A Discussion With Steve Perry
 

VIEWPOINTS: Capital Prep evolved out of the ConnCAP program, which you ran for many years.  Tell us a little bit about the beginnings of ConnCAP, how it evolved, and where you are today with Capital Prep. 

STEVE PERRY: Well, I’m not just the Hair Club president, I’m also a client.  I went through a ConnCAP program in a different city, and then when the opportunity presented itself to respond to an RFP by the state to start a ConnCAP program in Hartford, we did.  And so I started the ConnCAP program in 1998-’99, and from its inception, we sent 100% of our students on to a four-year college.  So every child who graduated went on to a four-year college. 

VIEWPOINTS: Briefly say something about…what is the ConnCAP program?

PERRY: ConnCAP program is an Upward Bound program, a state-funded Upward Bound program, that provides students with the opportunity to have extracurricular academic support that extends the academic day, and a six-week summer component which extends the academic year.  So the expectation is that children who come form historically disadvantaged populations will need more support.  

So the ConnCAP program was going as it was, and a parent, at the end of one of our summer programs, said why is that only the rich kids get good schools?  And I didn’t have an answer for her.  And so she, in my pause, peppered me with another question, and she said how come ConnCAP can’t become its own school?  And still in my silence, I hadn’t come up with an answer.  And so I said I guess it can.  And so for the next three years, we worked to transform the publicly and privately funded program that worked outside of the school system into a public school.  And so as a result, what we were able to do was to create a school that takes into consideration the experience of the ConnCAP program, which was to provide children with academic support, while extending the public school model into a place it’s never been. 

VIEWPOINTS: How did that transition work?  I’m sure that if couldn’t have been completely smooth. 

PERRY: It sucked.  It was horrible.  It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.  That and marriage will get you enough gray hair.  So – but I love it.  I love what I do.  I love the opportunity to transform education.  I feel like the only way people are going to get changes to occur is to put themselves out there. 

VIEWPOINTS: What were some of the specific issues that you had with making that transformation? 

PERRY: One of the first ones was the calendar. We designed a school that’s year round.  And news flash, that’s against most every union on earth.  Another one was getting a system that is not designed to be dynamic to be dynamic, to move quickly, to make big decisions that were going to impact the way in which the system itself ran.  There are certain school systems that win and there are certain school systems that lose.  And I just so happen to be working in a school system that has lost for quite some time.  Hartford Public Schools – this is not a slap against the school system, it’s just the truth – is one of the school systems in the state that has been among the lowest-performing in the state since we’ve been recording performance.  And so getting that school system to change just because ConnCAP was coming to town with a new school and a new idea wasn’t easy. 

VIEWPOINTS: So the Hartford Public Schools eventually has bought in, and tell us how do you feel, evaluating your success at this point with Capital Preparatory Magnet School? 

PERRY: We exist, so that in and of itself is a success.  Success is not a destination, but a journey, so we are successfully on the road to achieving our goal, which is to become the best school in the country.  Starting a school to become second best or good seems to me to be a foolish thing to do.  It’s too much work to do it that way. 

VIEWPOINTS: So how many students are here? 

PERRY: Currently 260.  When we’re fully enrolled, we’ll be over 1000, and that’s because we’re currently configured to be grades 6 to 12, but the expectation is that we will be pre-K to 12.  And so we’ll be the nation’s first public school that will be pre-K to 12 and year round college preparatory focused. 

VIEWPOINTS: So for an inner city and urban school in America, do you think you’ve surprised some people with the performance here, and if so, why do you think they’re surprised and should they have been surprised? 

PERRY: I think that there’s always a surprise when there’s some success, and I think that there are two responses to that surprise.  One is to suggest that we’re doing something nefarious, like we have different students than they have.  Or the other is to overstate the success.  I think that it’s important that we put our success in a relative perspective.  We’re getting started, sure.  Are we outperforming the area schools?  Sure. 

VIEWPOINTS: You’re serving what have been traditionally underserved students… 

PERRY: Absolutely. 

VIEWPOINTS: …primarily low income students, low income students of color. 

PERRY: First generation to go to college. 

VIEWPOINTS: And you’ve had success with the academic achievement of these students.  And you do something that’s somewhat different from obviously most schools, which is you involve the families, too.  And you involve the students in a sense of owning their education and taking responsibility, and it goes above and beyond in addition to the full-year school calendar that you implement.  Talk about that a little bit. 

