Enter Brooklyn High School for Leadership and Community Service (BHSLCS), one of 52 “transfer schools” in the New York City Department of Education, located in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Founded in 2008 by Georgia Kouriampalis, an alumna of the School Leadership Program at Touro’s Graduate School of Education (class of ‘05), in partnership with Brooklyn Community Services, the BHSLCS serves students from 16 to 21 years of age who are lacking credits and, like Cartagena, are in danger of dropping out.

Kouriampalis, who is the school’s principal, says, “It’s a second chance place. Our students are dealing with many issues —court dates, visiting parents in prison, unstable housing situations and cases of abuse. They’re heroes just by showing up.”

Like other transfer schools, BHSLCS is designed to re-engage students who often are from the poorest communities. They face extreme challenges, including severe behavior problems due to neglect, or are being raised by extended family members overwhelmed by their needs. They tend to be older than students in traditional high schools, and lack the credits needed to graduate on time with their peers in mainstream schools.

Given the needs of the transfer student population, BHSLCS offers more support than a regular high school might. Students are eligible to receive anywhere from 15 to 18 credits per year. The trimesters are rolling, so students can graduate at any time. Clinical support is provided by Brooklyn Community Services, a local communitybased organization, with four social workers on site.

“We create a family atmosphere and a safe haven,” says Kouriampalis. “We want students to believe in the power of transformational change.” This is a path Kouriampalis knows firsthand.

Raised in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn by Greek immigrants with a sixth-grade education, Kouriampalis learned the values of hard work, honesty and helping other people. She attended Soterios Ellenas School, a K-8 grade school which, she said, was “rooted in owning your history, culture, identity and spirituality.”

Early on, Kouriampalis discovered a passion for teaching and for working with youth, in particular. After receiving her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Brooklyn College, she completed her master’s degree in Secondary Education from the College of Staten Island before coming to Touro, where she earned her Master of Science in School Administration and Supervision. Her first teaching job was at Fort Hamilton High School in Brooklyn where she taught English for more than ten years— and also had been a former student. “It took some getting used to, calling my former teachers by their first names,” she says.

There, she learned the importance of mentoring and the role of a caring teacher in a student’s life. As coordinator of student activities and student government, a position she held her last three years, Kouriampalis oversaw countless activities— everything from team sports to student clubs. In 2005, her last year at Fort Hamilton, she was voted Teacher of the Year. To this day, she’s still in touch with her former students.

The importance of connecting and giving back was cemented by Kouriampalis’s experiences at Touro, where she studied with Alan Sebel, a professor at the Graduate School of Education and a former school deputy assistant superintendent who would become one of her trusted mentors. Sebel recognized Kouriampalis’s spark instantly.

“It was evident immediately that she had a special ability to be a great leader down the road,” he says. “She’s continued to give back to Touro, returning to my classes to talk to students about the transition from teacher to administrator. She’s remarkable, and I know there’s so much more she will contribute to the school system over time.”

The admiration is a two-way street. Kouriampalis says, “Whether you’re in his class or not, Sebel makes time for his students. Even though he was my professor 11 years ago, he’s still in my life. I’ve touched base with him around every professional decision.”

One such decision of Kouriampalis’s was pivotal: deciding to start her own transfer school. After Fort Hamilton, Kouriampalis took a position as the assistant principal of organization with South Brooklyn Community School, another transfer school. This showed her the importance of having a clinical element on site for the disadvantaged every day.

As she considered returning to the classroom, her colleagues started to plant other seeds. She recalls, “I kept getting tapped on the shoulder, ‘Hey, why don’t you start your own school?’ ” Kouriampalis then took a position in 2007 with one of the New York City Department of Education’s network teams, focusing on education administration. “I thought, if I am going to open my own school, I wanted to learn from different leaders,” says Kouriampalis.

