College Advisors quitting because of Dawson

From a student:

One of the unique things about City College is its college advising office. In fact, check out this article on the college advising office at City College in USA Today (from 1/11/06). Most public schools do not have a college advising office, but City does, which is a big part of our school's mission of getting kids to college and a big part of our 98% senior rate of college attendance.

Check out this excerpt:



But at Baltimore City College high school, which offers a high-powered curriculum and draws from throughout the city, first-generation students benefit from hands-on help. That is thanks to a counseling structure instituted by a previous principal who placed a high priority on college advising.

Because Duke and White's sole mission is college advising, that frees the rest of the six-person guidance staff to deal with other problems affecting the school's 1,350 students, virtually all of whom go on to college.

Duke and White advise up to 325 seniors. Next month, they will start meeting individually with about 340 juniors. But their advising actually starts in the freshman year. That is when the duo hold an evening meeting with first-year students and their parents to discuss college admission including testing, financial aid and other elements.

Students speak highly of the support and advice they receive. When senior Samuel Ball-Brau got an e-mail from Princeton University telling him that his application was incomplete because a letter of recommendation from a teacher was missing, White solved the problem. "She was like a rock," Ball-Brau says. "She knows that you might come in to see her a little crazy, but she can deal with it."

Senior Gerimi Belin says he can bring in an application essay for the advisers to critique and they get it back to him the next day. "They know what colleges want," he says.

City students contrast their experience with that of friends at other Baltimore schools. "Some of them say they don't even know the name of their adviser," senior Shamika Thompson says.

The situation at City is far from perfect. In addition to their heavy advising load, the women have virtually no support staff and lack an office budget. But, White says, "we feel that we are making a difference here."

However, word on the street is that the college advisors - Lucy Duke and Blair White - are leaving at the end of the year, almost all because of Dawson.

The backstory is that both of these well-trained and hard-working staff members were promised by Dr. Deborah Wortham (then interim principal, currently area high school officer) that the college advising office would have an administrative assistant next year to work with the colossol amount of paperwork in the office. When this didn't happen, Dawson (allegedly, and this is second hand) told Duke that she was easily replaceable, like a contractor, and has continually made their job hard. They get no budget (not even for postage or office supplies), and Dawson didn't even bother to take thirty seconds to walk through the College Fair - the office's big event in the spring. Of course, he's Mr. Invisible, so that's not a shock.

Hopefully we'll get someone as qualified as they were to run the office, which is perhaps the most important office in the school. After all, it's the school's mission to put kids in good colleges. However, the job requires a plethora of knowlege and contacts with college admissions offices around the country, and it's doubtful that anyone as qualified as they are can be found. Duke was trained under the former college advisor, David Gibson, but apparently there is no one training now for the job.