Lynka Guadalupe was about a year and a half from graduating from one of Boston’s oldest high schools when she learned she was pregnant. 

She liked life as a student and at first she thought she could juggle pregnancy and schoolwork. She soon realized, however, that navigating the large campus was a lot more work than she’d expected. 

“I was just drained in general,” she recalled, with “a lot of floors for me to be going up and down.”

But the final straw came when she confided in a trusted staff member, who told her that if she kept the baby she’d be ruining her life.

Guadalupe dropped out and spent months figuring out her next move. That’s when she learned about a tiny charter school not far from her home called , or BDEA. Though its model has changed slightly over the years — the school no longer operates in the evening, as its 20-year-old name implies — it has become one of the most alternative high schools in the U.S., offering a model of care and personal attention that larger, more comprehensive schools often struggle to create.

For Guadalupe, that meant a program that let her take classes from home two days each week. School administrators worked around her childcare schedule for the other three.

“They’re like, ‘As long as you get the work done, that should be the most important thing,’” she said. “They know where I’m at …. They don’t treat me like I’m ‘less than.’”

Though it was a long process, Guadalupe graduated in June with her now-4-year-old in tow, one of more than 1,200 young people who have found an alternative path to graduation since BDEA opened in 2004. 

The school comprises three programs, which enroll about 250 students ages 16 to 23. 

It offers streamlined coursework that can be completed faster than in most schools, part of a competency-based curriculum that allows students to quickly show they’ve mastered material. 

Among its keys to success: a nearly obsessive attention to the mental, physical and academic needs of students. BDEA not only offers small classes and free meals but showers, laundry, clothing, free city bus passes and an in-school health clinic. It helps students earn work permits and find jobs. For those experiencing homelessness, it works with a local nonprofit to find housing.

“If I didn’t have the support,” said Guadalupe, now 23, “I think I’d probably still be dropped out and just working my life away with no diploma.”

The support comes mostly in the form of small but important details. BDEA starts its school day at 9 a.m., hours later than most high schools. It also offers a session at 10 a.m.

“That’s our most attended time,” said Alison Hramiec, BDEA’s head of school and a longtime teacher there. The later start time, she said, allows students to drop off siblings or offspring at daycare or other schools. Most of her students take public transportation, which typically takes more than an hour. 

Class calendars are compressed to allow students to complete more at a faster clip. And the entire system is based on mastery, allowing students to test out of courses so they can check off requirements in days rather than months. The typical student graduates in just under three years.

But the school imposes no time limits on graduation, allowing them to take as little as one course per trimester.

‘My phone number hasn’t changed in 24 years’

Originally serving students who’d dropped out to become “third shift” workers, punching a time clock from midnight to 8 a.m., BDEA’s original class schedule allowed students to leave work, sleep through the afternoon and attend evening classes before their next shift. 

But over time, most young people grabbed afternoon shifts, creating a need for a more robust morning program. It also deepened its relationship to graduates, many of whom take extra time to decide on college or a career.

”We’re reaching out to those students on a regular basis and saying, ‘I know you’re working as a cashier right now at CVS, but what do you think in September you really might like to be doing?” said Director of Postgraduate Planning Margaret Samp.

She began working as a literacy specialist at BDEA at its founding, 24 years ago. Her background was in drama and English as a Second Language, and she admitted that she loves her current title “because it sounds like everybody’s going to graduate school.”

Even graduates who return years later needing help with college or career dreams aren’t turned away. As if illustrating BDEA’s consistency in students’ lives, she added, “My phone number hasn’t changed in 24 years.”

From credo to memoir

One month each year, most classes stop and students work on projects based on the competencies they need to meet.

Teachers are also encouraged to collaborate. In one case, humanities teacher Jose Capo Jr. and biology teacher Nilo Ashraf created a course that used superheroes to teach about DNA. The pair challenged students to imagine what would happen if two superheroes reproduced, asking what powers the offspring would share with their parents.

He called the class “a creative writing/science class hybrid” that helps them see how their interests intersect with academics. 

