10
Monday. November 22.1993
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Ewing Kauffman's
Monya Downey's mother, Cheryl Wallace, left. and her stepfather, Lorenzo Wallace, kept her away from the sometimes dangerous streets of Kansas City, Mo., when Monya was a child.
Continued from Page 1.
Downey likes to tell a story about an old violin sold at an auction. Cracked and dusty, the instrument looks as if it will never be of much use to anybody. A wise man buys it for a pittance and takes it home. He replaces the strings and polishes the wood until it shines. Then the wise man offers the violin for sale at another auction, where eager buyers try to outbid each other to buy the instrument.
Downey, a graduate of Westport High's class of 1992, says that she — or any of her classmates — easily could he that violin.
And the wise man could be Ewing Kauffman.
"Even though many of the kids in the Westport area are intelligent and capable, people thought they were hopeless," she says. "Mr.Kauffman saw something different. He saw kids with potential who needed help."
Downey was born and raised in Kansas City, Mo. She spent most of her youth in a house owned by her grandmother at 29th Street and Victor Avenue. Each house in the neighborhood has two stories and a front porch, from which parents watch their children play in the street.
"They could watch you outside," Downey says. "Just don't go around the other corner."
Around the other corner, and a few blocks down the street, lies Troost Avenue. There, storefront windows are covered with metal mesh. Some buildings have been left to vandals and the weather. And at night, prostitutes and drug dealers walk the streets.
"You just have to be frank with them and tell them what to watch out for," says Cheryl Wallace, Downey's mother.
Downey says she doesn't remember a lot of noise and crime.
But she remembers poverty.
Legacy of Hope
"The money wasn't there at that point in time," she says. "My mother didn't even have a high school education. There wasn't enough money to feed everybody in the house."
Wallace says times were hard then. After divorcing Downey's father, she worked long hours outside her house.
For the most part, Downey was raised by her grandmother, Minnie Randolph. Wallace says she regrets the lost time with her children, but economics forced her to work.
"I wish I could have been there to see the things you see as a parent," Wallace says. "But I knew everybody knew I had to work."
Closeness and love have kept the family together through hard times, Wallace says. She said a nurturing family kept Downey and her older sister out of trouble.
But they all credit Randolph, a quiet and religious woman who has lived in Kansas City for decades, with being the base of the family. Downey says Randolph gave her the strength to survive tough schools and a dangerous neighborhood.
Randolph says Downey has had that strength all along.
"She's independent, and a little stubborn when she thinks she's right," Randolph says. "She stands up for what she believes in."
Wallace says Downey would have found her way out of the inner city and into post-secondary school no matter what stood in
her way.
"She would have found a way," Wallace says. "It might not have been easy, but she would have found a way."
Downey found a way, but did not find it easy at all.
Downey's family moved to Ruskin Heights, a suburb of Kansas City, before her ninth grade year, and she discovered a different world. Ruskin Heights High School was nothing like the schools in the inner city. The school had equipment, facilities and well-trained teachers. After school activities such as athletics, debate and forensic could fill students' afternoons.
So when the lease to their house was pulled after one year, and the family was forced to move back to the same neighborhood, Downey transferred to the last place she wanted to go to high school.
Westport High School.
There, she found the class work unchallenging, the teachers unskilled and the hallways and bathrooms unsafe.
Wallace says she worried that Downey was not receiving a proper education at her new school.
"This really bothers me as a parent," Wallace says. "It would be nice to know they could come in to college without the extra struggle."
"I was depressed, I was crying, I felt as if I had been cheated," Downey says of Westport High. "But I knew I had it in me. I knew I could do it."
Downey says she breezed through Westport High School academically. The standards were lower than at Ruskin Heights. She did not write a thesis paper until her
senior year in high school, and most of her teachers were more interested in passing students than preparing them, she says.
At the end of the day when she left the classroom, she was surrounded by the problems of the day: teen-age friends getting pregnant, classmates on drugs and fear of violence in the hallways.
"In an inner-city school, you deal with more social problems," Downey says. "In the suburban schools, you don't have a lot of that."
She hated school so much that the lure of Project Choice was almost not enough.
In 1988, Ewing Marion Kauffman, founder and chair of the board of Marion Laboratories, Inc., and owner of the Kansas City Royals baseball team, began Project Choice. He announced the program as a personal challenge to the 1992 graduating class of Westport High School, the members of which were in eighth grade and almost out of junior high.
The challenge? Stay off drugs. Don't get pregnant. Maintain a 2.0 grade point average. Attend classes. Graduate from high school.
The payoff? If the students met all those conditions, Kauffman would pay for their education at the college of their choice. The offer covered tuition, housing, books and fees.
So Downey, who lives in Missouri, would not have to pay an estimated $5,970 a year in tuition, plus $3,175 for housing and $650 for books.
But Downey almost said no.
When Project Choice was offered to her as she began her freshman year, Downey originally declined. She says she felt signing the agreement would bind her to a school — and a way of life — she hated. But she and her mother finally signed.
Project Choice offers hope for community
Two shots.
Police said Jermaine Davis, a dropout from Westport High School in Kansas City, Mo., killed his manager, Marsha Kellogg, with two shots to the head as they closed Darryl's Restaurant and Bar on Sept. 6.
