
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, June 14, 1993                   TAG: 9306140329
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

ALTERNATIVE ED GRAD NOW COLLEGE-BOUND

Amie Malone grumbled at the staff when she came to Roanoke's Alternative Education Center. She didn't want to be there. "I thought it was just for bad people," she said.

Within a few months, she had become one of the center's success stories.

On her 18th birthday in late May, she pulled from the mail an acceptance letter from Virginia Union University in Richmond. She's going there in September.

On Wednesday, she graduates from Patrick Henry High School. She finished her senior course work at the center.

She's one of many city students who need the close attention the center gives.

Asked to define what the center offers, she said: "Warmth. You can talk to everybody here about your problems. Seem like you at home, like it's your family."

Friends urged her to return to PH. They said, "This is a bad school. That makes me mad. All my friends put it down."

She doesn't believe she'd be graduating if she hadn't been sent here by PH.

She's eager to get out of Roanoke, where she says teen-agers fall into trouble because there's little to do. "They just leave us hanging, grownups do."

She wants to be a lawyer.

by CNB