CNBNews

| Philadelphia Inquirer | 12/20/2009

By Rita Giordano

Inquirer Staff Writer

One Camden mother who has sent two daughters to an elementary school in Brooklawn couldn't say enough about the program.

"I absolutely love it," said Jovana Gibson. Her 12-year-old daughter, Justice, is a high-achieving sixth grader at the Alice Costello School in Brooklawn.

Her older daughter, Jemai, 18, is a freshman at Rutgers-Camden and a graduate of Camden's Creative Arts High School. Gibson sent her to Brooklawn in the fifth grade after reading a news article about the program. Jemai had attended a Camden public school and, briefly, a charter school and earned A's and B's. That changed when she got to Brooklawn.

"She wasn't an A-B student. She was a C-D student," Gibson said. She and her daughter were devastated, but the Brooklawn staff stepped up.

"They worked with her," Gibson said. "They got her up to par."

via www.philly.com