New England media reports: Simon Youth Foundation mall schools matter

In two recent reports from news outlets based in the Boston, Mass., area, Simon Youth Foundation students, educators and partners all agree: Simon Youth Academies provide a crucial alternative to the traditional classroom that ignites hope and fosters success in at-risk youth.

In the first report, David McKay Wilson, writing for the May/June 2012 edition of the Harvard Education Letter, a publication of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, interviewed SYF educators and students on both coasts as well as from the Midwest.

McKay quotes James Wigo, the superintendent of the Rose Tree Media School District in Media, Penn., SYF's partner in supporting the Simon Youth Rose Tree Media Academy at Granite Run Mall.

"We simply have kids who are square pegs trying to fit into round holes,” Wigo says. “We have applied every intervention, and it hasn’t worked. So rather than cut them loose, we provide the scaffolding to help them hang in.”

You can read the complete Harvard Education Letter report, Shopping Mall Schools, at the publication's website.

Courtesy Peabody Patch

Community news site Peabody Patch published on May 31 its coverage of the graduation ceremony at the Simon Youth Peabody Learning Academy at Northshore Mall in Peabody, Mass., just outside of Boston.

The story also features the theme of education different from the traditional, quoting former Peabody Mayor Michael Bonfanti, a strong advocate of the Academy while in office, as saying that the community "established this school because one size does not fit all."

You can read the complete Peabody Patch story, including a photo slide show from graduation, at the publication's website.

The Simon Youth Peabody Learning Academy is supported in partnership between SYF and Peabody Public Schools.