Most mornings Leo Saucedo has breakfast at his grandmother’s house in the Little Village neighborhood and then walks two blocks to the Robert Burns Elementary School at 25th and Central Park. He arrives at 8:55, just before the nine o’clock bell. Leo, a short, amiable eighth grader, sees no sense in getting to Burns any earlier. The three-story red-brick school has no playground, and the line to pass through the recently installed metal detectors is the shortest right before class starts.
Burns students are predominantly poor, many from immigrant families. Half the youngsters attend bilingual classes, and 60 percent of the eighth graders fail to meet reading standards on state-mandated tests (though Burns was not one of the 109 lowest-performing schools that the Board of Education placed on academic probation on Monday).
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There’s also the constant problem of unruly behavior. “A few kids just seem to cause a lot of trouble,” says Emilio Davalos, Leo’s friend. “They throw things around–spitballs and cut-up pieces of erasers–and they mouth off to teachers.” One recent morning a pair of boys nearly came to blows in math class, requiring Mrs. Jackowiac, a tough-talking, diminutive instructor, to stand between them. Later, in social studies, Mr. Kandelec was discussing how American industry grew after the Civil War when one of the boys suddenly barked at the other: “You fucking liar.”
Juvenal, Leo, and Emilio say they do at least 90 minutes of homework every school night, meeting a newly promulgated Board of Education recommendation for eighth-graders. They also watch up to three hours of television, and–aside from Emilio, who enjoys mysteries–they do little recreational reading. “I’m not into reading,” Juvenal explains. “My sister tried to push me into trying books, but 15 minutes into them I get bored. Outside of school I have to have something that excites me.”
“I doubt I can get into Whitney Young,” says Leo. “I don’t know if you’ve heard of Saint Ignatius. It’s a very good Catholic school where I also probably can’t go. So I’ll apply to Curie and maybe some other schools. Last comes Farragut, where they have to take you.”
