WAPPINGERS SCHOOL DISTRICT—When he earns his high school diploma in a few months, Sean Scott has plans to study at Dutchess Community College in the hopes of someday becoming an X-ray technician or an algebra teacher.

Three years ago, however, his future didn’t seem quite so bright. A former Roy C. Ketcham High School student, Scott says he “did nothing” there and didn’t get the kind of attention he needed from his teachers in over-crowded classrooms. Now he’s acting president of his class and thinks of his principal as a friend.

What made the difference?

Orchard View, the Wappingers School District’s alternative high school.

Once dubbed the “best thing Wappingers ever did” by the parent of a graduate, Orchard View was established in 2003 through the efforts of then Deputy Superintendent for Administration and Special Services Dr. Ray Healey, who has since left the district.

Originally housed in a wing at Ketcham and considered an off-shoot of that school, Orchard View became a stand-alone high school in 2004 and moved to its present location at WCSD headquarters on Myers Corners Road in the summer of 2005. It’s been growing steadily year after year, with its current enrollment in grades nine through 12 at more than 60 students. Orchard View students hail from both Ketcham and John Jay.

Ed Kossmann, who has been principal of the school since its inception, said alternative schools tend to carry a negative connotation and are often thought of as repositories for problem kids, but “that’s not the case at all.”

To begin with, Orchard View is voluntary. Much like college, students must apply, write an essay, and attend an intake interview with Kossmann and school counselor Laura Ligotino. And the reasons students seek alternative education are as diverse as they are themselves. Attendance issues, medical challenges, family struggles, and discipline problems are among them. Orchard View’s later start time of 10:30 (as opposed to the 7:17 opening bell at RCK and Jay) can help kids succeed when they’ve had attendance problems in the past.

The size of classes at the regular high schools is a recurring theme, too. Scott and fellow Orchard View senior Tiara Middleton, who attended John Jay, both say they often found themselves in classrooms of 20-plus students taught by teachers who had to keep track of 150 kids a day. By comparison, Middleton said most of her classes at Orchard View average about seven students.

“The teachers actually talk to you [at Orchard View],” Scott said.

What’s more, both Middleton and Scott agree that there was too much “drama” in the regular high school setting, something that is all but non-existent at Orchard View. Students who don’t like each other simply leave one another alone and if someone’s having a bad day, they can get away for a little while, doing their work or sorting out their issue quietly in Kossmann’s office.

“It’s a calming period, a refocusing period,” Kossmann said of these times, noting that he eventually sends students back to class with a “gentle push.”

Boundaries are clear at Orchard View and Kossmann calls it a “strict” and “structured” environment, with kids clear on all the rules before they even begin, but because it’s so small, it’s also a very personal and informal environment where everybody knows everybody and no one gets lost in the shuffle.

“Everyone is involved. They can’t escape me,” said social studies teacher Tina McFarlin, who, along with English teacher Greg Bornstein, is new this year. McFarlin points out that, in a class of 30 students, the “quiet ones can get lost” and those who don’t feel like participating can simply slide down in their chairs and hide. At Orchard View, she knows “every single kid” and she interacts with each one of them during class.

Sometimes these interactions take the form of small, chatty digressions, but Scott notes that they’re “always on topic” and the Orchard View teachers have a way of bringing things back to the task at hand. McFarlin said the students sometimes express themselves in a way that might not fly in a traditional school setting, but the teachers, “who don’t get offended very easily,” overlook in the face of the larger picture, namely that they students are participating in class.

In fact, it’s exactly the small, informal nature of the classroom that allows science teacher Nick Perino to cover more material than he would if he were teaching to a class of 32 students, as he did for five years at a middle school in the Bronx. Informal roundtable discussions and hands-on activities are much easier to handle with small groups, he says. Bornstein agrees, saying that alternative education allows the teacher “more freedom” in trying to reach students.

And reaching the students, getting them back on track, instilling confidence and feelings of success, is what Orchard View is all about. Indeed, inspiration and motivation are everywhere. Advisory councils of students and faculty engage in friendly competition to boost school prides, a newsletter distributed to everyone at the school includes the student of the week award and events like a pot-luck lunch an parent night are held regularly. Also, the cork strips that line the school’s single hallway are hung with the second quarter honor roll, posters depicting individuals who have triumphed over challenges, and motivational quotes. One of the latter, from 19th century American transcendentalist philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, is plastered near the ceiling at the end of the hall, where everyone can see it on their way to class. (It also, incidentally, hangs in Kossman’s house.) It says: “Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”

“All of us have bumps in the road,” Kossmann said, explaining that staff members use a lot of work and real-world metaphors with the kids and they liken school attendance to a job. There’s a strict attendance policy, in large part because students automatically start to do better from the simple act of showing up for class.

“We tell them school’s an investment in yourself,” Kossmann said.

For Perino, his students are “good kids” for whom motivation is a problem.

“These are not bad kids, but they’ve brushed off school,” Perino said. “This is the first time they’re putting in effort and we have to constantly remember that.”

McFarlin also sees much good in her students, calling them “cool.

“They’re a trip. You get something different every day from these kids,” she said. “I can’t imagine just being in a regular school.”

The warm feelings the teachers have for their students are reciprocated as well. Several of the latter say the six teachers, whom they tease and joke with, are the best part of Orchard View.

“They all have personalities and everybody’s pretty cool,” said Middleton.

Scott, who shares a love of video games with Kossmann and often chats with him on that subject, says, “He’s more like a friend than a principal.”

Joe Rusch, a 2008 Orchard View graduate who is now studying electronic media communications in Syracuse, said of his former teachers, “I love them. They’re awesome. I consider them friends.”

Rusch said that without Orchard View, he would be a “statistical high school dropout.”

Scott feels the same way. Without the alternative school, “I would already have dropped out. This was my last chance, my best chance. This really saved my high school career.”

Kossmann called it a “source of pride” that the school has met its Annual Yearly Progress benchmarks under No Child Left Behind every year and noted that it gives him “immense satisfaction” to see kids graduate from Orchard View. But he stresses that helping students in their journey is the school’s true function. His staff holds a similar view, pointing out repeatedly that they’ve chosen to work where they do in part because they might be the very ones to reach a student.

Kossmann, who’s fond of puzzles and keeps several in his office as a way of getting to know students, thinks of each of the latter as a unique challenge, too.

“Each kid’s a different puzzle,” he said. “You’ve got to find the way that they fit. And we don’t give up.”