“It’s really about young people feeling empowered to take charge of their lives here,” he said.

Capo often starts his courses by asking students to write a credo. Many struggle with the assignment, telling him, “‘I don’t think I have one. I’m just here.’ … And I’m like, ‘Isn’t that still a code?’ And they would just be like …” — he makes a “mind blown” motion with his fingers.

After their credo, Capo guides them through the process of writing a short memoir while reading a sociology textbook that explores “the multiple dimensions of the self.” He also assigns chapters from the 1967 memoir Down These Mean Streets by , a Latino writer who grew up poor in New York’s Spanish Harlem. 

Students write essays exploring which dimension of the self has a stronger hold on them at the moment — and which they need help bringing into the light.

Hramiec, the head of school, said that sets BDEA apart. “We spend a lot of time giving students space to grow emotionally, to learn how to self-regulate, to think about social intelligence.” 

Jill Kantrowitz, the school’s advancement director, recalled sitting in on the superheroes unit in her first few months at the school. “It blew my mind,” she said. “The idea is that students can take control of their education.”

That extends to nearly every aspect of the school, from feedback on classes to student achievement. Rather than pushing to pass each class, Kantrowitz noted, students can choose whether they want to simply prove competency or aim for a higher level of mastery. 

That changes the complexion of classes, where 15 students might be working towards different outcomes.

Students are, of course, expected to attend every day, but many face huge challenges. About one in 10 is homeless, with many “couch surfing” and in search of housing, said social worker Rachel Revis. “We have students that sleep in parks. We do have students that are in shelters looking for stability. And that was a huge thing, especially after COVID, where families were sort of broken apart.”

On the other hand, BDEA also serves escapees from elite schools who can’t handle the competitive pressure. “They would say they come here because they’re like, ‘I can actually breathe — I can be myself.’”

‘An educational team backing me’

Nearly half of students arrive with either individualized education plans (IEPs) or less restrictive 504 accommodation requirements. And nearly all face difficult family and personal circumstances.

Teachers watch absences closely, calling and texting whenever students don’t show up. There’s no harsh punishment for not attending, but if they miss five days in a row, the school turns off their city bus pass and turns to more direct interventions, such as one-on-one meetings, home visits and, if applicable, conversations with family members.

That approach is rare, said Mina Koenig, 22. She enrolled at BDEA after attending the prestigious for a few years. Chronic migraines drove her out of a school that she says didn’t accommodate her needs — for one thing, its ubiquitous fluorescent lights never shut off.

Though she earned A’s, Koenig missed a lot of school — one year, she was absent 160 days and failed several classes.

She expects to graduate from BDEA within a year as she earns more math and science credits. 

Much like her classmate Guadalupe, Koenig said one previous roadblock was having a physical condition that severely limited her, with teachers “making no real effort to cross that barrier and understand,” despite an IEP.

At BDEA, she said, teachers are “very focused on having an individual connection with each and every one of their students” — very similar to her medical team of doctors and neurologists. “Here, I feel … that I have an educational team backing me.”

For her part, Koenig said her migraines have been improving. After she graduates, she’s thinking about studying to be a dietitian. She plans to attend Bunker Hill Community College and “figure it out while I’m there.”

BDEA has already given her the freedom to study diet and nutrition, offering a gardening project as well as botany and agriculture courses. “It’s really nice that the school is supporting me with things that are other than just math worksheets,” she said. “They’ve actually set me up for life.” 

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at

A Chicago Public Schools program that set out to reel back students who hadn’t attended school a year or longer is ending — training a spotlight on both the promise and hurdles of reengaging these young people.

Since its launch during the pandemic, district leaders have touted Back to Our Future as a trailblazing initiative to reconnect with some of Chicago’s 45,000 teens and young adults who are not in school or the workforce — a goal seen as key to reducing gun violence and poverty. At a price tag of $18,000 per student, the program offered a chance to catch up on high school credits, therapy, job training, and a stipend.

But the program was beset by problems from the get-go, a Chalkbeat analysis of data and correspondence shows.

