Opinion

Choir boys' tough lesson

It's become a familiar tale. Choir boy commits childish prank or stupid mistake at school. Administrators bound by zero tolerance policies throw the book at him. Parents are outraged. Choir boy is traumatized for life.

And so it was for three good, college-bound seniors at Langham Creek High School in northwest Houston. All except the trauma.

What struck me as I interviewed the teens — two of them who committed their misdeeds on a choir field trip — was what they had learned from their ordeals.

Their last high school lesson came from the weeks they spent with the so-called bad kids of the Cy-Fair Alternative Learning Center.

"Did I want to see those kids? No," said one of the choir boys, 17-year-old Matt Borgardt. "Am I glad I saw those kids? Yes."

Automatic expulsion

Borgardt's road to ALC began nearly a month ago, when he and Ryan DelaGarza , 18-year-old all-state choir first chair, bought souvenir knives at a gift shop in South Padre. They say they didn't know the butterfly knives, with 3 1/2 -inch blades, were legal to buy but illegal to possess. They'd bought knives before on a choir trip to Hawaii.

Instead of having the boys just return the $13 knives, school officials confiscated them and accused the boys of a level five offense, the highest level reserved for infractions such as rape, aggravated robbery and capital murder. The offense triggered an automatic expulsion and removal to a strict alternative school run by Harris County juvenile justice.

The same fate was prescribed for 18-year-old John McDaniel, who earlier this month brought a blunted sword to use as a prop for an English class skit.

School officials considered the sword a dangerous weapon and expelled him.

But the boys avoided the stricter facility. They say a few understanding school staff members advised them to delay their appeals, which left them in limbo at a district-run alternative center until graduation.

Missing out

For the next three weeks, (two weeks for McDaniel), the teens say they spent long days in "bridge class," where they kept up with course work, listened to smooth jazz on the Internet, played cards and dominoes, made giant paper snowflakes and read Chronicle comics. They missed senior rituals: scholarship banquets, senior breakfast, graduation rehearsal.

Routine ruled their days, which began by lining a hallway, pockets out, passing through a metal detector and being inspected for drugs and weapons.

Most kids wore uniforms of khakis and white T-shirts. A color-coded disciplinary system rewarded good behavior with privileges, such as walking unescorted.

There seemed to be a lucrative black market and kids who refused simple rules, like tucking in shirts.

"Everybody in there is the toughest person you've ever met," McDaniel said.

Once, he said, he overheard a student ask a girl if she had "the stuff." He was anticipating a drug deal when the girl reached into her bra and pulled out a piece of gum and demanded $5.

Kids told wild stories about how kids came to ALC. An eighth-grader who claimed he hijacked a car. A seventh-grader was obsessed with getting high. One freshman said he'd beaten a kid with a chair after he called him an ethnic epithet.

The kid's friends were mostly bad influences, the boys said. He did a lot of drugs. He seemed to have little support from his parents, who had recently kicked him out for coming home late.

"He told us the only thing that kept him out of trouble was sports," Borgardt said.

So he and DelaGarza, both football players, encouraged the boy to pour himself into sports, instead of drugs.

"We got him to say he'd stop smoking weed," DelaGarza said. They hope he meant it.

"It's sad because you see these kids just wasting their lives away," DelaGarza said. "You're so used to this little protective life and you can see what life would be like if you didn't have those rules."

It made them appreciate their nagging, overprotective parents whose warnings to them echo like second consciences.

"My dad bought me a cell phone when I was 15," said McDaniel. "It was so that he could constantly call me and constantly bug me and it annoyed me so much. I never really understood 'hey, the morals they're teaching me are going to keep me out of ALC.' "

The experience, Borgardt said, "made me want to go home and go hug and kiss my mother."

I can't think of a better lesson for three kids headed to college. Every year, good kids like these drink themselves to death at frat parties, play with drugs and sex like toys, because they think they're invincible.

In a way, Langham High's narrow-minded discipline policy gave these kids a precious graduation gift: their first taste of the real world.

lisa.falkenberg@chron.com