PERRY: Well, I have to be honest that I can get away with some things that other folks wouldn’t be able to, in large part because I’m African-American, I work in a large African-American school system.  In addition to that, I am able to connect with some of the families because I’ve shared similar experiences that they have.  And the success.  Nothing argues your point like success.  And so we’re able to engage some of the parents – not all of the parents, but some of the parents – in an otherwise completely disengaged population.  I’ve been to urban public school PTO nights from Philadelphia to here where students – there have been as many as 2500 students in the school, and I’ve seen six or seven parents at a PTO night.  Our push is against the tide, getting families to understand that this is about them and it’s their responsibility. 

But we involve the parents through something that we started with the Nellie Mae Foundation (sic), which is a program called the Parent Advisor.  And we provide the parents with a stipend.  The stipend provides them with the access to money that they need to on some level justify their time, but also to come in and create an opportunity for the parents to continue their own education. 

VIEWPOINTS: So what’s different for a student at Capital Prep as opposed to another public school? 

PERRY: This school is designed to literally mirror the college experience.  So we have classes on Monday-Wednesdays, Tuesday-Thursdays, with a rotating Friday schedule.  Our classes are 92 minutes.  The colleges are 90 minutes.  We go year round.  Our school year starts on July 5 and then we go all the way through June.  We are literally in school every single month of the year.  We also now go to school on Saturdays.  Many of our students have opted to participate in the Saturday Academy, in which we do additional skill work.  Our school day is longer.  Our day here ends at 3:19.  The other school days end at 2:06.  The expectation is that children who come from historically disadvantaged populations need more education, not less.  At some point we have to have an honest discussion with our good friends in the unions and say to them what does this mean? 

VIEWPOINTS: Given the overall perception of public education in this country, with diminishing performance despite higher accountability being implemented and… 

PERRY: And expenditures. 

VIEWPOINTS: …and high stakes testing and things like that,…you see a school like Capital Prep and you see what’s working.  Why do you think it’s not being mimicked, or is it, or can it?... 

PERRY: I don’t think it is.  I think there are parts of it.  We have made a conscious effort to create something that has never been done before.  And I don’t believe that many of the school systems have the courage – we’ll call it courage for now – to make the changes that they need to change.  There are not geniuses who work as part of this organization.  All that we’re doing is taking the present research and putting it into practice.  There’s not an ounce of research that says that children should be home – especially children with no parental support – should be home from between 10 and 12 weeks all summer.  That’s an agrarian calendar.  It’s a school system that was designed under times when you didn’t need to go to school, even to pay your bills. 

Why is it today that we’re using a system that we know is outdated and has no chance of ever coming back?  Why do the children have to be home at 2:06 or 2:10 or whatever?  There are some schools that let out at 1:30.  I mean it’s just absurd.  Even if you did nothing else but just kept them there and busied them, they’d be better off than just sitting home goofing off and committing and crimes and getting hurt and otherwise not getting the education that they deserve.  

So we know – everybody knows – it’s a well-known fact.  We know that children need to be school more.  They need to have more rigorous classes.  And the teachers need to be held more accountable.  The administrators need to be held more accountable.  And I think that we need to look at, honestly, vouchers in a very real way.  We need to look at it as a free market economy.  We are in a free market economy.  Why should someone be guaranteed a job?  If you’re a hairdresser, you’re not guaranteed a job.  You mess somebody’s hair up, you don’t get that client again.  If you’re a physician, you don’t.  And how is it possible that we have school systems that are sending less than 20% of their children to college – in some cases, 15 and low digits – how is it possible that every single person in that district still has their job?  OK, you fire the superintendent.  Well, she/he’s not the one who blew it.  You keep firing the superintendents, and yet the scores don’t increase. 

So at some point or another, we have to look at the other places.  I think if we’re going to fire people, we got to fire the principals. We got to fire the teachers.  We got to fire the lunch ladies, the custodians, everybody in the building, and start from scratch. 