Only about half of the 1,000 students the program set out to reach actively participated over the past two years — and some had not actually dropped out of high school, but had struggled with spotty attendance. Fewer than 60 have earned a high school diploma, while about 160 are currently enrolled or pursuing a GED.

Early on, recruitment proved difficult. For young people who did enroll, online credit recovery software was not yet in place, and there was no clear process for re-enrolling students back in school once they were ready to transition. Six months into the program’s launch, the state issued a formal improvement plan. More recently, it continued to voice concerns about tracking student outcomes.

Still, some argue each student served was worth the effort.

“There’s so much you don’t see if you are just looking at the numbers,” said Myisha McGee, the postsecondary high school director at the nonprofit Breakthrough Ministries, one of the district’s partners.

Jadine Chou, the CPS safety and security chief, said the district knew the initiative would be challenging: It targeted young people with extremely high needs that districts across the country have often written off. For hundreds, it did offer a path to graduation, jobs, and relationships with caring adults.

“This was very hard, and yet at the same time, these students all deserved all of the effort that went into it,” she said. “And I think over the long run, the outcome will show this was absolutely worth all of that work.”

Now, the city, district, and state are in talks about launching a new version of Back to Our Future, which officials say will draw lessons from the original program. The idea is to provide even more — and more personalized — services to its participants.

The mayor’s office did not respond to multiple requests for more information about efforts to relaunch Back to Our Future.

Back to Our Future had a slow start

CPS kicked off Back to Our Future in May 2022 with an $18 million grant from the state Department of Human Services’ Office of Firearm Prevention and some philanthropic dollars. The goal was to reach 1,000 youth ages 14 to 21 in 15 neighborhoods on the South and West sides who had stopped going to school 18 months prior or longer.

The district enlisted three community-based nonprofits — Breakthrough, UCAN, and Youth Advocate Programs — to recruit participants and provide 20 hours of services a week over their initial 12 weeks in the program. The three signed one-year contracts for up to $20 million in total. Students would have the opportunity to get their diploma by completing a credit recovery program. Some might earn their GEDs or make their way back to a CPS school.

was another key partner, tracking and analyzing student outcomes pro bono. The lab’s research has shown that 90% of school-aged gun violence victims in Chicago were not going to school when they were shot.

Recruiting students was slow-going in 2022. One issue was that amid a push to quickly enlist participants, the district and its partners relied heavily on district lists of students who had dropped out. But contact information didn’t always work, and the outreach could feel more impersonal. More informal outreach using the nonprofits’ ties in the targeted neighborhoods was more effective, according to a report by Crime Lab.

Later that fall, showed that the majority of students who did enroll in the program were actively enrolled in school. That December of 2022, roughly six months after the program’s launch, the Department of Human Services put it on a corrective action plan, noting that only about 125 youth had signed up. The state also hadn’t yet seen a consistent model for running the program that all three nonprofits could follow.

CPS launched a marketing campaign on radio, social media, and CTA buses, along with other steps to boost recruitment. Enrollment in the program picked up.

But emails obtained by Chalkbeat suggest recurring friction between the district and DHS, with repeated emails in which the state demanded data and documentation on the program’s outcomes. At least at one point, the state temporarily cut off payments to the district for failure to submit required reporting on time.

In the summer of 2023, LaTanya Law, the DHS point person on the program at the time, looped in Jennifer “Jen” Johnson, Chicago’s deputy mayor for education, youth, and human services, in an email, saying: “Hopefully we can move the needle so we can make any adjustments needed to improve the program.”

Recruitment and attendance issues persisted

In early 2023, the district tried to get some outside help. The program enlisted Leo Smith, director of policy at the violence prevention nonprofit Chicago CRED, to consult on improving it.

In an interview, Smith said he agreed that the program needed a more consistent model for the three nonprofits and more of a focus on therapeutic interventions, including the cognitive behavioral therapy the program provided. Some young people stopped attending once a stipend the program offered ran out, suggesting a need to extend these payments or trail them off more gradually.

