Kids Who Can't Get
Enough of School

Harlem — Harlem resident Onilda Acosta wants the very best for her children. She has three: Two boys, Quishaun, 15, and Dijonne, 11, and a 7-year-old daughter, SaintAngel. Acosta was born in Belize and emigrated to the United States as a child. Now, she lives in a three-bedroom apartment on West 140th St, just off Malcolm X Boulevard— across the street from a Key Food grocery store and around the corner from an NYPD watchtower, a permanent presence in the embattled neighborhood.

Like the area, life in Acosta's home – located within the boundaries of the Harlem Children’s Zone – has its rough patches. Her apartment had been without heat for six years until a judge's recent ruling forced her landlord to deliver working heaters, as well as restore walls demolished by construction and begin a long-overdue renovation of a lead-contaminated kitchen. She says she has not slept in her bedroom in over a year, because mold seeping through from the exterior made the room uninhabitable. But the living area is cozy and inviting, filled with family mementoes, DVDs and a television mounted to a wall.

All three kids have been students at the Harlem Children's Zone Promise Academy schools. Dijonne and SaintAngel are still enrolled, in the middle and elementary schools, respectively. Quishaun left after struggles with his teachers. "He had a problem with his mouth and his attitude," said Acosta, brushing a streak of hot-pink hair out of her eyes. "It was embarrassing, how he talked to his teachers. I had to back-slap him."

Quishaun moved to his dad's apartment and enrolled at the Manhattan School for Career Development, an alternative school run by the school system's special education district. But according to his mom, he rarely goes—and when he does, he rarely stays the day. Now, the family is looking for boarding-school alternatives for Quishaun. "He's out of order," says his mom, explaining that the boy is struggling with a lot, including the shooting deaths of five friends—some shot by accident, at a block party or a dance, and others caught up in the gunplay on nearby Seventh Avenue.

"The way he's going, he's going to go to jail one day or he's going to get killed," Acosta says, describing a neighbor who neglected to get help for own child until "he was out there covered with the white sheet."

"I'm not going to wait for that," she vows. "I don't even have the money to bury him."

Acosta, 46, works part-time cleaning houses but had to leave a recent job in retail to attend housing-court dates, permit her landlord's workers access to her apartment and manage Quishaun's school transition. She receives welfare and housing support for her family.

The Promise Academy schools weren't an option when Quishaun began kindergarten, but Dijonne was part of the charter school's first class, after Acosta put in an application and his name was called in the lottery. Once Dijonne was accepted, Quishaun was invited to enroll in the new middle school—and when SaintAngel was old enough for school, she, too, enrolled there.

"They love their school," says Acosta, who adds that the kids rarely want to miss the after-school activities like hip-hop, theater, dance, karate and tennis. When she says she'll pick them up at 4:30, they ask to stay until 5; if she says 5, they ask for 6. SaintAngel asked one teacher if she could stay until 8—which would mean a 12-hour day, for both teacher and child. "Sometimes they never want to come home, they love that school so much!" their mother relates.