VIEWPOINTS: How do you see being able to change the public will in that way, to make everyone care about educating all students… 

PERRY: I don’t think you can.  I don’t think you can make everyone care.  But I think that the people who are in position to care, the people who are in the positions who are in boards of education, they need to care.  They need to come out of the box.  They need to stop acting like idiots and take their heads out of the sand and make some real decisions. Children are dying.  Literally, I buried two children this year.  Two of our students – two of our former students have died.  Not died because they have a heart attack or anything like that.  They were shot dead less than a mile away from our school.  Both of them shot dead.  Now, someone’s got to explain to me how much more carnage do we have to see before we start to take this stuff seriously?  This is not a game.  Every single time you don’t educate a child, you make a very dangerous member of the society.  An undereducated or an uneducated person is a very dangerous member of the society, dangerous to all of us.

VIEWPOINTS: Viewpoints also spoke with two students at the Capital Preparatory Magnet School, Jordan Green and Amoy Brock.  We asked them about their experiences at the school and got their thoughts about how the educational experiences they’ve had could benefit others. 

GREEN: My name is Jordan Green.  I’m in 10^th grade. 

VIEWPOINTS: And how long have you been here? 

GREEN: This is my first year attending this school. 

VIEWPOINTS: How is your experience here with the school and how the school is run different from your previous schools? 

GREEN: Well, honestly, when I first came here it was like, oh, man, we got to go to school during the summertime.  Like, you see all your friends playing basketball. They’re going to AAU tournaments and you’re stuck in school.  But I see that I really want to go to college, and this is to take the next step for me to go to college.  This is a real warm atmosphere, so – for the teachers because a lot of the teachers stay after school if you need it and they’ll stay after and help you. 

VIEWPOINTS: Do you think you’ve increased your academic performance since you’ve been at this school? 

GREEN: Well, my maturity level has kind of increased a little bit because all through all my other schools, I was the clown.  That’s the way people knew me.  I was like the funny guy.  So when I came here they checked me on that.  All the teachers was like we are concerned about your behavior and we don’t think that you should progress in that way because that might be a detriment to when you get older.  And Mr. Perry and a bunch of teachers like Mr. Fulton, they were pulling me aside and it was like you got to become more of a leader and take more of a leadership role.  And slowly I’m progressing in that manner. 

VIEWPOINTS: What do you see yourself doing after high school? 

GREEN: I’d like to be dealing with – possibly a teacher, but if not a teacher, I’d like to go into sport broadcasting and stuff like that. 

VIEWPOINTS: Now, why a teacher? 

GREEN: I see my one teacher, like Mr. Fulton, it’s like he gets a joy out of helping kids out and they personal – like in their academics and telling them what to do.  And you look up to somebody like that as a role model, so it’s like – and then you see Mr. Perry.  He’s pulling kids out of every different place and then trying to help them out.  So I think I get a joy of that, but I’m not really sure what I want to do when I get older. 

BROCK: My name is Amoy Brock and I’m in the 11^th grade. 

VIEWPOINTS: What is different about Capital Preparatory Magnet School and your previous schools? 

BROCK: The thing that I find different is that the teachers are more focused on the students individually, and they offer more opportunities than what you would find in a regular public high school. 

VIEWPOINTS: Like what kind of opportunities? 

BROCK: To meet different people.  Like, I’ve been able to have interviews with people like business people around the area, met with a few Congressmen, Senators.  And I take college classes, and so I’m given the opportunity of becoming a college student, and they put us out there so that colleges can recognize us. 

VIEWPOINTS: What do you think for people who say that this kind of school is great and it can exist like this, but this school can’t really exist everywhere? 

BROCK: If there really is a need of change in society for them to realize that students should be offered every possible opportunity that there is for them, if they want the students to strive and to become great individuals and to be able to succeed in society, no matter their race, their social class – no matter what – if schools like this can be duplicated, it offers more opportunities for everyone.  Everyone has a fair and equal change of surviving in college and making it to college and becoming something of themselves and making themselves better.  But I think that it’s possible only if people really want to see a change. 

VIEWPOINTS: Do you think people really want to see a change? 

BROCK: Honestly, I don’t think everyone wants to see a change.  I think society is fine with the way that it’s always been.  But there are those who realize that it’s unfair and it’s unjust, and with a few people making a small change, that it can actually become something.  That’s why I think many people doubt the school, because they are saying that it will never strive to be anything more than just one school, because they don’t have faith in what – they don’t want what could possibly happen.  They don’t want to look into the future and see that this might actually change how we’re living our lives now. 

VIEWPOINTS: Do you think it needs to change? 

