25 Roosevelt seniors get head start on college

Twenty-five seniors at Roosevelt High School got unusual academic promotions on the first day of school Tuesday: They all signed up for college.

The teens are enrolled in a program known as Smart Scholars, which is financed by software billionaire Bill Gates. The program helps students obtain free college credit and tutoring while still attending high school. Roosevelt's students will be issued ID cards by SUNY Old Westbury, allowing them to use the college's library and tutoring center.

"We have to start thinking bigger," said Jeff Littwin, the seniors' English teacher and a department chairman, now in his ninth year at Roosevelt High.

To underline the point, Littwin asked students as their first homework assignment to come up with the names of three four-year colleges they'd like to attend next year.

Littwin's exhortation could well serve as a new slogan for Roosevelt. After eight years under state control, the 2,800-student system is making a renewed attempt to boost its academic performance. It has successfully balanced its books and rebuilt its schools.

The academic push is focused on Roosevelt High School, which in January was placed on a list of the state's "persistently lowest achieving" schools. Since then, the district has brought in a new principal, Stephen Strachan, from Los Angeles to run the 700-student school, retrained teachers, and begun planning for a potential expansion of class periods from 42 minutes to 50 minutes each.

Then, too, there's the Smart Scholars program. With financial help from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, about 60 juniors and seniors combined each year will take college-level courses designed by SUNY Old Westbury, but taught at the high school. Those who pass will be awarded up to 16 free college credits over two years. A similar program recently was launched at Freeport High School, in cooperation with the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University.

Roosevelt teens who entered the Smart Scholars program over the summer say initial training on such topics as surviving first-year college classes were often a revelation.

"In college, I learned, you can't expect professors to help the way teachers did in high school," said Luke Graham, 16, a junior.

District officials see the push for college as a means of raising student expectations. Roosevelt could use the boost.

Last year, only 59 percent of prospective seniors graduated on time after four years, compared with an Islandwide average of 86 percent. Roosevelt's graduation rate was down 2 percentage points from the year before, and only three other districts - Central Islip, Hempstead and Wyandanch - fared worse.

Roosevelt has made substantial progress in other areas, however, with the help of extra state aid. In May, the state comptroller's office reported that the district was on track to end the fiscal year with a $4.2 million surplus - as opposed to a $7.9 million deficit recorded in 2008.

Moreover, Roosevelt has rebuilt all three of its elementary schools and erected a new middle school. Renovation of the 55-year-old high school will begin in August and be finished within a year, said Superintendent Robert-Wayne Harris. That will complete reconstruction of the district's entire physical plant - a $245.5 million school project that is the largest ever undertaken on the Island.