Suspension Trap.

• Author: Sussman, Anna Louie
• Position: Short story

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It was chilly in Brooklyn on November 4, with rain on the way, so Stephen Trenchfield's mom insisted he wear his heavy jacket to school. Although he says he couldn't feel it under his coat, a small pocket knife that he used for fishing accompanied him to school that day, setting off the metal detector at the entrance of the High School for Public Service. The school suspended him for sixty days.

When we met in early December, Trenchfield, a senior, was midway through his twelve-week suspension at the Brooklyn West Alternate Learning Center--a four-room "school for degenerates," as he calls it. It was his second time at Brooklyn West; a year earlier, he was sent there thirty days for fighting. Tall, clever, and deeply sardonic, Trenchfield plans to be a college history professor, plans that his months at Brooklyn West nearly derailed.

During his first stint there, Trenchfield fell so far behind in math that he almost failed upon his return. At his regular school, where he was getting 80s and 90s on his Trigonometry 1 exams, the class was studying distributions before he left. When he came back from Brooklyn West, he felt like Rip Van Winkle.

"I had no idea what we were doing in that class," Trenchfield says. "I was just sitting in the back of the class, copying down notes every day." He barely passed math that year, with a final grade of 65.

He started off this school year in his regular school with a great math teacher. He caught up so quickly that after a month he was bumped up into a more advanced class. In November, the class was factoring polynomials. Two months into his time at Brooklyn West, he was still factoring polynomials. When he asked his home school's administration why they wouldn't send over work to the alternate learning center, he was told that he would get work there.

"But it's not the same work," he says, "and when I do come back, I'm, like, waaay behind."

Despite passing all of his classes at the alternative learning center last year, Trenchfield had difficulty getting credit for his work when he returned to his regular school. Although the curriculum is theoretically equivalent, the home school has final say over whether or not to grant credit. In Trenchfield's case, his eleventh grade guidance counselor, with whom he had a testy relationship, refused to sign off on them, and it wasn't until this year that a new guidance counselor put those credits on his transcript.

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