For a year, she worked on a proposal for BHSLCS and put together a planning team that included Sebel, and spent time delving into her ideas about education. Many of her foundational philosophies have roots at Touro. In Sebel’s class, she had made connections between her personal life and professional journey, identifying her core values and leadership style. Kouriampalis says, “There is a lot of power in someone saying, ‘You have to be accountable to who you are.’ His course really taught me how to build in selfawareness and self-reflection as a leader, and maintain trust in the process.”

While Kouriampalis was busy honing in on her mission and vision, she was also at a particularly challenging time in her own life.

After a three-year stint in hospice following a brain-related injury, Kouriampalis’s older sister died in April 2008, months before the school would open. Throughout her family’s grieving process, the compassion of the hospice workers—as well as coworkers, her spiritual community, mentors, friends and family—only fueled her motivation to create an inspired and loving experience for her future students. “It made me want to give back,” Kouriampalis says. “My sister was full of kindness, happiness and faith. She didn’t get to live, but we do. I thought, ‘How can I bring this sense of understanding to kids who don’t have parents in their lives?’ ”

By the time BHSLCS opened in September 2008, Kouriampalis’s team was ready. Most important was to make the students feel loved and supported. Kouriampalis is a firm believer that the way one speaks to students and staff affects the entire community. In one of her old notebooks from Touro, she’d written, “Life is about human relationships before human achievements.”

Now in its sixth academic year, Kouriampalis clearly is achieving success. Her office is wallpapered with appreciative notes from staff and students, and the school is getting rave reviews from students, faculty and parents alike for creating a safe, secure and comfortable environment— one filled with respect, good communication and engagement, while at the same time setting high academic expectations. Students once on the verge of disappearing from the school system instead are graduating and going on to college and the job market.

“Despite the horrible loss of a beloved 21- year-old who was part of the community for three years—one week before New York State exams and two weeks before graduation—26 students graduated,” Kouriampalis said of the Class of 2014.

To create opportunities for the students, Kouriampalis and her staff have forged partnerships with local organizations, including New York Cares to create murals; Downtown Community Television Center to bring teaching artists to the classroom; and Educational Video Center to demonstrate the power of documentary filmmaking to English classes. In addition, former City Councilwoman (and current New York City Public Advocate) Leticia James granted the school $150,000 to set up a computer lab.

“We continue to create access and build opportunities for our students,” says Kouriampalis. “We’ll try anything.”

Since its inception, BHSCLS has faced its share of challenges, including the untimely losses of four other students due to separate incidents of violence, and one staff person due to natural causes. Many of the students have expressed their own fears about not living past their 21st birthdays. In response, the school set up a healing wall, where students can create poetry and artwork.

Hallways are covered with inspirational quotes, as well as images of butterflies, which had become an important symbol of metamorphosis to Kouriampalis during her sister’s illness.
After attending the funerals and seeing grieving parents, Kouriampalis’s resolve to heal and continue has been strengthened.

How, is a question Kouriampalis and her staff contend with on most days. “Every student is unique in terms of what they need,” she says. In Cartagena’s case, he mentioned to Kouriampalis that he’d studied robotics in high school and even traveled to Tokyo to compete in a robotics competition. When he said that the activity had provided him with a positive distraction from his struggles, she arranged to have a robotics lab set up. Cartagena says he feels at home at BHSLCS. “Here, if something happens, the teachers are quick to react, like parents would,” he says.

The stresses in his life haven’t gone away, Cartagena says. His grandmother and aunt recently had strokes, and his grandmother moved to Puerto Rico. Focusing on schoolwork is a serious challenge. Of his circumstances, he says, “I don’t know why I was put in this predicament, but then Georgia explained to me the butterflies,” referring to Kouriampalis’s philosophy that “life is messy like the caterpillar stage, but if you are resilient and hang in there, you get to the butterfly stage.” “At the end of the day,” he continues optimistically, “I know something good is going to come out of it.”

This article appeared in Issue V - August-September 2014 of Touro Links, the graduate division magazine of Touro College.