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Hawthorne High School is not, senior Brad Cellent says, the biggest day-care center in Charlotte.
And it is not, Tracey Pickard adds, a truancy center for students with serious behavior issues.
It is, they agree, misunderstood by many people in the community.
"We're trying to do something about that," says Pickard, who came to Hawthorne in April as principal.
She is leading an effort by staff and others to recruit volunteer help for Hawthorne's students, who, she says, do not fit the mold of traditional high school students. But she wants the students to have the traditional offerings of a high school.
Hawthorne High, which moved to its site on Hawthorne Lane in Plaza Midwood several years ago after a previous life as Midwood School, is home to Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools students seeking a different academic setting, and for Dolly Tate Teenage Parent Services (TAPS), for pregnant students and those with young babies.
With only 276 students - less than one-tenth the number of Myers Park High - Hawthorne normally functions below the radar of area residents.
Occasionally that changes, but usually not the way its staff and students would prefer. In August, Hawthorne student Tiffany Wright, eight months pregnant, was shot to death at a bus stop.
"Our students are not behavior risks," Pickard says. "They are simply following a different path. We try to meet their needs."
Many Hawthorne students are there because of the smaller setting.
"A setting like this gives me the opportunity to learn," says student Jonathan Crespo, who moved to Charlotte from Harlem before the school year started. "I was on the wrong path, thinking school is not for everyone. Hawthorne changed that."
There is an evening program for students returning to finish high school work. And for 90 minutes every afternoon, students can take a course to make up for lost credits.
And there is the TAPS program, with about a dozen babies spending school days in the nursery. Pickard and school officials would like to add a second nursery room, if they can get donations of cribs and other baby supplies.
"But there are more than pregnant girls and young mothers here," says Cellent, who is college-bound.
A key goal for Pickard and the staff is to create a sense of community. Students participated in a talent show last week, and the school held a fall festival Saturday. Hawthorne now has a boys' basketball team, a chess team, dance classes and a choir.
"Whatever our students' situation, our goal is to make sure they have a solid chance to succeed in society," said Betty Cecil, the school's executive secretary and a 15-year Hawthorne veteran.
In the lobby of the school is a painting by senior Jarkevian Winchester, based on the Robert Frost poem "The Road Less Traveled." Pickard says that poem symbolizes the lives of Hawthorne's students.
Two roads diverged in a wood
And I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference.
