Turnaround Efforts (Our Friends @United Way of Southeastern Michigan)

Student has made his own turnaround

   Nearly 500 people gathered at Ford Field on Thursday night to celebrate change.

   They came to salute the United Way for Southeastern Michigan’s High School Turnaround Initiative in 15 schools that are nothing short of amazing.

   Audience members sat teary-eyed during a video about two students: Stepha’N Quicksey, who went from a 0.3 grade point average at Osborn High School to a 4.0 and was named salutatorian, and Kymoni Baker, a self-proclaimed former thug who will graduate in July and plans to attend culinary school to become a chef.

   It is Kymoni Baker I want you to meet.

   He said he knew his life could take two paths. His circumstances kept pushing him down the wrong one.

   He lived off and on with his mother. He didn’t know his father. And when he needed money, he’d sometimes find ways that weren’t always legal.

   But then he got kicked out of school, and it may have been the best thing ever to happen to him.

   “He wasn’t my student initially,” said Johnathon Matthews, principal at Cody Academy of Public Leadership in Detroit. “When we opened up the small schools, the school year had started, and in mid- to late October, another school pretty much kicked him out. They said, ‘We can’t control him.’ I took him in.”

   Kymoni needed the kind of support that some gangs give young men. He found that at Cody, which is now part of a network of United Way-sponsored schools with small student populations, small class sizes and varied teaching methods. They’re expecting 70% to 100% of their students to graduate this year — a marked difference from the 40% who used to finish at the school.

   Kymoni, 18, was among the students honored Thursday night.

   Going from a school with 2,100 students to one with 400 students meant people saw Kymoni, individually, for the first time.

   “I go to school looking forward to going to school,” Kymoni said in an interview in his Corktown home. “My mama didn’t make me go to school. I went of my own free will.”

   Now, he said, “life is better than it was. I had started going back to my old self — Brightmo Kymo (his nickname when he attended school in Brightmoor). I never got into robbing, but running around, selling drugs, trying to keep some cash in my pocket ’cause I didn’t have anybody to say, ‘Here’s $5. Go to the store and get yourself something.’ ”

   Matthews said that “in a school of 2,000 kids, you cannot even see, let alone understand, a Kymoni Baker. In a small setting, you can tap into the pulse of a kid. We knew where he lived, and he really didn’t have anyone there.”

   But what endeared Mat-thews and fellow students most to Kymoni was how he handled an unexpected change in his life.

   “Midway through his sophomore year,” Matthews said, “he got a young lady pregnant. I remember him coming to my office. He said, ‘I’m going to have this baby because I never had a father, and I want to be a father to someone.’ It really showed his character. When the child was born, he disappeared (from school). He moved in with his sister. He said, ‘I have to find a way to take care of this child. I want to be there because my father wasn’t there for me.’ ”

   The curve that life threw Kymoni was matched by another blessing. A guy he’d met when he was a freshman cursing out school officials at a public meeting handed him a card.

   Kymoni said he thought to himself, “Oh, he’s just playing. That’s what people do. Take my card. Call me anytime. But Mike’s about it.”

   Mike was Mike Tenbusch, the vice president for educational preparedness at United Way, who was heavily involved in shaping the turnaround at Cody but just happened to be in the school, at the public meeting, that day.

   He listened to a very upset Kymoni talk.

   “He was upset, and he was cussing,” Tenbusch recalled. “So I said, ‘Kymoni, I understand that you’re upset, but I’m going to ask you not to cuss.’ I had just met him. He said, ‘Man you don’t know blank about me.’ ”

   Rather than walk away, Tenbusch invited Kymoni to lunch.

   Between the support of a friend and the support of the school, Kymoni’s life got better.

   And now, he works (at Mudgie’s Deli, not far from home), and he studies (so he can graduate in July). And he’s doing it all for his son.

   As he looked over at his 1-year-old son, he said, “I want to make him right, let him get old, so he doesn’t have to worry about the things I had to worry about.”

ROCHELLE RILEY FINDS UNITED WAY-SPONSORED SCHOOL OFFERS SUPPORT

Kymoni Baker, left, talks with Mike Tenbusch, a vice president at the United Way. Tenbusch said Baker “is like a son to me.”

   ROCHELLE RILEY/DETROIT FREE PRESS