WGN-TV CoverStory: Oliver's Kids
Muriel Clair, Reporter
October 25, 2006
Tonight, WGN News begins a five year project that was prompted by a story in this People magazine. It featured a math teacher in Boston, Oliver Sicat who has the potential to change many lives in the Chicago area.
Sicat had taken 20 9th graders from a rough Boston neighborhood into his after-school program.
Now, four years later, every one of those students is going to college, a first for many of their families. Oliver Sicat's energy is now being tapped in Chicago.
Oliver is officially on the payroll at Chicago's nationally recognized Noble Street charter schools. He's been hired as a principal-in-training with this challenge: take what you did in Boston with 20 kids and expand it to an entire high school. Noble Street thinks if anyone can do it, Oliver can.
Oliver's Chicago assignment began over the summer.
"I would like to officially introduce to the Noble Street staff the two '07 principals," says Mike Milkie.
Oliver and Chicago native Soledad Ruiz were hired by Noble Street founders Mike and Tonya Milkie to compliment a dedicated group of teachers and staff.
"How will he be accepted by that group of teachers and staff. My belief is he'll be accepted once they find out about the kind of work he can do," Milkie says.
In just seven years the Noble Street charter high schools are dramatically changing the Chicago public school experience for hundreds of mostly minority and low-income kids.
"I want to know how and where I'm going to fit in. Thinking about starting over is really scary and exciting at the same time," Sicat says.
At age 27, Oliver Sicat is already much accomplished.
He was born in California to Philippine parents of humble means.
"I saw them educate themselves, I saw my father graduate college when I was 16," Sicat says.
He went to the University of Southern California, then graduate school at Harvard. There he developed an after-school program he called Emagine. Emagine with an "e" for "equality through education."
His first true test of Emagine was with 9th graders at Madison Park Vocational in the Roxbury section of Boston, the equivalent of Chicago's Englewood neighborhood.
"We took a good cross section of every kind of student you could find at that school," Sicat says.
With a drop-out rate of 37 percent and many kids who couldn't pass standardized tests in reading and math, he had only two requirements: Work hard and dream of going to college. This fall, those dreams came true, all are in college many with scholarships.
The Boston marathon was their ticket to the latest technology. Their laptop computers were paid for with generous donations and Sicat's sweat.
He reunited with his students on the beach in August when Oliver married his high school sweetheart Zipporah Allen. She's getting her MBA at Northwestern.
"This is a mansion, washer and dryer that's living in luxury, I've never had this in my life," Sicat says.
This will be home until Oliver finds his very own school.
For now, he's working out of the brand new Pritzker College Prep school at Cortland and Kedvale.
He's learning the Noble Street culture, strict discipline, a dress code and dedication to learning.
For Oliver Sicat the fall of 2006 brings a new city, new challenges and new opportunities for Chicago kids.
"I teach because I love my parents and I teach because I want to create opportunities for others who are like them," Sicat says.
"He has intellectual energy, he has physical energy, he has emotional energy and all those things will be needed," Milkie says.
Oliver has until next fall to find a school building, hire his staff and hold a lottery for his first class of incoming freshmen. Can he do it? Look for progress reports on WGN News at Nine.
For more information, go to www.emagine.us or www.newschools.org
Copyright © 2008, WGN-TV
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