Philadephia Inquirer - December 19, 2004

For 17 years, Gifts Have Signified Hope


A free college tuition program keeps expanding.


By Dale Mezzacappa

Inquirer Staff Writer

This fall, for the sixth time in 17 years, a football was lobbed from an auditorium stage into an assembly of inner-city schoolchildren, and, with it, the chance at a life that money could buy.

George Weiss, financial manager and social alchemist, was at it again, this time in New York's Harlem.

He already had spent $33 million of his fortune on what once was a radical experiment in urban education. Begun in Philadelphia's Belmont Elementary School in 1987, Say Yes to Education was Weiss' bold design to rescue students from the depredations of poverty by expertly shepherding them toward high school graduation and through college, all expenses paid.

Of the sixth-grade class known as the "Belmont 112" - chronicled by The Inquirer for 13 years - 20 got bachelor's degrees. The same number landed in prison.

The statistics didn't discourage Weiss. They impelled him to keep trying. By 2000, he had tossed footballs, his signature gesture, to adopted classes in two more Philadelphia elementaries, in his hometown of Hartford, Conn., and in Cambridge, Mass. - a total of 300 children.

In Harlem, Weiss has more than doubled the Say Yes ranks, with 400 kindergartners from five schools. His plan for them is so ambitious that even their 2,400 parents and siblings are being offered college aid.

The predicted cost over 18 years: at least $20 million from his own pocket, and $30 million from donors he hopes to rally.

When he announced the plan at the historic Apollo Theater in Harlem, Weiss surveyed a familiar scene. The bewildered faces of children too young to understand. The tears of overwhelmed parents.

Not everything, however, was the same for 61-year-old Weiss.

The man who hadn't always had the education mainstream's unequivocal blessing was sharing the stage with New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott, and Columbia University Teachers College president Arthur Levine, all pitching footballs into the crowd.

So was Kimberly Creamer Carmichael.

In 1987, she was on the receiving end, a sixth grader from Philadelphia's Mantua section suddenly hitting the Weiss jackpot. One of the Belmont 112, she got a degree in sociology and communications at the University of Hartford. Now nearing 30, she works as a residential adviser to mentally disabled adults in Connecticut.

She visited Weiss' financial management office in Hartford two years ago, and he recalled her asking: " 'Mr. Weiss, why are you smiling?' I said, 'You're sitting in front of me with your beautiful 3-week-old son, with a college education, married to a fine young man with a college education, talking about buying your first home.

" 'That's why I'm smiling.' "

How well do programs such as Say Yes to Education work?

That question has hung in the air, much discussed but still unanswered, for two decades - even as such programs have multiplied into the hundreds nationwide.

Major philanthropists such as Bill and Melinda Gates and the late Walter Annenberg have put up hundreds of millions of dollars to improve the lot of poor children by changing how they are educated - creating smaller high schools, for instance.

For other wealthy patrons, however, the idea of showering opportunity on a randomly chosen class, with its Cinderella overtones, holds much appeal.

"I think what stirs these people, they feel helpless looking at big social problems and ask, 'What can I do with the resources I have?' " said Colleen O'Brien, president of the Pell Institute, which studies college access for low-income students.

The modern father of the higher-ed giveaway was New York businessman Eugene Lang. In 1981, six years before Weiss started Say Yes, Lang was speaking on graduation day at his old Harlem elementary school when he impulsively offered to pay the college tab of anyone in the class.

Many educators said he was sending the wrong message to poor students: that luck, not work, was the ticket. Lang's idea caught on, nonetheless. Today, there are 180 "I Have a Dream" projects in 27 states, with classes sponsored by lone philanthropists or groups.

Philadelphia has been home to a number of programs. In 1988, Ruth Hayre, a luminary in city public education, adopted 116 sixth graders in two North Philadelphia schools. Hayre died in 1998, but her project, Tell Them We Are Rising, was kept alive by Temple University. By the time it ended two years ago, six of her students had bachelor's degrees.

Those initiatives became the seeds of federal policy. Saying that Lang, Weiss and Hayre had inspired him, U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah (D., Pa.) wrote legislation to create the national Gear Up program in 1998. Since then, $2 billion has gone to states and school districts to prepare two million middle school students for college, academically and financially.

There is little research on the overall success of the private programs. Why do students such as Kimberly Carmichael take a Weiss football and run with it, while so many others drop it? Answers could come from a study being conducted by the Education Resources Institute, which provides aid to low-income and first-generation college students.

Does the promise of a free college education "work as an incentive," asked Ann Coles, the institute's senior vice president, "or is it the support services, the caring, the mentoring?

"We still don't understand those things."

Weiss hasn't changed much. As always, he displays a guileless joy at transfiguring lives.

But Say Yes has changed a lot, evolving with the wrenching lessons that Weiss and his counseling staff learned mostly with the Belmont 112.

He chose the Mantua school not only because it was desperately poor but also because it was close to the University of Pennsylvania, of which he is an alumnus and trustee. Within days of his announcement, he learned that more than one-third of the sixth graders were in special education and 40 percent read at a second-grade level.

Most of the families were mired in dysfunction. Many students, who were on the cusp of adolescence, already had been sucked into street life.

"The kids were too old," Weiss said. "That was our major problem; we didn't have enough time to work with them."

Even before the class finished eighth grade, one boy was murdered; he was the first of seven to eventually die. Two-thirds of the girls became mothers in their teens. Yet Weiss stuck with his Say Yes charges through it all.

Many floundered in college, failing courses and transferring from school to school. He kept paying the bills.

In the end, 62 members graduated from high school, seven got GEDs, and 13 finished trade school. There were 20 bachelor's and 10 associate's degrees.

"I wouldn't change the Belmont 112 for any group in the world. They're my kids, and I love them," said Weiss, who nonetheless did many things differently from then on.

Subsequent Say Yes classes have started with progressively younger children. Weiss has provided more help for families and more training for teachers.

Higher percentages graduated from high school, and the proportion of college degrees crept up.

A 1990 Say Yes class, cosponsored by builder Robert Toll and his wife, Jane, began with 78 third graders at Harrity Elementary in West Philadelphia. Eight graduated from colleges last May; 10 are still enrolled.

By 2000, Weiss was dipping into the Head Start ranks to form another class. Those 50 children are now fourth graders at Philadelphia's Bryant Elementary, and the recipients of his vastly expanded largesse.

Say Yes provides reading teachers and runs an after-school enrichment program, along with a summer school open to the neighborhood.

Weiss also aids Bryant parents who want to continue their own education. Siblings who can't scrape up enough money for college can count on him to make up the shortfall with "last dollar" scholarships.

Bryant will be the model for the Harlem franchise.

Weiss already has raised $500,000, with potential pledges for $2 million. He has promises from IBM for computerized reading labs, from Harlem Hospital for health care, from Hasbro Inc. for toys. The powerful international law firm Bingham McCutchen L.L.P. has opened an office in Harlem to service the Say Yes families. Columbia's Teachers College is lending its expertise, in part because Say Yes' holistic focus on the family "is the right answer," as Levine, the college's president, explained.

Buoyed by the support, Weiss one recent day was talking big: "I'd have no problem if we eventually had 1,000 kids in Harlem. My dream is to keep expanding Say Yes. I really think this is why I was put on this Earth."

Contact staff writer Dale Mezzacappa at 215-854-5112 or dmezzacappa@phillynews.com.

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