
Although students there have always been allowed to take college classes at LaGuardia, next year’s 11th-graders represent the first class of students who can leave with an associate’s degree.
“We’ve developed a stream of classes that will guarantee that they end in an A.A. degree,” Cunningham said.
The Gates Foundation was created by the founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates, and his wife Melinda to provide funding for health and education initiatives worldwide. The grant emerged from a partnership that also includes the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Ford Foundation and W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
Middle College will put the $7.6 million grant into creating eight new schools and redesigning 12 others around the country, creating in each of them a five-year associate’s degree program like the one starting up in September on its own campus.
At least four of the schools will be located in New York City. Two new schools will be created here, while Middle College and another school will be redesigned to add the associate’s degree program.
The school is already the leader of a nine-year-old group called the Middle College High School National Consortium, which consists of 30 high schools nationwide based on the model pioneered at Middle College.
The program will begin in Long Island City as a pilot for 30 current sophomores who are interested in earning their associate’s degree, after which other Middle College students can sign up once any problems are ironed out.
In order to get the degree, however, the students must agree to attend classes during the summer and extend high school by one year.
“This doesn’t happen magically,” Cunningham said. “We’re looking for kids who feel like they want to make a commitment to this extra work.”
Although they are too old to be eligible for the newly funded program, a group of juniors and seniors standing in the back of the cafeteria during the press conference spoke enthusiastically about the opportunities the school has already afforded them.
LaEma Vanterpool, a senior from Long Island City, said she decided to attend SUNY New Paulz after having toured the campus with Middle College.
“If it wasn’t for the college trip, I wouldn’t ever have found New Paulz,” she said.
Vanessa Coley, a junior from Astoria, is enrolled in a sociology class at LaGuardia Community College.
“I’m the youngest one there,” she said. “My goal is to complete my first year before I graduate.”
But for students who come after her, that extra work will give them an extra degree, too.
“I think it’s great. It’s a good opportunity,” Coley said. “It helps people get their degree in less time.”
Reach reporter Dustin Brown by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 154.