“It’s incredibly hard to find kids and engage them,” he said. “But when you do, it can be powerful. Kids do turn their lives around.”

Some of the issues with recruitment and attendance persisted, however. In July 2023, DHS and CPS officials discussed a 60-day “reset” that would involve pausing new recruitment while examining the program’s challenges and ways to improve it. The state flagged that many program participants were logging in significantly fewer than the 20 intended hours a week in the program, and many were not getting cognitive behavioral therapy and other mental health support — what Chou had described as the program’s “secret sauce” to school board members. that in the program’s first year, students logged in seven hours a week on average.

That fall, school board members voted unanimously to renew the contracts for Back to Our Future for another year. They praised the program as a move away from a punitive or at best disinterested approach to students who struggle — with little discussion of its challenges.

“This is a good example of when we are collaborative within CPS and with other public agencies, when we provide high intensity support and recognize that what students need is beyond what sometimes is available in the classroom,” said Jianan Shi, then the school board president.

Ushering students to graduation was challenging

Tiana Williams, 19, said Breakthrough reached out to her family in spring 2023 to pitch the program to her sister, who was not interested. Williams was not exactly the program’s target audience: She was in her senior year at Pathways in Education, an alternative high school. But she was looking at the possibility of doing summer school to finish her studies, and found out she could do that in the Back to Our Future program instead — and receive a stipend while she was at it.

“I am a teenager who wants to make money but also stay focused on school,” she said. “The weekly stipend might not seem like much but it helped a lot.”

She said she liked the online credit recovery program — earning her handful of remaining credits at her own pace, in a smaller, more intimate setting, and eventually graduating. She also took arts and music classes and went on field trips, such as a visit to Malcolm X College.

Williams said she is in between jobs now after working at Walmart following the program, and she is considering applying to college.

But Crime Lab’s report found the credit recovery software was not a good fit for most students without robust in-person support.

Indeed, it doesn’t appear CPS had a clear plan for shepherding the students to their high school graduation, beyond the online program. Even that program wasn’t in place at first. Chicago Public Schools provided it to Breakthrough some two months after participants started arriving. That meant some were at the end of their 12 weeks of receiving a stipend when they started making up credits.

Documents show the district would not formally spell out a process for Back to Our Future referrals to alternative high schools — essentially ensuring that both nonprofits and schools were prepared to provide a smooth transition for students — until January 2024, more than 18 months after the start of the program.

Officials at one network of alternative high schools, Youth Connection Charter School, had been frustrated that the district did not engage it in the program from the get-go. Some of these schools had seen enrollment plummet during the pandemic, and re-enrolling dropouts through the program could give them a boost.

In the late fall of 2023, some Breakthrough students enrolled in a couple of the network’s campuses, most through a connection the nonprofit happened to have with one of them. But the schools didn’t know much about the program; it didn’t make for the smoothest handoff, said Sheila Venson, the network’s head.

Then, Venson said, a principal at one of the schools was invited to a graduation ceremony the district hosted for Williams and 17 other Back to Our Future students. With TV cameras trained on them, the students — wearing moss-green caps and gowns — walked across a stage and later flipped tassels on their caps to raucous cheers.

“We are so excited for the graduation today because every single young person who walked across the stage today completed the program, but even more importantly got a CPS diploma,” Chou told attendees.

But Venson said that the YCCS principal was confused: “Why are these kids in the booklet as graduating? They are not graduating. They are still with us.”

Chicago Public Schools said the 18 students in that ceremony had earned enough credits to graduate but had not yet met other senior requirements, such as attending a senior seminar, completing their senior portfolio, or filling out the FAFSA form. All but one have since done so and gotten their diplomas, the district said.

Days after the release of , Crime Lab pulled out of the program, though a data analyst stayed on past that point. Crime Lab said the decision came after a conversation with CPS about “the highest-priority activities and partnerships needed for the program to be successful.”

The program took on an important challenge, Crime Lab said in written responses to questions. It also said that verything from youth concerns about safety to scheduling conflicts with jobs and caretaking got in the way of getting a diploma through the program. But one thing is clear: To help improve youth outcomes and reduce gun violence, helping them graduate from high school — which markedly reduces a young person’s odds of incarceration — is key.

