Atlantic Canada’s first Pathways to Education “stay in school” program is welcomed by participants and residents as a saviour for a lost generation

Driving through Halifax’s Spryfield neighbourhood with Kevin Young is an eye-opening experience. Raised in the area and a graduate of J.L. Ilsley High School, the late-40s community program manager knows firsthand the back streets, tenements, and housing complexes. He’s a product of the rough-scrabble district, and he has returned to his boyhood home with a mission. Many teenagers here are potential high school dropouts who might never escape a life-long cycle of poverty. His challenge is establishing the first East Coast site for Pathways to Education, a Toronto-based charitable organization focused on a unique stay-in-school program.

Passing dilapidated residential blocks on Herring Cove Road, teenagers stroll the streets, play pick-up basketball, or hang out on crumbling verandas. On this late-summer day, there isn’t much to do in the working-class district on the city’s suburban fringe. In three of 10 residential zones, Greystone, the 500 block, and River Road, including an area called “the Village,” 57% of the teens don’t graduate from high school. “These are the hot spots,” says Young. “And that’s why Pathways to Education is here.”

The Halifax Spryfield Pathways community project is one of 12 across Canada, but much is riding on its success. It’s the brainchild of Carolyn Acker, a feisty former nurse who started Pathways in 2001 in Regent Park, Toronto’s best-known urban ghetto. Since its introduction there, high school dropout rates have declined to as low as 10%, compared to 56% before Pathways launched. Now 80% of the teenagers go on to post-secondary education, instead of 20%. “Bullets no longer fly in Regent Park,” says Acker. “The community now has hope.”

The mere arrival of Pathways generates lofty expectations. What began as a gutsy stay-in-school experiment is now a $14-million charitable operation, hailed as the possible saviour of a generation of lost youth. Since 2007 it has expanded to 10 disadvantaged communities in Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and Manitoba. Its recently appointed executive director, David Hughes, is a well-known community-development professional, the former head of the Canadian branch of Habitat for Humanity. 

The Halifax Spryfield Pathways venture is anything but fly-by-night. Months before the official launch of the ground-breaking project in May, Marjorie Willison and key members of the local sponsoring group, Chignecto Community Connections, had worked diligently to put the pieces in place. From the beginning, the project had the support of such heavy hitters as Murray Coolican, the provincial deputy minister of Energy, and Douglas Hall, board chair of Nova Scotia Business Inc. About $500,000 in core funding had been raised, including a four-year $400,000 commitment from Nova Scotia’s leading public utility, Emera. 

Sitting in his chair at the Salvation Army Centre on Herring Cove Road, Pathway’s temporary base of operations, Kevin Young looks right at home. It’s obvious he feels the pressure to make the project a success, but he relishes the opportunity to make a difference. He has set aside an unfinished book manuscript (the plot is based around a man returning to Spryfield) and has plunged into the work. That has involved assembling a small community support team and selling Pathways to Spryfield students and their parents or guardians.

Launching the community-based Pathways program has been hard work. Young is employed by Chebucto Communities Development Association and assisted by two paid student-parent support workers, Darryl Johnson and Cheryl Matheson, both with previous youth-programming experience. The goal is to recruit 75% of 90 eligible Grade 9 students from the junior highs that feed into J.L. Ilsley. They currently have 45.

So how does Pathways work? It’s based on a youth-development model with four distinct pillars: tutoring, mentoring, counselling, and financing. The program focuses on building home, community, and school partnerships. One unique component of the program is its offer of $1,000 per year for up to four years toward registration in a college or university. While the $4,000 tuition credit is only a start, that incentive has proven effective elsewhere in encouraging families to plan for their children’s education beyond high school. 

Donald Martell, a 14-year-old Grade 9 student at Rockingstone Heights School, was one of the first Spryfield students to sign up for Pathways. An older cousin approached him in June to tell him about the program, and Martell liked what he heard. “It’s a chance to get tutored,” he says, “and then there’s the $1,000 a year!” When the Greystone resident is asked where he sees himself a few years from now, he replies, “I want to be an electrician.” So far he likes Pathways because it’s like “someone is watching over me.” In his own words, the clear message is: “Do well in school and you’ll get rewards.”

The stakes are high for the Halifax Spryfield Pathways project, but so are the needs of the community. Central Spryfield is a prime location for such a stay-in-school venture. Although 81% of young Nova Scotians currently graduate from high school, that’s far from the case in this Halifax suburb. Only 64% of Grade 10 students entering J.L. Ilsley graduate, and in the “hot spots” the number is closer to 43%. 

Children growing up in some of these housing complexes face dim prospects. According to statistics, crime is declining in Spryfield, but that’s small consolation for those facing a lifetime of intermittent work or dead-end jobs. Upon hearing of Pathways, one mother struggling to make ends meet said, “I didn’t know that anyone cared about us.” For his part, Martell has already found in the Pathways staff what he describes as “people looking out for you” and “positive role models.”  

Closing the alarming educational attainment gap is critical to the region’s future. The first Atlantic Canadian site of Pathways has been hailed by community supporters as a godsend. Passionate enthusiasts such as Marjorie Willison of Chignecto Connections are counting on the project to break old patterns. “It’s going to make a world of difference [in the younger generation’s futures],” says the long-time Spryfield resident.

Pathways appeals to a broad spectrum of people in urban communities. Murray Coolican, a former chair of the Halifax Regional Municipality’s United Way, is a staunch supporter of the project. “It’s getting results,” he says. “And those results are potentially life changing for kids.” Adds Pathways’ Kevin Young: “It’s not about fixing the schools. It’s more about bettering students’ chances in life.” 

Paul W. Bennett is the director of Schoolhouse Consulting in Halifax and author of The Grammar School: Striving for Excellence in a Public School World. He can be reached by going to www.schoolhouseconsulting.ca.