Obama's story resonates with Bronx students

‘You have to look at other aspects’
The Obama supporters are quick to state that they're not supporting him just because he looks different from the 42 white men who have been president.

"Everybody's like, 'Oh, he's black, let me vote for him.' That's not how it falls," said Kenneth Obasuyi, 17, whose mother and father came to the U.S. from Nigeria. "You have to look at other aspects, too."

Students listed their top issues, in the mock election, as health care, the economy and education.

Interest in the election began early in the long primary season. A retired special-ed teacher, Brenda Walton, started papering the walls of Validus with election headlines last fall. (She had the tabloid Daily News and the Post, so the main characters in the news are known as "Hil," "Mac" and "Bam.")

She said the possibility of a black man in the White House might seem to offer Validus students a role model. But with few fathers at home, and only two black men on the 30-person faculty, "that's so far out there, they can't see it. They need role models they can touch," she said.

The school was created by Brady Smith, a former English teacher who not only is the principal but also a dominating presence with "mad skills" in the faculty-student table-tennis tournament held in the atrium at lunchtime.

Principal Smith said it would be too easy to reduce the students to demographic stereotypes. He referred to critiques such as comedian Bill Cosby faulting black parents for not instilling proper values.

"It's a shame that it's oversimplified: 'single-parent families,'" he said. "It's an issue, but the fact is, it takes addressing so many different issues. It's different for every student. To pull a Cosby is incorrect for many. Once you're on the ground, things that seem like issues from 20,000 feet are not issues — they're realities. You can't let them be the barriers to success. You have to overcome them. "

Obama's appeal in the school is not confined to black students. Excitement is strong among Hispanic students, too.

Abigail Payano, a senior who will be able to vote for the first time on Tuesday, will be going to the poll on Tuesday with her daughter, Abriana, who will turn 2 on Christmas Day. After supporting Hillary Clinton in the primaries, Payano is voting for Obama now.

John Makely / msnbc.com Abigail Payano: "He knows what we struggle for."

"In my neighborhood, I see that they're going for Obama. We're not even looking at his race," Payano said. "We're looking at what he struggled. He knows what we struggle for. You could compare our life struggle to his life struggle.

"I want for the election now: I want my daughter to have an education better than I'm receiving now. I want her to go to a better college."

Payano said she hopes to be a lawyer or social worker, helping women deal with domestic violence and civil rights.

Christopher Gonzalez, whose grandparents moved from Puerto Rico to New York, will also be voting for Obama.

"It just opens up people's eyes to see that anything's possible," said Gonzalez, 18, who lives with his mom, three sisters and older brother. "I mean, after centuries of white presidents, there's a black president. I mean, soon there's going to be a woman president.

"If he can become president, why can't a Hispanic become president?"

About Validus Prep 'Do what's best for students' Validus is Latin for strong, mighty, exceeding. Validus Preparatory Academy seems on its way to achieving all three. The public school in the South Bronx is in just its fourth year, preparing to graduate its first class of seniors in June. Part of the small-schools movement, it has just 426 students in four grades. The small-schools movement has been championed here by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein. It's an open-enrollment school, meaning any student who has attended an information session can select it as a first choice in the school citywide lottery system. The building is new and brightly painted, sharing a library and other common areas with two other small schools, a few blocks south of the Cross Bronx Expressway. It's next to an industrial park where a dry-cleaning plant and other industries have replaced vacant lots in what a decade ago was a burned-out section of the South Bronx. Though surrounded by the poorest congressional district in the nation, the New York 16th, it lacks something prevalent in schools: There are no metal detectors on the doors. Principal Brady Smith proposed a school focusing on academics and fitness, and got the support of the nonprofit Expeditionary Learning Schools Outward Bound. Students take a weeklong camping trip to the Catskills and have far more opportunities for fitness and sports than at most other schools in New York City, even a Double Dutch jump-roping team. Sneakers are a part of the school uniform, along with school logo T-shirts and khakis. The faculty and staff are young. About one-third come from teaching fellowships, such as the nonprofit Teach for America or the city's Teaching Fellows (an alternative certification program to recruit teachers and help them meet the certification requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind law). Assistant Principal Jodie Ruck came from a trading floor on Wall Street. Working at night on master's degrees, the teachers still find time after school to coach and lead school trips. They're responsible for a homeroom class — called a "crew." Teachers keep track of students in spreadsheets, watching for grades or absences that indicate a need for a parent conference. Some students are invited to hang up a jacket in a teacher's classroom each morning, just so there's a chance to check in twice a day. The school has scored well above the city average on surveys of parents, teachers and students on the learning environment, as well as winning high marks on a school quality review by visiting educators. A chart in the teacher's workroom lays out the "norms" for the teachers: "Do what's best for students. Laugh. Be flexible. Take risks." And this dose of hopeful realism: "Assume the best intentions (as first response)." — Bill Dedman

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