Kermit Carolina and his Deans Try to Turn Hillhouse Around

Larry Young’s mission began with a note from a geometry teacher: A student “walked out of class” and didn’t come back.

“Radio to all deans,” said Young, pulling out his walkie-talkie. “We’re on the hunt.”

Young, who’s 41, broke into a stride in a second-floor hallway of Hillhouse High School as he delivered that message Wednesday morning.

The subject of his search was a junior boy whom Young affectionately calls Songz, after the rapper and heartfelt singer Trey Songz. Hillhouse’s 15-year-old Songz has a great singing voice, Young said—a voice he could develop further if he didn’t miss so many sessions of music class.

Larry Young was a singer for a band and a Hillhouse student, too, before he took a long, circuitous route that led him back to his alma mater.

Now the Newhallville native is leading a team of deans at the 923-student school on Sherman Parkway.

Kermit Carolina, Hillhouse’s new principal, is counting on Larry Young not only to bring kids back to class, but to help turn around a school that’s been cited for years as one of the nation’s “dropout factories.” A full-time employee at the school for 10 years, Young stepped into his new leadership role in February, when the head of deans and longtime Hillhouse “father” Tom Fleming passed away.

Young leads a team of deans who grew up in the neighborhood, some from the same housing projects where the students live. The modest wages of the four deans reporting to Young—as low as $12 an hour for an official total of 19 1/2 hours a week, though they put in considerably more time—come from a federal School Improvement Grant designed to transform the country’s lowest-performing schools.

Early results have been promising: Suspensions are down, attendance is up, and the culture of the school is changing. Carolina, a longtime Hillhouse basketball coach who took over the school this year, said the new deans are establishing a new culture in the school, restoring order to the hallways, and helping quell disruptive behavior.

The job involves a mix of mentoring, mediating conflicts, calming down parents—and looking for kids like Songz.

The student, who’s in his third year at Hillhouse, had been absent from class this year through a series of in-school and out-of-school suspensions. He showed up Wednesday morning to a 90-minute geometry class, where students were taking a third-quarter assessment.

While other students scribbled answers, Songz put his head down on his desk.

He “refused to complete any part of the assessment,” reported teacher Erin Petruzzelli.

Then he asked to go to the bathroom. Petruzzelli said no.

“I repeated myself and he said he was leaving anyways,” she said.

Petruzzelli gave that report on a Level I discipline slip, which is used to report minor incidents in class. She handed it to Young at 8:35 a.m.

Young greeted her wearing a striped tie, a button-down shirt with silver Tiffany cuff links and loafers, though he usually wears sneakers to cover more ground. He agreed to help track the kid down.

“Young to all deans,” he said through his radio. “Be advised, deans, I’m looking for [Songz].” If anybody sees him, Young directed, “please give me a radio check.”

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