Michael has over 20 years of experience working in schools like this. Starting in the Camden, NJ area, he transferred to a school in Chicago caught in territorial gang violence. After more than a decade of work in the gang riddled neighborhoods of Chicago, Michael moved to the Bay Area to serve at the De Marillac Academy. Michael has been working in the Tenderloin for a few years now, and we felt measurably safer walking through the neighborhood with him. The people of the neighborhood know him, including the drug dealers on the corner. As we took a quick walk through the streets, we saw some caution tape marking off the scene of an accident. A pedestrian had been hit by a vehicle, and Michael asked us to stand on the corner as he investigated further. He recognized the injured pedestrian, as a local drug dealer who is routinely working that particular corner. He appeared to have his leg broken in the incident, and was surrounded by paramedics and police. His day might be getting a bit worse.
Michael pulled out an orange syringe cap that he had picked up outside the school. This is a common enough occurrence that he collects these like souvenirs in a jar in his office. It’s not uncommon to see someone incapacitated on the sidewalk with a needle sticking out of their neck, arm, or leg. On more than one occurrence, Michael will ask drug dealers standing outside of the school to take a 15 minute break while the school dismisses for the day. Usually, they are happy to oblige, “Anything for the Kids”.
Michael and team are doing great work to provide a bright spot in an otherwise black eye of San Francisco. The principal goal of the De Marillac Academy is to provide quality education to youths who may not have access to it otherwise. The hopeful long term result would be to help break the cycle of poverty in families and allow students to create lives filled with meaning, purpose, and fulfillment. The De Marillac Academy boasts a 12:1 student to teacher ratio, a graduation rate of 90%, and an equally impressive higher education enrollment rate of 89%.
The facilities reminded me of my own high school experience, only more evolved. Every classroom has a smart board, the library was full of Dell computers with giant, wide-screen monitors. The science labs still use those long, rectangular tables with the black painted tops (sparking a debate of why these tables are a staple of every science classroom in America). The art facility was donated by the Leroy Neiman Foundation, who will also provide all art supplies in perpetuity, and pay for the art teacher for the first year.
The teachers and staff at De Marillac Academy could earn more money in a public school district, but selflessly choose to work here, in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the city. We continued our walk with Michael around the Tenderloin as he pointed out a few things the lay person wouldn’t recognize. He told us there were more children living in the Tenderloin than any other neighborhood in San Francisco. Most of the families are forced to live in SROs (Single Room Occupancy) apartments that have one room, with no kitchen, and a shared bathroom for the entire floor of apartments. This sounds a lot like a freshman dorm, except squeezing entire families into those 10×10 cinder block dwellings seems unimaginable. San Francisco is one of the most expensive places to live in the country. In a city full of tech millionaires, I was wondering how someone working in the service industry could afford to live in San Francisco. The answer under most scenarios: they can’t.
Michael told us about the initiative to bring tech companies like Twitter to the Tenderloin, giving such companies a tax incentive to build offices in the neighborhood, and adding a capital injection into the area. A supermarket and other trendy shops have begun to pop up near the proposed site. The neighborhood’s residents have started to picket the building sites, as they understand the certain side-effects of the city’s plan. Businesses will move in to cater to the new, wealthy tech residents, increasing the popularity of the area as well as its cost of living. How can the city improve this black eye without inadvertently kicking out its current residents? That is the unanswered question at hand.
Yet another issue plaguing the area is dietary related disease. Currently, there are no grocery stores in the Tenderloin. There are corner stores, but most do not carry fresh produce. It’s also cheaper to buy artificial foods than fresh produce, a primary reason for the high diet based disease rate in the area. Diabetes is a major concern among the youth of area, and one could assume it’s a combination of lack of food options as well as dietary education.
Despite the adversity that the community faces, it’s hard to ignore the positive impacts from the De Marillac Academy. They serve over 200 families in the area, and the success stories will melt your heart. Michael gave us two books of poetry composed by the 8th graders. Not only is the work impressive, but if I didn’t already know so, I would have never guessed it was written by 14 year-olds. The poetry was integrated into a short profile video produced for the school. We sat down to watch this video with Michael, and it blew us away. The video has a cinematic quality with a dramatic flair that makes you want to pick up and join the De Marillac Academy cause. It also makes me confident that the reach and impact of the De Marillac Academy will continue to grow.
Check out the short video below and see for yourself.