Those two shots continued a downward spiral for Davis. It began when he dropped out of school last year after a burglary conviction. It might end when he makes his first court appearance next Monday. He faces the possibility of a lifetime in prison without parole.
But Davis' life could have taken a different route. Instead of being held in Jackson County jail, Davis, a former Project Choice student, could have been on his way to college.
Kauffman Foundation.
"The quickest way and the best way to bring the students into education is higher education," said Tom Rhone, director of Project Choice for the Ewing Marion
Ewing Kauffman's Project Choice, which began in 1988, offered students at Westport High a lucrative deal: if they stayed off drugs, did not get pregnant, went to classes and graduated, Kauffman would pay for their college careers.
Project Choice was offered to a high school that reflected a variety of American social trends. More than 80 percent of the student body is African American, Asian or Hispanic. Most are from low-income families. Many come from single parent homes, where one parent does the job of two. Westport High had one of the highest dropout rates in the city, and only 20 percent of its graduating class ever went on to higher education.
The surrounding neighborhoods are riddled with problems. Drug use, alcoholism, poverty and a high crime rate have taken their toll on the neighborhood. In 1992, two Westport students died violent deaths.
The violence carries into the hallways of the school itself. Security guards keep watch over the students. In the mornings, students coming to school are greeted by newly-installed metal detectors.
But in 1988, Kauffman, who graduated from Westport High in 1934, injected money and hope into the Westport community.
In order to participate, students and parents had to sign an agreement in their
Today, Rhone said, Project Choice covers about 1,050 Kansas City area high school students and college students across the country. Kauffman extended the program to cover the class of 1992 through the class of 1995. Now, it also covers five high schools in United School District 500 in Kansas City, Kan.; Wandyotte, Washington, F.L. Schlagle and J.C. Harmon high schools and the Summer Academy of Arts and Sciences. Students in U.S.D. 500 also must show economic need. The last Project Choice class, the class of 1995, will graduate in two years.
And in the hallways of Westport High, the students have a better chance at success in the future. The dropout rate has been halved. Sixty percent of the 1992 graduates have passed on to post-secondary education.
ninth grade year, Rhone said. The students agreed to be bound by the conditions set by Kauffman. In return, the Kauffman Foundation agreed to pay for the students' undergraduate education. Students cannot enter the program after their ninth grade year, and if they move out of the district, they are dropped.
KU has 15 Project Choice students
But Project Choice has not been able to save everybody. Rhone said that three Project Choice students had been killed so far and that he would not be surprised if more died.
enrolled, six from the class of 1992 and nine from the class of 1993. Seven members of the class of 1993 are from Kansas City. Kan.
"One was killed in a drive-by, another was shot," he said. "They were killed in violent ways. They wanted to turn their lives around. It's tragic, but it happens."
While 14 percent move away from Westport, 6 percent simply disappear—as Jermaine Davis disappeared. Rhone said cases such as Davis' were tragic, but students must ultimately be responsible for their actions.
"If these young people choose their future and make their choice, we respect their choice and encourage them to do what they want." he said.
There lies the "choice" in Project Choice. he said.
Some, such as Monya Downey, choose college.
And some, such as Jermaine Davis,
choose otherwise.
The impetus was KU. Downey says she had known since she was eight years old that she wanted to attend KU. When she saw the campus on television or read about it in the newspaper, it seemed far away from Westport. However, she had heard that its law school was excellent. It was a dream destination she had never expected to fulfill.
"I saw from watching television that KU was big on law," Downey says. "I didn't know how I'd get here, but I knew I was coming."
Today, Downey laughs at the suggestion that she might be on drugs, pregnant or dead if it were not for Project Choice. She says she would have found her way out of Westport somehow.
Her stepfather, Lorenzo Wallace, says Downey may set a trend for the family in the future.
But Downey also represents a broken cycle. Her mother gave birth to her sister when her mother was 16. Her sister and two-step-sisters were also teen-age mothers. And Downey is the first in her family to attend a four-year university.
"I hope they follow the example she has set for them," he said.
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In the living room of Douthart Scholarship Hall, about 20 members of the Inspirational Gospel Voices gather to perform. The bass guitar and drum set barely fit behind the performers, and the audience looks uncomfortable as it squeezes together on the floor.
The show begins with a prayer, then the choir breaks into song. The first one, "Take It Away," is received well. By the third song, the audience members are too busy clapping to realize how uncomfortable they are.
Downey, one of the sopranos, stays in the background until the fourth song, "How Can I Forget?" Then she sings a solo, following each verse with a phrase of her own.
Downey feels comfortable here as she sings, but she has not always been comfortable at KU. She says that at first the education levels of her fellow students, who attended suburban high schools, intimidated her. Sometimes, when she received a bad grade, she wondered whether she should go home.
But Downey also remembers the personal letters she used to get from Kauffman himself. He wrote to her in his own hand, as he wrote to other members of Project Choice. He encouraged her to stay in school and tough it out.
Now, she wants to stay. She says she likes her Spanish class, and she wants to use Spanish to aid her future career in international law.
And she wants — someday — to return to Westport and give back what the late Ewing Kauffman gave to her. She says the odds are against it — but the odds have been against her before.
"You know how you read about these sad people whose dreams don't come true?" Downey says with a smile. "Well, my dream came true. I came to KU."
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