Sistas and Brothas organizer Mustafa Sullivan speaks to the press about an incident at Walton High School, allegedly due to overcrowding, involving a student maced by the police.
Photo: Heather Hadden

Sistas and Brothas United

By Fernando Carlo, Antoine Powell, Laura Vazquez, Shoshana Daniels,
Clay Smith, with Kavitha Mediratta and Amy Zimmer

In fall 2002, after years of organizing efforts to reduce overcrowding and improve the quality of education in John F. Kennedy, Walton, and Clinton High Schools, young people in the northwest Bronx, N.Y., united to create their own high school. Their three-year struggle to bring the project to fruition offers a cautionary tale about the potential — and struggle — for youth leadership in the top-down, fast-moving small schools movement.

Sistas and Brothas United (SBU), a six-year-old youth leadership project of the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition (NWBCCC), had been working to improve local high schools for the past five years. Fernando Carlo, a senior at Satellite High School who transferred from John F. Kennedy, had worked on campaigns to reform Kennedy. "Security was a huge issue, so we managed to get more school counselors and security guards in the school," Carlo recalls. SBU also convinced the administration to repair broken-down escalators and ensure that fire-safety mechanisms were working properly. SBU's efforts helped oust one of Kennedy's principals, who repeatedly refused to meet with the organization to discuss their concerns.

In 2002, SBU formed a design team and invited parents, teachers, and representatives from Fordham University to propose a new small school for the area serving John F. Kennedy High School in response to the New Century High School initiative. Through this initiative, launched in 2001 by New Visions for Public Schools, the Department of Education has created almost 100 new small schools throughout the city. Small schools will eventually replace the large, failing schools that currently anchor the city's high school system. The initiative is funded through grants from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Open Society Institute.