The size and immediacy of the drop will strike some as suspect, but Memphis Street Academy stands by accuracy of their numbers, saying that they are required by law to report the same types of incidents any other school must report. Nothing about the reporting process or the kinds of incidents that must be reported was changed. And while many charter schools are criticized for "creaming," i.e. taking only the best students and transferring those with behavior problems or disabilities to other struggling public schools, the Memphis Street Academy and the Alternatives to Violence Project insist that wasn't the case, here. The conditions of their charter required them to pick up exactly where John Paul Jones left off.

Carolyn Schodt, a registered nurse at Alternatives to Violence who also runs AVP inside Graterford State Prison, says, "We did this with the same students, same parents, same poverty. In one school year serious incidents - drug sales, weapons, assaults, rapes - went from 138 to 15.

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Fifth grade certainly isn't too early for school-based violence intervention programming in North Philadelphia. Memphis Street Academy kids grow up quick. Many students have parents struggling with addiction and older siblings in the drug game who are already either dead or in jail. The reality of life in their community can be harsh; teachers say students coming to school in the morning witness prostitutes on Kensington Avenue tricking to get their wake-up dope shots. On the way home in the afternoon, after the extensive network of drug corners operating in the neighborhood are up and humming, they might have to dodge bullets. Students have brought dirty syringes and discarded guns they found on the street to class. By middle school many of them have witnessed more violence than most Americans who didn't serve in a war ever will.

Previously listed as one of Pennsylvania's persistently dangerous schools, John Paul Jones was known as an unruly place where fights were the norm and street violence from the surrounding neighborhood occasionally spilled onto school property. This despite the fact that security measures at the time--the ones the school got rid of while rebranding to Memphis Street Academy--were extreme.

"Every day ," says CEO of American Paradigm Schools Stacey Cruise, "they would set up a perimeter of police officers on the blocks around the school, and those police were there to protect neighbors from the children, not to protect the children from the neighborhood." Before school let out the block would clear, neighbors coming in off their porches and fearfully shutting their doors. Nearby bodegas would temporarily close shop. When the bell rung, 800 rambunctious children would stream out the building's front doors, climbing over vehicles parked in front of the school in the rush to get away.