By DIANNA SMITH - Palm Beach Post Staff Writer Monday, January 14, 2008
By DIANNA SMITH Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 14, 2008
DELRAY
BEACH — They have classrooms with matching desks and the walls are no
longer paper thin. There are computer rooms and athletic fields and,
most important, these students no longer have to attend school in a
strip mall.
This is the new Toussaint L'Ouverture High
School for Arts and Social Justice, a charter school of 140 students,
most of whom are Haitian. The school, which has moved five times in
seven years, has a new home on the former Atlantic High School campus,
where students have 12 classrooms to learn as opposed to the makeshift
school they once attended.
They studied in a former
warehouse that was part of a strip mall in western Delray Beach, where
rooms were the size of walk-in closets and the space just wasn't
enough. There was very little green space except for a patch that was
surrounded by a parking lot.
There, Joe Bernadel, the
school's co-founder and chief operating officer, and the school's board
of directors were paying as much as $20,000 a month to rent the space
at West Atlantic Avenue and Military Trail. But now they are paying the
Palm Beach County School District only $1 a year for the space on
Seacrest Boulevard.
The new location opened to students one
week ago, and at 3 p.m. today, Bernadel will host a ribbon-cutting
ceremony on the school lawn. The public is invited.
This is
the first time math teacher Frantz Arthus has had a real classroom. In
his three years of teaching, he was stuck in a much smaller room, but
now he has more than 15 desks. He recently created his first seating
chart, and he has room to walk as he lectures the students.
"It feels very good," Arthus said.
Shameike
Clark, 17, and Kirk Root, 18, said they love the new school because
there's so much space. It's a different environment and has more of a
school feel to it, they said.
Diane Allerdyce, the chief
academic officer who also co-founded the school, said it's the first
time Toussaint L'Ouverture High has been in a traditional school
building since opening in 2001.
"I think the students are really proud," Allerdyce said. "They really feel like they've been recognized" by the school district.
A
new school means new rules for the students. Bernadel has instituted a
dress code - students can wear only yellow, blue or white polo shirts
with pants. He said he can already see a difference in the students.
"The
kids feel much better in the classrooms," he said. "They're more
inclined to learn. In the other building, there were lots of
distractions."
The school focuses on more than academics.
Students also learn life skills and are taught how to be good citizens.
Some arrive from Haiti knowing little English and having had little
education. They come here for a better life.