BROCK: I think it needs to change, yeah, because I have friends and I talk to them and like what are they doing after high school?  They’re just going to find a job.  But like within this school, where they’re helping us as best as they can.  They’re giving us every opportunity that they could possibly offer us. 

VIEWPOINTS: Do you think that some schools don’t expect this much out of kids and they have lower expectations? 

BROCK: In society, when you talk to young people, you automatically think, oh, they don’t care about their lives.  They just want to have fun and enjoy their high school years.  Like no one really cares about their future.  And so when people begin to think like that, they begin to doubt the students, so they don’t offer them the opportunities.  They look at them and say they’re just going to waste our time, our money.  What’s the point?  This is pointless.  And so they begin to lose hope in them. 

VIEWPOINTS: If this school is replicated, or this type of education is replicated, what do you think would happen for our country? 

BROCK: If this school is replicated, I feel like we’ll see a growth and the minority population striving in society.  And by this I mean that within the school is predominantly African-American and Hispanic, and to see the amount of hard work that the students are putting into it and let’s you see that the kids are being taken out of the ghetto and brought here, where they are offered – education-wise, they’re being put in college classes and they are just have a fair and equal chance as those in private schools or boarding schools.  They are able to learn just as them.  And so by the school helping them, like when they get into college, now we’re going to have a greater population getting into college.  And they’re going to be working harder and they’re going to be making themselves known in society.  And it’s going to change the way society has always been thought of, like minorities can’t really survive.  And, like, they’re not worth it.  And by having this school replicated, it’s going to change the way how people think.  And it’s going to make it better for us all. 

VIEWPOINTS: Do you believe the independent models, like your model for education, can coexist in other areas?  You’ve made it work here in a public education system. 

PERRY: At some point or another, it has to.  When I used to run a not-for-profit organization, I put my mortgage on the line every single year.  Every single year I had to prove that I could take the poorest children in the region and put them in college.  Not just get them in the school.  No, I had to take them from the furthest point all the way up to that point.  And there’s no discussion afterwards, well, you know, they’re poor.  That’s why we couldn’t send them.   Well, you know, we need more resources.  I had $2300 a student to send them to college.  And I had to do it against the systems that were supposed to be helping me.  More often than not, I was in there arguing, fussing, fighting with teachers who were putting them in classes that they weren’t supposed to be in.  How many times did I have to pull a child out of special education who wasn’t supposed to be in special education because he had dreams of going college?  

So I am sick and tired, for one, of us looking for excuses.  I’m saying to every single person who gets paid by the public to be an educator that you put your mortgage on the line.  Put your mortgage on the line and put your children’s future on the line, because everyone else is asking that they put their children on the line – I mean everyone else is putting their children’s future on the line for you, so you do the same.  And let’s go. 

VIEWPOINTS: You’re also an author.  Your most recent book is called Man Up!  There’s a tagline for the book.  It says ‘stop blaming white people, black America.’ 

PERRY: Yeah. 

VIEWPOINTS: How does that apply to what you teach the kids here at Capital Prep for taking ownership in their education, their future?... 

PERRY: That’s what we do.  There’s one truth that I know, and that is each one of us had to wake up this morning, and for every obstacle that there is, that’s an opportunity to prove what you’re worth.  You can look at an obstacle and say wow, that’s something that stands in my way.  Or you can look at it as an opportunity to prove how high you can jump.  Every single person, regardless of hue, has to, at some point, man up, because they have to understand that nobody is coming to save us.  If you think that your good friends, your liberal white friends, are coming in and they’re going to kick the doors down and they’re going to drag your behinds into the streets and educate you, it’s not going to happen.  You think the conservatives are going to set you free and they’re going to let you do your own thing?  It’s not going to happen.  The only people who are going to save people who are under these circumstances ultimately, in the end, are the people who live in them. 

It doesn’t mean that we absolve people who are racist of their racist tendencies, and it doesn’t mean that we think that the situation is just ours and ours alone, but no matter where I go in this country – I’ve done now some almost 100 interviews n radio and TV in the past eight months.  Every community I go to, every black community I go to, what I see that is consistent is that we acknowledge that somebody has hijacked the notion of personal responsibility, and we know that as an African-American community, that’s been the hallmark of our community.  And so somewhere along the way, we’ve lost our way.  And that we have to take responsibility. 