Overall, CPS said, 636 students agreed to take part in the program over its two years. About 100 dropped out, though the district and its partners continue trying to reengage them. Some moved or signed up for other youth programs; 10 were incarcerated, and four died. One hundred and fifty remain connected to the program with “intermittent participation” while 73 are still actively involved in it. Almost 40 landed permanent jobs. The district did not specify, but based on previous data it provided to the state, the majority of the 58 students who graduated got their diplomas at alternative high schools.

Chou said there were never conflicts with the partner agencies on the program and both the state Department of Human Services and Crime Lab remain close collaborators.

She noted that some of the participants were younger and behind on credits, so they understandably need longer to finish their studies; others were older and had aged out of CPS. Still, for some, the program accomplished the tough task of reconnecting them to school. The district also got valuable input from students on why they disconnected that will help the district’s efforts to prevent dropout.

“Students told us, ‘I was made to feel like I couldn’t succeed,’ and to hear that over and over again from the students we are here to serve is a very important lesson for the district,” Chou said.

‘Many improvements we want to make’

Shyvone Leeks said her son was also attending school and had largely completed his high school credits when he applied for the program. After his probation officer recommended it, the family agreed it might offer a positive, supportive environment while he worked out his next steps.

“It was something different,” she said. “I told him he might as well try it out.”

Her son loved the program, Leeks said: He felt safe there and made friends. The stipend was a draw for him and for several friends he helped recruit to Back to Our Future. After the stipend ended, he found a restaurant job. But he recently was arrested on a weapon violation and incarcerated.

“It was a good program,” Leeks said. “I just wish it was a little longer.”

The state did not extend its contract with CPS to continue the program after it ended back in June. In the program’s first year, the state granted $8.1 million, which was later reduced; the district submitted invoices for $2.2 million. In the second year, the district spent about $5.5 million of another $8.1 million grant.

A state spokeswoman said the contract for the program simply ended when it was slated to end.

“Our dedication to this effort is unwavering, and we are optimistic about the future possibilities for continuing the type of impactful work initiated through the Back to Our Future program,” the spokeswoman said in a statement.

In May, CPS officials told the school board that the district would wind down the program, using philanthropic dollars to ensure that students in the program could finish it out. They said they were discussing a new version of the program with city officials, who see reengaging dropouts as a key violence reduction strategy.

McGee, Breakthrough’s postsecondary high school director, said the Garfield Park nonprofit continues to serve some students in a scaled-back program with private funding, though it no longer offers stipends — and hopes to be involved in its next version.

“I think despite the slow start, the program was very, very beneficial to the students who participated,” she said. “We are honestly changing their trajectory.”

Twenty-two Breakthrough students graduated from Progressive Leadership Academy, a YCCS campus. Another student got a degree through the online credit recovery program, and one earned a GED. Five are attending CPS this fall.

McGee holds up Alonte Wilson, a student about efforts to reengage youth, as an example of a young person who turned his life around. He came to the program after dropping out, getting shot, and later getting arrested. He graduated and now works as a teacher assistant at Breakthrough and is a role model for younger students, McGee said.

She said she wishes there were a number of campuses that had been prepared to seamlessly enroll returning students, including some schools closer to the Garfield Park neighborhood than the Southwest Side alternative school.

The new version of Back to Our Future might still use an online credit recovery program — a promising option for students who can’t safely go back to school or don’t want to go back — but paired this time with more individualized mentoring and academic support, Smith of CRED said. The cost of the new program might be closer to $25,000 per student.

Chou said the end of state funding presented an opportunity to pause and rethink some aspects of the program. For instance, she now believes the program should broaden the definition of the students it targets, to include some chronically absent students. The program should also be better prepared to help with a range of needs, including housing and child care. She said she believes the district will continue to play a key role.

“I don’t want to keep feeding into the current version of it when we know there’s so many improvements we want to make,” she said.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.