What’s Up? with Merlene

Outside the yellowish five-story, castle-like school building on the west side of Chicago, violence, drugs and prostitution are nearly as prevalent as pollen. The school was on lock-down twice this month because of the violence occurring nearby.
Inside that building, however, enveloped in strict discipline, demanding rules and hard work, every student who has graduated in the past 30 years has gone on to a four-year college. Every one.
The school is Providence St. Mel, once controlled by the Archdiocese of Chicago, but now a private school founded by Paul J. Adams III, the principal when the Catholic Church wanted to close it down in 1978.
Twenty years later, after being a teacher at Providence for two years, Jeanette DiBella, a onetime Lexington teacher, became the school’s principal and chief education officer. And that’s about when the school stepped it up another notch.
In the past decade or so, not only have all the graduating students attended college, but 50 percent of them have gone to Ivy League or tier one universities.
The school is like the little engine that could, and DiBella is its conductor.
She credits most of her success to the five years she spent in Lexington, when the Kentucky Education Reform Act was still new.

Jeanette DiBella with a student

“I loved my job in Lexington, and I loved the educators,” DiBella said. “Some of the greatest educators I’ve ever worked with came out of Kentucky.”
DiBella taught a self-contained emotional behavior disorders class at Bryan Station Middle School in which the students had a variety of issues that prevented their being mainstreamed.
She said she recalls the efforts then by the Equity Council to reduce the number of black males in special education. “It was something like 99 percent,” she said. “That wasn’t right.”
Former Fayette County Schools educator Jane Harris was one of DiBella’s mentors in Lexington. Harris has also trained DiBella’s Chicago staff about behavior.
“Her approach to instruction is that good instruction is good instruction regardless,” Harris said. “She had a tremendous academic program here, and the kids respected that. All the kids were tough to teach.”
In Chicago, Harris said, DiBella’s staff “is on fire to make this happen.”
Tom Jones, then principal of Bryan Station Middle, hired DiBella in the middle of the year. “It was a no-brainer to hire Jeanette,” he said. “The difference was Jeanette had the training and the personal skills to do the work. She was a spiritually centered person and confident in who she was.”
DiBella, who was named Kentucky Special Education Teacher of the Year in 1995, often repeated the well-known quote, “Think you can or think you can’t. Either way you are right,” Jones said.

Jeanette DiBella

Her positive attitude shined through no matter what the situation, he said. “It was like a virus,” he said. “She infected other faculty with that attitude.”
DiBella moved with her husband to Chicago in 1996 and accepted a job at Providence.
“I chose to be here because of Paul Adams,” DiBella said. “I loved how he was able to make it simple in black education. It is simple and hard work. So many people blame the families, but you take the child and educate them and make them know they can succeed.”
With what she had learned about classroom management and behavioral problems, DiBella soon won the job of principal.
Nearly all the students at Providence are black; 75 percent are on free or reduced lunch and need financial assistance to attend the private school. The results have captivated so many people the school became the subject of a documentary, The Providence Effect, which was released in September and is showing in various cities.
Parents weren’t welcoming of a white woman running Providence at first, DiBella said. But Adams assured them she was the right choice, she said. “I told them I know you are nervous, but I’ve had 30 years in urban education, and it’s always been with black students,” DiBella said. “I will always be in African-American education.”
DiBella said she’s surprised at the attention the school has garnered because what they do can be replicated easily.
The students wear collared shirts, undershirts and pants that fit. No tattoos are allowed. Discipline rules as do high expectations.
The school system asked DiBella and Adams to start Providence Englewood Charter School in another depressed area three years ago. It is having equal success.
Parents or guardians must attend some Saturday sessions to learn of school expectations, gain parenting techniques and get information about the curriculum so they can help with homework.
DiBella said she walks the hallways and visits classrooms just to keep students and teachers on task.
“Our real goal is to provide a first-class education to a child who would never be able to afford this kind of education,” DiBella said. “We have a breadth of curriculum that we have to teach. (The students) don’t have a daddy that will pay their way into college, so they need scores.”
Despite the hard work, 60 percent of the teachers have been at the school for at least five years. If teachers are not ready to work, they need to move on, she said.
“If you don’t have the passion, then don’t come in to sign the letter of agreement,” DiBella said. “I will drive you crazy.
“I try to be a human being, but my main focus is getting these students into the best colleges.”

Jeanette DiBella quieting students

DiBella is a central figure in the award-winning documentary, which some of her friends are trying to bring to Lexington. The trailer can be seen at www.theprovidenceeffect.com.
“You have to have passion to do this work,” DiBella said. “I love my job.”