The reason why there is a Capital Prep is because a question was asked.  I could have come back with some, well, you know, we can’t have a school because they won’t let us.  You know how white folks are.  They won’t let us have anything.  I could have just as easily taken that same tack, the same tack that so many people take.  So many times when someone says – like the whole Imus foolishness – somebody said they don’t let us have our own radio stations.  Who are they and why won’t they?  You have money, right?  And if you don’t, get some.  It’s really simple.  If you want something, you got to get it. 

Every single one of us has the opportunity to transform our lives.  When I woke up this morning, I looked over at one of my sons, who had crawled his way into our bed, and my wife – I was just as tired as anybody this morning – more so, because he was up really late.  But you know what?  I had to come to work.  You had to come to work.  Every single one of us has to come to work.  No one, no one, not one person has the luxury of deciding that they’re not going to participate in the solution.  Every single one of us has to do it.  Capital Prep is one example of a solution.  It is not the solution.  It’s one example.  And you know what?  We’re going to do this damn thing until we get it right. 

VIEWPOINTS: Now, the fastest growing segments of the population, at least in New England, are people from low income families and people of color.  If there is one thing you think could help the general populace understand how important it is to make sure that the fastest growing segments of this population need to be educated, what is that thing?  How would you convey that? 

PERRY: Every single one of us at one point will be in a hospital.  Some of us will even make it to hospice.  Every single one of us is going to send our children to childcare.  Every single one of us is going to get our car fixed.  Every single one of us is going to need some service provided.  The people who are going to provide those services are the very people that you just mentioned, until they move up out of that circumstance.  And if you want your mother’s medicine being delivered by an idiot, then you keep doing what you’re doing and watch your mother die before you.   But if you want that person to be a learned individual, you want that person to be someone who’s had access to information, the same information that you would want for your children, then you have to acknowledge that these are not other people’s children, these are all of our children.  No one has the luxury to stand on the sidelines. 

This thing called life, this educational experience that we have here, this is a full contact sport.  There are no spectators.  Everyone, everyone gets mud on them.  And at some point or another, we have to acknowledge that there is no line anymore.  There’s just one America with a whole bunch of people in it, whether they come from a different company or they claim to be indigenous.  Wherever they come from, there’s one America.  And in this one America, we have to be our brother’s keeper.  And what that specifically means is we have to shut down these raggedy behind school systems that are killing our future because it’s not helping anyone. 

So many people look at the notion of voucher and they call it a conservative ploy to undermine the public schools.  You know what?  Maybe it is.  But I tell you what.  If someone said to me today, Steve Perry, we will give you the same amount of money that we were going to give to the public schools to open your own school, I would walk away from this school that I started and start all over again.  If someone said to me, we are going to make you an admissions-driven school, meaning that if you can attract the children, then you can have them and we’ll give you the money and you do – and we’ll measure you the same way we do everybody else, but we’re going to let you have at it.  We’ll let you swing at the piñata.  We’ll blindfold you, just like everyone else is, but we’re going to let you swing of your own free will.  I and so many other educational entrepreneurs would take that challenge and every single one of us would probably spend our last year working for somebody else. 

VIEWPOINTS: Do you think public education can be saved? 

PERRY: I think that the term ‘public education’ is broad.  You can’t look at public education as if we were talking about just poverty, because there are some very wealthy – I mean Greenwich High School has 3500 students.  Nobody’s shutting Greenwich High School down.  And no one’s complaining about it being so big.  Yet New Britain High School has 2400 students and the place is an abomination.  So we’re not talking about public education en masse.  We’re talking about different sectors of public education.  Those schools that typically are charged with the responsibility of educating poor, low income people of all colors – of all colors – are typically the ones with the lowest qualified teachers – and I can site you the research on it – with the most amount of days absent and the most obsolete academic calendars. 

VIEWPOINTS: So what gives you hope? 

PERRY: What else is there?  What else is there?  I’ve got to send my kids to somebody’s school.  These are my children.  These children here – my son, who is four, refers to them as Daddy’s kids.  They are my kids.  If I don’t put my life on the line to make sure they get to where they get to, then what have I done?  There’s something within me that makes me believe against hope.  I am just one person who is swimming upstream and we’re going to make it. 

VIEWPOINTS: Steve Perry, thanks for talking to Viewpoints today. 

PERRY: My pleasure.